"Calculating the cost of your midlife crisis" Dana Manciagli, 53, of Bellevue, Washington, is also pleased with her decision to quit. She was working a "perfectly great job" at Microsoft Corp. as a general manager of worldwide sales. "I was planning on working there the rest of my career," she says. But 18 months ago, her identical twin sister, Tracy, had a recurrence of breast cancer, and the "life's too short" mantra and idea of mortality hit Manciagli hard. Divorced, and with her 20-something kids out of college, she decided it was worth the risk to quit her lucrative job and turn her experience as a corporate executive into a job as a career coach.

"This is what I'm meant to do," she told her now ex-boss. Indeed, Manciagli, who invested a lot of her savings into starting her business, says she has made almost all of it back. Of her new career, she says, "I'm loving every minute of it and with no regrets."

<a href="http://money.msn.com/personal-finance/calculating-the-cost-of-your-midlife-crisis" target="_blank">http://money.msn.com/personal-finance/calculating-the-cost-of-your-midlife-crisis</a>