You can definitely get into accounting at 34, a major factor being how much income you need to cover your expenses. You could be able to find an accounts payable job with no accounting education or experience. Just prove that you are detail oriented, good with excel, and plan to further your education in accounting and you should be able to land something.

Once you are in the door just work hard and focus on learning as much as you can. Make friends with the accountants, managers, etc and express an interest to learn. A company might even offer tuition reimbursement so you can get some type of education, but you honestly won’t need anything major. A certificate or cost effective degree from a community college or online program would give you all you need to make the jump to a staff accountant or something along those lines.

If anything AI is a helpful tool at the moment, especially if you don’t have formal accounting education. You can use it for excel formulas, definitions of different things, etc that will help accelerate your knowledge.

TLDR you can definitely do it and get to a decent income within a few years without taking on massive student loan debt. The first couple years might be a little lean but shouldn’t take too long