I can afford to leave my job. So why am I still there?

ASK WTFT

This representative question reflects a dilemma many people face.

I’m 52 and have wanted to leave my corporate job for at least five years.

Financially, I could manage for a year or two without working. My children have left home, my partner is supportive and I have several ideas about what I might do next.

Yet every time I get close to resigning, I persuade myself to wait for another bonus, another project or greater certainty.

I no longer know whether I am being prudent or hiding behind prudence.

How can I tell the difference?

My perspective

My experience is that people leave when their frustration or ambition finally becomes stronger than their fear.

In my case, the frustration was not having enough time to see my children grow up. Eventually, that mattered more than the security of my corporate career.

Your frustration is clear. But your current job is concrete, while what comes next remains vague.

An idea is difficult to compare with a salary, a position and a life you already understand.

Clarity rarely arrives through more thinking. One way to create it is to spend a couple of hours after work turning one of your ideas into something real. Research it. Speak to potential customers. Build a first version. Try to sell it.

Yes, this temporarily increases your workload. But you could view that time as an investment in creating an alternative.

I am always surprised by how many people will spend their evenings and weekends pursuing an MBA for one or two years, yet hesitate to invest the same time in testing a project that could change their lives.

Perhaps that is because an MBA offers an established path and external validation. Your own project offers neither—and leaves you responsible for the outcome.

You may not need more courage to resign.

You may need to make one alternative sufficiently real that leaving no longer feels like stepping into nothing.

Walk your talk,
Franck