Funny. I'm in my 40s also but decided on a career in academia (CS) when I was younger instead of the tech industry. What a mistake. I recently lost my job to d

Funny. I'm in my 40s also but decided on a career in academia (CS) when I was younger instead of the tech industry. What a mistake. I recently lost my job to due to a lack of funding and I'm a pretty difficult hire now: academia is done for me, if you haven't made it to professor by my age, you're obviously worthless. But for an industry job, I'm facing the dilemma that I'm formally highly qualified but have no relevant (industry) experience to show. That is, I'm too mature for a junior position but too inexperienced for anything else. To make things worse, I left the states over a decade ago, and thus have no relevant network there. Not that I have a network outside academia over here, either... I'm so far removed from your situation (being able to pay off your house and thinking about retiring) that it's not even funny. My wife and I were only able to buy a tiny town house last year (< 1000 sq ft, shared walls with two other townhouses left and right), and will hopefully find some job that will allow us to pay off our loan over the next 20 years.