How can I make a comfortable income from home

50K - lol. OnlyFans it is then! (And even then you'll have to come up with something pretty original or niche!)

I didn’t put DC2 into nursery initially, thought as I was freelance I could work when she was asleep (at the same time as doing my MSc). It worked until I burned myself out completely and ended up nearly dying of sepsis because I worked on through appendicitis. DC2 went to nursery after that.

Yes - agreed. That seems very ambitious without any niche skills. BTW if I were hiring I’d reject anyone who called women ladies.

😆

Selling magic beans

🤣

🎣 9/10. Excellent.

£50k from home on school hours? Sorry, OP, but you're living in la-la land. I'm all for supporting women's employment and it not having to mean children are endlessly in childcare, but goodness ... we live in the real world here.

I was a VA and am now a freelance business consultant, I earn about £60k working 5 hours a day 4 days a week. However I had recently departeed an industry where I was incredible well known and sought after.

You could earn this as a VA, but after 15 years out of work you'd have a slog ahead of you to build up the clientele- you would have to work full time and maybe even more in the beginning to get the work. Once you've done that for a couple of years you could probably move into some more strategic work and charge more like £50 an hour, then you could probably work less hours and bring in what you want.

Unfortunately that’s not a realistic salary expectation unless you’ve got a specific skill, such as being an experienced software developer for example.

100% agree with that.
You can earn maybe up to 20k doing some remote language teaching/11+ tuition, training AI, maybe some translation if you know a foreign language, virtual assistant and the type, working around the school hours and that's basically it, if you didn't have a flying career before or recent qualifications.

It's a case of finding a job you can do with an employer who allows you to work from home. However, if you're thinking that working from home is an easy gig, it's not. One of my friends works in the public sector and since COVID only goes into the office once a month. She works at least an hour of unpaid overtime a day, with only a short break for lunch. It's worth it to her because she no longer has an exhausting and expensive commute every day.

I was a stay at home mum for about three years and when I went back (to admin) I earned £10k a year less

I think 50k is a crazy goal for admin if you've not worked in so long

Etsy Seller: Creating and selling handmade jewellry, crafts.

DSis sells on Etsy and Ebay (and has her own company). To actually make a profit and do well - particularly in a saturated market - is incredibly hard. There are sellers who have been around for years and barely made half a dozen sales. And unless OP has an actual skill or a 'niche' or funds for start up costs...she's going to be buggered.

DSis made something like a £6K loss in her first year due to insurance costs, overheads, testing her products (to ensure she had the necessary regulatory evidence if something went wrong to ensure her insurance paid out), buying the components to make what she sells etc.

I think its slightly naive to think you'll just be able walk in to a 50k WFH job after 15 years out of work.

Entry level admin at my company is 26k. 50k is very unlikely.

Qualifications like business admin are nice, but the decider is always the interview and tasks. We often have people with certifications who then somehow can’t format an excel or set up a simple pivot table.

It will completely depend on your recent experience. You need some recent experience- in the last 2 years. We would mostly not even read back as far as 10 years on a CV.

Many places would also want 2-3 days a week in the office, especially for the first 6-12 months to see what your actual productivity is.

It’s a tough market, especially for remote working. I’m getting 80-100 applications per admin role currently, and most of those have a lot of recent office experience.

The thing that is frustrating about these threads is the way people are so vague. I know people don’t want to be identified. I know I am very out of touch (worked in health, pre kids, which is a world of its own) job adverts are the same. They give no clues as to what people actually DO, so I’ve no idea if I could do them. I run a business, so I’m not clueless. I’ve had a professional job and got two degrees, so I’m not stupid and I feel like I could aim higher than customer service. But aim for what? It feels very exclusive and I need a map and interpreter. I think that’s what people are asking.

