Have you changed career?
Was it a good move?
How long before you settled in?
I live in a big city and I have a job that relies on big companies implementing complicated management systems.
I've been doing this for the past 16 years, and I get paid fairly well, for fairly easy work (if you know).
I'm less and less interested and slowly the technology is starting to pass me by, and most of what I do now is argue with people who have YOUTUBE'd or gone to a conference where X vendor said it should be done this way. I hate my immediate colleagues, but I like the many PhD's in the company.
I'd like to get out of the chity, have a little garden with some pets OH and NBN otherwise less scene releases for y'all torrent addicts.
WTF am I going to do in a small coastal town?
If I was a Dr., radiologist it would be easy.
What do small coastal towns need? I thought of a Dollar shop, or grocery store...
I thought about being a chopper pilot crop dusting... but I farked my back and can't sit up straight.
I'd have to do something were I was the boss (my own).
And then there's my wife... she's an international paralegal, with some special UK certificate... her clients are exclusively British banks and she feels isolated living in Sydney!
We've been together most of our adult lives and I ain't leaving her cos she has an opinion.
I changed career...I retired
Dont Know where I found the time to go to work actually
You have interweb-IT-programing background? You could become a scammer! Be your own boss having a business based in Barbados or Nigeria, having top (free) legal advice and find your victims in the UK!
Lot more time to go wind-kitesurfing, drinking beer and looking after your back!
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About 2 hours north is a thriving city that still has a country feel.
You could even come and live in paradise and travel down to Newy each day. Heaps of people here do it.
You wouldn't need to change careers.
I was talking about living here in Port Stephens and commuting to Newcastle for work!
With all the business in Newcastle now surely you could find work easy enough.
I know what the drive to Sydney is like. I go down about once a month. I have to leave home at 4 in the morning to beat the traffic.
If you can find something that you want to do then its well worth the effort involved in the career change. I did this a few yrs back. It takes a while to learn to reduce your out-goings as your income drops - be warned!!! I was restricted to work in big cities due to my previous life, it took me a few years to engineer what I was after but now its happy days. I earn less than I did 8 yrs ago but am stoked on life. Never been happier. I work from home half the time and charge myself out for 30 hrs a week. I used to do 60 to 70 hr weeks. Stoked!!! I commute 94km each way twice a week - but its no real drama as most of it is on the freeway. If I leave by 5:15am I am in the office in 1hr 15 mins.
The best advice I ever received was to find someone that does a job that you like the look of and go and speak with them about it. Ask them the simple questions about what its like, good and bad points, people, locations, money etc People love to talk about themselves when you give them a chance (ego) so take advantage of it and ask their advice on how to get their. They will be thrilled to help I am sure.
It sounds like you have lots of practical skills that are probably easily transferrable if you can find the right avenue to attack. I went from one side of the risk equation to the other - into a place I had never even thought of / had thought about / knew about. And only because I talked to lots of people seeking advice and it came up.
Best of luck. If you need any more info send me a PM and I can tell ya some more.
Honestly you are better off staying where you are, saving up as much as you can, and then moving in the knowledge you can live till 100 and never have to earn another dollar.
Unless you have a skill needed in your new community and you need the money, you will end up working in a much lower paid job that will probably require hard physical labour. If you are lucky to get a job at all.
Personally I was incredibly crazy. About 10 years ago I finished uni and had no job so I started a business in Coffs Harbour. I worked very hard at it. It started slowly but after a few months it was doing well. However I sold the business after two years. Looking back I should have kept going. However back in 2004/2005 my wife and I were worried that what happened in 2008, the GFC, was going to happen and ruin our business.
So I was happy to sell out and take a government job.
Adolf, Nurse freind just moved here from newcastle. Between the hospitals in mornington and frankston she was spoilt for choice on nursing jobs.
Don't do it , country coastal life is a drag ,all ways fish to catch people are real friendly ( well most) , fish every where ,social life is crap
(never a chance to sleep), every one wants to , or knows you, so much to do tv doesn;t matter any more .
Gees I am getting tyred just typing 
In the late 90's my part time job/hobby, apart from running a company was, I'm not sure if I should say this... but I distributed Tryptamines and various other research chemicals.
Back then I was known as the chemist, even though all I did was order the stuff over the internet (today's silk road), measure doses out and pass them on... like a home Smart Shop.
