Five Things to Do Before You Quit Your Job and Chase Your Dreams

I'm forever urging people to look beyond money, to take some big risks in life and dare to reach for their dreams. We recently got a letter here at MSN Money from someone who suggests I reconsider this advice before more people end up like she did.

This woman left a large Eastern city in 1990 with her husband and four teenagers to live the simple life on 40 acres of virgin land in the American West. They lived in tents and hauled water for three years while clearing the land and digging trenches for telephone, water and power lines.

The simple life cost a lot. "It is very expensive if you are trying to recreate the infrastructure most of us now take for granted," she wrote. The couple spent their life savings -- $245,000 over 11 years -- and watched wildfires twice destroy much of their work. ...