I would honestly pay good money to have a kind of graduate recruitment thing for post kid-mums or have someone explain to me how to decode things like what phrases like “niche business administrator’ or ‘freelancer in a creative profession’ actually do. I know what the words mean, but they don’t convey any useful information to me. I don’t mean to pick on those people and I don’t want to pressure anyone to say, but it still leaves me at a complete loss - how the fuck do I find out? They’re like cryptic crossword clues. They make sense when they’re explained, but they don’t give me any tools to decipher any more of them. The whole business seems like another language. Perhaps that means I’m deeply unsuited to them, but we’ll never know if unless I find an interpreter!

I’m considering being a climbing arborist. That seems FAR easier to get to grips with from where I’m standing. And if I’ve go to start at the bottom anyway, why not? 😂

I have 2 roles; one a 12 hour a week test round job where I work from a church office 2 mornings a week and the rest are done at home as needed. The office is 10 minutes walk from home so I do the school drop off and then walk in. In the school holidays I only go in for an hour to get all the printing done; they let me do the rest from home around my children. There’s 1 evening meeting a month that I have to go to but my husband is with the children so it’s not a problem.

Second role is company secretary for a peripatetic music teaching team. Fully remote as they don’t have a base, term time only and we schedule meetings around school hours. Two evening meetings a term, which are usually online, and any in person meetings are scheduled so my husband can cover things if needed.

I earn about 30k a year - could earn more but happy with the super flexibility I have. I used to be a teacher so could be earning more by now but I really value the flexibility.
I do 30 hours a week, with the odd extra bit when my youngest is in bed. I got the first role and worked towards the extra flexibility by showing I could do the job well (also turned down one pay rise in order to keep my current schedule). In my second job they appointed me and then decided to pay me more based on my own teaching qualifications - it means I can offer something extra when communicating with clients. I’d also run my own business before so understood the tutors - it means I can help keep everything running smoothly for everyone as I get both sides of the supply chain. It was absolutely the extra skills that got me the role over all the other people looking for a flexible term time only role.

My husband is remote too - one day a week where he does site visits, the rest from home. Three times a year he stays away for a night for team building things but he runs his diary apart from that so just blocks time out to accommodate the children/me. He earns 100k but has been in his profession since leaving uni and has become chartered etc.

Without more work history and niche experience or qualifications you won’t earn anywhere near 50k doing admin work. If you start at the bottom and up skill as you go you might have a chance but it’s a lot of work.

You'd be better off setting your sights on £5K per year...

I know this sounds rude, but to be brutally honest, you don't seem to have many discernable skills or qualifications, and you have not worked for 15 years, so you really can't demand high wages. You have to have a very niche skill, and/or some fairly substantial qualifications to make anywhere near the money you are asking for.

You could try ...

Etsy Seller: Creating and selling handmade jewellry, crafts.

Reselling/Flipping: Buying clothes from charity shops, and then selling them on Vinted/Depop, or sell some of your (used) items on eBay/Facebook Marketplace. (Maybe even buy some other stuff - as well as clothes - to try and resell at a bit of a mark-up.)

Data Entry: Inputting information into digital databases for companies

Surveys: Taking online surveys.

Neighbourood Services: Pet Sitting. Ironing. Cleaning.

Best of luck, but you're deluded if you think you are going to make £50K a year from a working-from-home side hustle! As I said, I would set your sights on £5K a year to begin with,

I have two advanced degrees and 15 years in my industry and it's hard to get above £40k full time (including unpaid extra hours).

Go for a rich industry.

I'm on 45k for 4 days at home, school.hours and it took me YEARS of showing up and doing stuff I didn't enjoy to get this level of flex. Even now I'm.landed with all the health and safety shit noone else wants to do, you can't have it all.

You won't find a £50k school.hours job without putting in a lot of groundwork first.

Very noticeable how in the past few years the job market has been turned on its head (COVID I guess).
Before, you worked on your chosen career to make the income you required and you worked around that career to make your home life work.
Now, people (well, the OP at least but there have been others) are asking for a well paying career (with no real plan of what that career might be) which fits around their home life, often WFH.

Yes but everyone knows the nhs is generally underpaid. Private sector can sometimes be more generous. I do agree op is living in la la land though.

I agree. It is possible to earn the £50k but you need a lot more skills than a course.

i think you've made a typo and have put the thousands separator in the wrong column.