Don't have time to read all the fine responses. Let me risk redundancy, then:
+1, "talk to your wife". +1, "talk to other people as well, like a therapist, a priest, or a career counselor".
Don't try to solve all your problems at once. "I hate my current job", "I have no savings", "I barely see my children", "I think I want to work for myself", and "I want to create something new/challenging/interesting" are all separate problems, and the odds are really, really poor that you can solve them all at once, particularly when you add in the too-vital-to-mention underlying goals, like "my kids deserve to eat".
I'm not you, but if I were I'd work on the "get a different job", "see more of my kids", and/or "get some savings" problems first. Work on your expenses. Life sure does look better when your expenses are smaller than your income.
Reading between the lines of your post, it sounds like you may already know this far too well, but for the benefit of others: "I don't own my home" is not a sign of dishonor. Don't be in a rush to own a home. Most of the people who bought homes four or five years ago are now underwater; many have been foreclosed on. That process is not over -- many mortgages will reset their rates over the next few years, creating more foreclosures and prolonging the glut of inventory. Thus, though the market is apparently better than it was last year, and we may even be approaching the point in some markets where the rent-vs-mortgage calculation is approaching parity again, homes are still rather illiquid, which is another way of saying "your home may make it difficult to change jobs or reduce expenses, because they can be hard to sell when you want to sell them, especially if you can't afford to take a loss."
+1, "talk to your wife". +1, "talk to other people as well, like a therapist, a priest, or a career counselor".
Don't try to solve all your problems at once. "I hate my current job", "I have no savings", "I barely see my children", "I think I want to work for myself", and "I want to create something new/challenging/interesting" are all separate problems, and the odds are really, really poor that you can solve them all at once, particularly when you add in the too-vital-to-mention underlying goals, like "my kids deserve to eat".
I'm not you, but if I were I'd work on the "get a different job", "see more of my kids", and/or "get some savings" problems first. Work on your expenses. Life sure does look better when your expenses are smaller than your income.
Reading between the lines of your post, it sounds like you may already know this far too well, but for the benefit of others: "I don't own my home" is not a sign of dishonor. Don't be in a rush to own a home. Most of the people who bought homes four or five years ago are now underwater; many have been foreclosed on. That process is not over -- many mortgages will reset their rates over the next few years, creating more foreclosures and prolonging the glut of inventory. Thus, though the market is apparently better than it was last year, and we may even be approaching the point in some markets where the rent-vs-mortgage calculation is approaching parity again, homes are still rather illiquid, which is another way of saying "your home may make it difficult to change jobs or reduce expenses, because they can be hard to sell when you want to sell them, especially if you can't afford to take a loss."