The Bridge, Not the Pivot: Career Moves for Women Who Are Not Starting Over

My severance runs out soon, and when it does, I’ll be picking up the full cost of health insurance for me and my two children. Instead of celebrating the return of Pumpkin Spice Lattes and sweaters, I’m calling insurance brokers to find out how much of my retirement is going to go toward giving us some element of protection should our health go sideways.

People talk about the big stuff when you lose a job: reinvention, fresh starts, “finding your passion.” What almost no one mentions are the small, relentless expenses that drain your savings long before you’ve figured out your next move. Friends meant well, but a lot of the advice I got sounded like it was written for women who are still choosing between starting a family and chasing a promotion. I wasn’t either.

If you’re still employed, the most practical bridge is usually inside your own company. You already have a reputation. Moving toward work that’s hard to replace—the cross-functional, judgment-heavy, “call her when this breaks” kind of work—can potentially protect your income and benefits while reducing how exposed you are when budgets tighten. Whether the role comes with a bigger title matters less than whether it puts you closer to next year’s headcount decisions. If I’d understood that earlier, I would have taken a lateral move that put me in the room where decisions were made instead of the shinier title that didn’t.

The problem is that most realistic bridge options get framed as consolation prizes. A lateral move looks, at least on paper, like you’ve stopped climbing. But that’s only true if you’re measuring everything against a ladder that was never built for the last decade of a career.

If you’re unemployed, the pivot starts to look tempting because the safety net is gone. But a pivot assumes the most important thing right now is the freedom to reinvent yourself. For a woman close to retirement, I’d argue the most important thing is continuity, and income is the biggest part of that. Real pivots come with gaps: retraining, credentials, slow first years. A gap at 55 costs more than a gap at 35 because you have fewer years to recover if it doesn’t go the way you hoped.

Reputation is the quieter part of this. After twenty-plus years, people know what you’re good at. They call you for a certain kind of problem, and they recommend you when someone else has that same problem. A full pivot asks you to walk into a new field as a stranger, which is hard at any age and even harder now.

The numbers make this even sharper. Transamerica’s research, reported in Forbes this summer, puts median household retirement savings for women in my generation at $77,000, compared with $125,000 for men. Less saved means less room for a lean year. And the hiring market isn’t neutral about who gets a fresh start. Economists David Neumark, Ian Burn, and Patrick Button sent out more than 40,000 job applications in a field experiment published in the Journal of Political Economy. They found strong evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, especially those nearing retirement, with far less evidence against older men. Put those two findings together, and a pivot starts to look like rolling a set of loaded dice.

Fractional work is a real option, but people often judge it by comparing a day rate to a salary, which doesn’t tell you much. The better comparison is what it costs to keep the work going: the benefits you now pay yourself, the gaps between clients, and what it takes to keep you in the black. Two clients who already know your work and keep coming back may do more for your bridge than a full-time job in a field where you’re starting from zero, even if the annual number is a little lower.

Advisory roles are another path that gets overlooked because they rarely add up to a full income. They don’t need to. A board seat or a monthly call with a founder who needs your judgment can be one of several income streams. And it keeps your expertise current in a way a gap year never will.

Whether you choose a bridge or a pivot depends on your numbers, your risk tolerance, and, if we’re being honest, your energy. Before you decide, write down what each option preserves. How many months of income does it protect? Will the people who already know your work still be able to find you a year from now?

My own bridge is a business I’m building with my sister. From the outside, it might look like the kind of pivot I’m arguing against. The difference is that everything we’re building runs on what each of us spent two decades developing. The work changed shape, but the expertise underneath it carried over.

I don’t know what the future holds. What I do know is that starting over this close to the finish line isn’t an option. So I’ll sit here with my Pumpkin Spice Latte and warm sweater and pick out the right healthcare plan for my family, knowing the years I spent building my expertise still matter, even if my former employer disagrees.