People loved the stuff (I tested everything on myself first), and I really wanted to get in to organic chemistry... maybe also cos I read Pihkal.
Unfortunately the whole business idea runs afoul of some barbaric laws that make the average Joe not responsible for his own body.
Y2K ended and contracts dried up, so then I figured maybe Bioinformatics; that whole human genome project was throwing money around... Genentec, Biogen, Merck, etc all wanted good algorithms for sequence matching, archiving and manipulating.
But I couldn't break away from what I knew, all the jobs were in the US and I started reading stuff about it turning on itself.
Friends and family went in to developing trading platforms and trading algorithms... I missed that boat too :(... cos I thought the whole system was going to implode, a couple of buildings imploded instead.
I've been thinking about Carbon Tax compliance software... but the legislation is all over the shop and I can't even be bothered to read everything I've found.
I like programming, building technical things (quadrocopter, OC'ed computers).
I've got enough squirreled away to start a business or franchise, but like adolf I don't know what... maybe like Felix says, go to Africa buy a bar on the beach and spam the OECD with scams
Wind & Kite Tanzania anyone?
Flysurfer, have you ever lived in a small town? You know it's not for everyone, some people will go stir crazy from boredom. My suggestion would be to pull this thing off gradually and incrementally. Try moving to a nearby small town while keeping your current job.
I'm a plumbing and A/C contractor, I lived and worked in silicon valley, then we moved to a nearby small town for 3 years then moved to Hawaii. At first it was tough as there was no work in a terrible economy, then gradually I found my way like everyone eventually does. Three years later I do all kinds of building trades work in order to stay employed, I'm not making near as much money as before (less hours = more free time) but I live in Hawaii!
We hardly spend any money, never go out to eat, drive old cars etc.. but I've never been happier despite all the challenges that get thrown at us.
As you get accustomed to the slower pace of life the expensive things get much less important.
Changing careers and location completely could be too much of a shock to the system, I always say stick with what you know and keep your day job.
Almost every country town that is half decent to live in have residents who moved there from the city and regret it.
This article tells some of the downside of moving out of the city.
www.domain.com.au/news/
Surprised at the red thumbs above. The reality is incomes are usually lower in regional areas that are pleasant to live in, especially those areas where the most businesses in the main street are employment and real estate agents.
Im in the midst of a career change,
When i left highschool in 05 i took the first apprenticeship i was offered. it was at the local mower shop. it was good, i liked the work but my manager and i didnt get along. 2.5 years there i left and went on to repairing Forklifts, cars and trucks. finished my apprenticeship there and after 2 years and an altercation with my boss i quit. Had 3 months off, started a job with Coates hire and started making good money ( well i thought so )
it was at that point i decided i was earning enough to start learning to fly. i always wanted to be a pilot, ( probably crop dusting or something fun, not commercial passenger jets )
the cost of getting into that career is quite high, but i think it will be worth it. i work up north on a mine now and earn even better money for only working 6 months of the year!
So im currently building my hours while i make decent money and when i have my commercial pilots license and a few decent endorsements on it i will quit fixing things and fly for $$'s
I do enjoy being a mechanic but it really is a dead end job. and i keep getting visions of myself when im 50, hands and fingers all busted up back and knees stuffed haggrid beard and low moral. Plus crawling around underneath stinkin hot machines in the mud underground to change oil hoses wears pretty thin pretty quick! 
I can't start at the bottom again... I need a business idea.
I have a friend who wants to be a commercial pilot, he's getting his hours up buy flying parachute jumps... I haven't seen him in a while, but he gave the best ride ever... 1000ft negative G... dude put your feet on the roof and hold on!
I've got another friend who claims his blog posts pay well with advertising... I don't get it... maybe cos I block all ads.
I can't see why Moby above was red-thumbed.
There are very few career changes or scams that are completely safe and preserve the current income, esp. that you both appear to be well-paid professionals.
Before age 30, I switched a couple of times. Now past 40 as a professional with a business, it seems I'll have to wait it out to the end.
I'm lucky I happen to love my job. Or perhaps I convinced myself I do, not sure.
You have my empathy. Call me crazy but I've decide to leave an easy, well-paying job that I enjoy (for the most part), pack it all in and repatriate back to Oz and start again. Hope to plan to start a business but I have no idea either. I've moved internationally before but this time, after 20 odd years away, it's daunting me especially in this economic climate.
