I've been working in public accounting for several years, and am in my late 20s. Most of my experience has been with local government accounting. It's never thrilled me, but it had its good days and it paid off my student loans. I wanted out of public accounting for sure because of hours and travel, but really my experience has set me up for some pretty well-paying local government finance jobs (like school district treasurer, city finance director, etc) with pretty good work life balance and great benefits. The intellectual stimulation isn't the best though.
It all started really with my inherent Mustachianism. I was looking for a good neighborhood where I could live a car-free or car-light lifestyle, and have been frustrated by the lack of transit and bike and walkable infrastructure in my state. This led to me joining a discussion forum website and reading and posting a lot about urban development in our state and eventually led to me thinking of it as a potential career change. If I couldn't find the place I wanted to live, I would build it. I have always been a total geek when it came to maps, roads, trains, skyscrapers, always loved everything about cities.
Then I went through a big breakup and wanted a reset, so I took a mini-retirement and taught abroad last year and traveled all around Europe. Before I left, I applied for planning masters programs.
Now it's time for me to start in the fall. Don't worry, I got a good deal, I have a graduate assistantship where tuition is covered and I get a small stipend. If I work there in the summer as well I should be able to make more money and the way I calculate it is that I'm more or less getting paid $10,000 a year to go to school. So probably will have to dip into savings for living expenses but hopefully not too much. I have no debt, $30k in a savings account, and $16k in a 401k. I actually very much enjoy the prospect of schooling for schooling's sake and look forward to getting into the classroom and studying this stuff instead of doing repetitive public accounting work all day.
But the reality of the opportunity cost of this degree is setting in. Former coworkers of mine are starting to land good gigs, a former manager just got a job as a CFO of a wealthy suburb, $150k, and a former peer is the assistant treasurer of a wealthy school district, $80k. Even if I graduate without spending a lot of my savings, and land a job, I'm getting back into entry level stuff. I'm putting myself 3-5 years behind. There are planners making good money but I don't know how long it'll take. Hopefully I can leverage my background in local gov accounting to set myself apart from the pack. Several people have told me that's a possibility.
Best case scenario, it takes me a bit longer to reach financial goals but I find a career that keeps me engaged and intellectually stimulated and I'm surrounded by interesting people and interesting ideas (all of the above are lacking in the accounting world), and therefore I'm ok with that and more motivated to do better work. Worst case scenario, I get super disillusioned when I realize that I can't change the world, the job is super bureaucratic, I sit there working on dull zoning codes all day, and I wonder what the hell I left accounting for.
It's a scary thing, I'm about to jump off the cliff and I don't know what I'll find down there. I'm taking a risk and I guess this is what risk feels like.