I'm 41 and I've worked in insurance for nineteen years. I've always dreamed of opening a little café with mismatched chairs and good cake. I have some savings and my partner is supportive, mostly. Everyone at work says "go for it, life's too short." Part of me thinks this is my midlife moment. Another part of me knows nothing about running a business. Which part should I listen to?
— Dreaming in DerbyEveryone at work says “go for it” because none of them will be there at 6am mopping oat milk off a floor you’re still paying for.
Opening a café is one of the world’s most popular dreams. It’s also one of its most popular ways to convert a lifetime of savings into mismatched chairs. The cake is the easy part. The hard part is rent, staff, suppliers, business rates, and the man who buys one filter coffee and sits for four hours on your wifi planning his own café across the road.
“Life’s too short,” say the colleagues with pensions. Life is also long enough to spend fifteen years paying off a coffee machine.
Nineteen years in insurance, and now you want to take an uninsurable risk. There’s a joke in there. Your landlord will tell it.
Here’s the grain of sense, dressed as a threat: work weekends in someone else’s café for three months before you spend a penny. Ask the owner what they wish they’d known, and watch their eyes. Write a plan with real numbers, then make every number worse, because reality will. If the dream survives that, it’s not a midlife moment. It’s a decision. If it doesn’t, congratulations. You’ve saved your savings.