At 51, I Finally Ditched My Office Job – I Am Self-employed And Earning Far More

As Brits work longer and the state pension age rises, a growing number of workers in their fifties are abandoning established careers in favour of entirely new professions, businesses and passions.

Where once a career path meant working for the same firm for decades, there’s now a new way of thinking. The employment rate of those aged between 50 and 64 is currently 72 per cent, but statistics from the OECD suggest that only a third of firms would hire someone aged between 45 and 54.

As a result, thousands are embarking on “second careers” in new fields. Analysis by ONS in 2023 found that almost half (48 per cent) of self-employed workers in the UK are aged 50 or over, the highest proportion between 2013 and 2023. Research from think-tank Phoenix Insights shows that a third of people aged between 45 and 54 expect to change careers before they retire.

Cath Gosden, 53, based in West Sussex, is one worker who gave up her lifelong career in payroll and bookkeeping. “I felt like there had to be more than this,” she says. “I needed something that lit me up and excited me. I was bored.”

Gosden had been in her last role for a payroll bureau for 14 years, and previously worked in accounting and bookkeeping roles. “I enjoyed it to a point but it’s very repetitive. I like having structure but it gets a bit samey-samey.”

After separating from her ex-husband in 2007 she’d been on and off dating apps for 17 years with no success. “It’s soul-destroying. I’d go on dating apps for six months, then think I had to come off of them. I’d stay off for a similar amount of time and wouldn’t meet anyone in real life so I’d go back on. After 17 years I was done.”

Her plan when leaving her PAYE role was to launch her own bookkeeping business, but after attending a three-day residential course for business owners and seeing the excitement of others starting their new journeys, she realised it didn’t excite her at all. “While I was out soul-searching for what I did want to do, I thought about the dating system and how it doesn’t work. The apps are designed to keep you swiping. If we all found what we’re looking for the apps wouldn’t need to be there. I thought we should go back to the old-fashioned way.”

In 2024, when she was 51, Gosden set up her own matchmaking agency. Most of her work is done through client folders stored in physical files, and she manually matches people based on their values, interests and lifestyle.

Clients can sign up to a package, including a certain number of dates, a photoshoot, and a stylist or dating coach session. Other clients she speaks to online can join her dating database for £24 per month, aimed at those who “aren’t ready to jump in with two feet and take a one-to-one package but would like to be considered as matches”.

Gosden says starting the business was “petrifying” and it took five months before she signed her first one-to-one client. Now she caps new clients at six or seven per month with some months fully booked in advance. Her numbers at one time vary, depending on intake and successful matches made.

“I think in your fifties you realise time isn’t infinte. When you’re in your twenties and thirties your fifties feel like forever away but it goes in the blink of an eye. It felt like 70 was just around the corner and I needed something to give me a sense of achievement and purpose. Working for somebody else and building their dream wasn’t it.”

One thing she didn’t expect was meeting her own partner Iain. After three of her clients were unsuccessfully matched with him, she met him herself, and they have now lived together for a year.

She’s now earning more than ever before while working less. “My salary is definitely better and I don’t work so much now. In the initial stages I did but not anymore. Payroll was pressured and time-driven. I often worked late nights but now I can pick and choose my hours. I try to stick to standard working hours but if I want to go and meet a client in the evening, or a Saturday morning, I can.”

Mark Wilkinson, a 55-year-old from London, quit his job in 2019 at the age of 50. He’d been working in health and safety for 10 years for various companies, including the Olympic Stadium and Heathrow. Although he had a good salary, he wanted more than corporate life.

In his twenties, Wilkinson had been a DJ for the Ministry of Sound. From a young age he’d been into music and built up his own record collection, playing at his friends’ birthdays and eventually becoming a resident DJ. “I remember just having the time of my life thinking it was incredible. I remember my first night at the club vividly because I was right in the thick of it.”

Through his DJing work and a job in a record shop in Kensington Market in the early 2000s, Wilkinson earned around £50,000, but his lifestyle meant he was spending heavily and not looking after himself. “Aged 33, all my addictions got the better of me, I was doing too much, living the high life. I didn’t see water or green vegetables for 20 years.”

In his early thirties, after collapsing in his flat, he was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and eventually lost his income and job, before being declared bankrupt at 39. After years of appointments, medication and living back with his mother, he completed a health and safety course and entered the corporate world for the first time.

“It wasn’t for me, I did my best and I did well. I went from bankrupt to a salary of £100,000 in three years by understanding my strengths. What I didn’t realise was that everyone loved the DJ, nobody loves the health and safety person. That was quite a transition for me.”

His day-to-day was a mix of office management and on-site work. “It was quite rigid at times. I’m very energetic, visionary, full of ideas and talkative and pre-Covid, I definitely felt that energy not being appreciated by other personalities. I felt quite misunderstood in the corporate world.”

In 2019 Wilkinson set up his own health and safety consultancy business, and in 2021 he published his first book Life Remixed, and is a coach for entrepreneurs and large companies. “It took 12 months of effort before I left. I was afraid to leave corporate and was reliant on the salary. I had to get all my ducks in a row, make sure I had money and then made the leap.

“I’m free of that corporate expectation. I can be my own boss, have my own freedom, my own energy and it’s the greatest joy of my life. I make my own diary, I do what I like when I like with who I like,” he says. ” I get up in the morning and walk my French bulldog Frankie, who is the apple of my eye, and always book out an hour for lunch and dinner with my wife Emma.”

Today, he considers himself the most successful he has ever been. He earns more than double his former corporate salary, manages his health and stress through his lifestyle, works with people all over the world and owns his own home. “It’s taken a long and patient effort and a willingness to keep learning,” he says. “But I’m in a good place.”

Gosden adds: “Many people in their fifties wonder if it’s too late to start again but in reality many people are entering a new phase as children have grown and flown the nest and they have the time and space to think about what they want for themselves.”