Whether you’re fresh out of college, or in the middle of a mid-life career change, choosing the best career for you isn’t as easy as it was when you were seven years old and you wanted to be a hockey player or a ballerina.

As you’ve gotten older, you realize that your personality and financial needs are going to play a vital role in the type of job you pursue. And because jobs aren’t one size fits all, and you’re not just like everyone else, finding the best career for you might not be as easy as you’d like it to be. But it’s still possible.

Let’s understand how your personality can affect your choice of career. Are you the type of person who always likes to be in the thick of things and enjoys working with lots of other people in a dynamic setting, or are you the type of person who is most happy and productive when working on a project alone or on a small team, in a quiet setting where you can concentrate on what you’re doing? You can see that the perfect job for the first person would be a not-so-great job for the second person and vice versa.

If you look further at personality, you can see that some people like to work with things, such as plants, while other people enjoy working with numbers. Still, others may like having a job that involves using their physical body or working with machinery (as in construction), or maybe having a job that involves nurturing others (as in nursing).

Some people work well in setting where changing gears often is normal, and tasks and priorities change. Others like to follow steps one by one through to completion. None of these preferences are right or wrong, but they can give you a lot of insight into whether a certain career is the best career for you.

Another consideration for your career path is your financial needs. Now everyone wants and needs to earn money. If that wasn’t necessary, many of us would opt to do things like putter in the garden all day, or go to the beach instead of having a job. But we need money.

When you’re considering your career, you have to consider your financial needs. It would be easy to say, “I want the job that makes the most money,” and for some, that’s true – but not for all.

Many people are more interested in finding a job that offers flexibility and other benefits and are willing to forgo earning millions so they can have certain other rewards that may or may not make sense to someone who wants to get rich. Again, neither is right or wrong.

Most career paths will offer jobs that make you rich, or make you enough money to pay your bills and enjoy life, but not have much extra. You have to determine where your priorities lie.

You also have to think about the debts you may have now, or that you will have in the future. You do need to choose a career path that will allow you to pay for your debts and still have a little fun, or a lot of fun, throughout your life.

Choosing the best career to suit your personality and financial needs is going to involve spending time thinking about what you want and what you’re like. Don’t try to fit yourself into a career path that won’t work for your personality style, but don’t assume that you can’t make good money in your chosen career area either. It is possible to find the best career – one that lets you earn good money and that suits your personality, too.