How do I get involved in budgeting..

[Ifuckinglovespreadsheets]

There might be a better place to put this, but I couldn't see where. Looking for advice, reality check, or anything really.

I've recently realised that the one potential career/boring thing that I love is budgeting.

I'm not saying I'd be any good at it, I might be rubbish. But I love doing our own budget, forward planning, and actively improving our finances. I've massively changed our financial position over the last few years (from unnecessary struggling to what I would class as comfortable).

Is this something I can do as a career? Or even on the side? How would I start to get involved? Is it something I could do part time alongside my normal job?

How would you make any money off something like this anyway? Is personalised budgeting advice something people would get for free or pay for? If someone is struggling with budgeting would they have money to pay for help? Where do they turn to for help?

TBH I'd actually be happy to offer it for free anyway, but obvs not full time. But I'm an overthinker and wouldn't be comfortable holding people's personal info.

Is there qualifications or professional standards you need to meet?

I assume this is a financial advisor. But when I think of a financial adviser I think large amounts of money and investment. I'm not interested in that.

Is this a career that's possible to get in to? Any advice appreciated.

I do a lot of budgeting in my career as an accountant, however to get to the point where you're involved in the company's budgeting process you usually are fairly senior. In my case I'm a chartered accountant and have quite a lot of experience.

If you want to do it on a more personal basis you could try volunteering or working for a debt management charity, something like Poverty for Christians or Step Change, helping people budget to pay off debt etc.

Thank you, that's a good idea.
Definitely looking at personal/family budgeting - not company.

Would I need qualifications or experience to volunteer?

From what I understand, although have never used their services, Step Change advisors are trained on the job rather than needing qualifications so it might be an option for you?

Yeah, as a start perhaps volunteer with step change or CAP.

I've just realised, with my lack of concentration, I meant Christians Against Poverty... Not poverty for Christians 😅😅😅😅

Professionally, I have zero accounting qualifications but a huge amount of budgeting experience, and I found it really hard to be considered for budgetary roles (Finance and Ops were always rolled into one, and often they wanted a qualified accountant).

I'd tackle the personal angle if I were you.

No shade from me to accountants who do budgets well, but some of them are awfully dreary at the task of business budgeting and financial planning.

One of the reasons I left my previous job was that I couldn't get a look in on the finances because the treasurer was an accountant who'd run billion pound company accounts - and they took his word over mine, even though my experience was radically fixing the finances of small companies of the same size and financial profile as ours. And he didn't even know the difference between zero-based and activity-based budgeting...

The only thing I'd say on the professional side was that I got my financial experience in Ops roles - so as long as you have the aptitude for Operations work, that could be an angle where you get to do the finance work without a qualification.

Financial coaching is a thing. If you can coach on different budgeting softwares it helps too. I use YNAB and there are YNAB coaches you can pay to help you get set up and started. It depends if you want to do something freelance to earn some money or want to volunteer to help others or somewhere in between.

😂I didn't even clock that.

Thank you for the advise so far.
I think I will contact CAP and ask about volunteering, possible step change too.

I don't have much personal experience with debt...at least not bad debt. I had a childhood which was not financially secure and my parents are only just out of debt now due to inheritance. I've been very conscious about not repeating that in my own life and have been fortunate so far (and also didn't have kids young - that can't have helped).

Octopus have just launched an Octopus Money training course. Don't know much about it but it's about learning to help others with their personal finance situations. Might be worth a look?

octopusmoney.com/become-a-coach

Kind of both. I'm not worried about making money from it currently, I just think I could offer a few hours a week and get some experience. See where it leads.

I have to stop myself banging on to friends about budgeting and money. I'm sure it would be boring for them. But I have had a couple of friends check their budgets with me recently so maybe some are listening 😆

Thank you, that looks great.
I took the quiz feeling hopeful, but I can't commit to 20 hours a week (at a push I could - but not daytime hours).
I have a stable job with a great pension, risking that wouldn't be good financial advice 😀
Hopefully I can find something similar.

An that's a shame, I didn't realise the time commitment as I was wondering about it too, but probably not able to dedicate that time to it either.

Financial coach/money coach is exactly what I'm looking for.
I'm not interesteded in recommending products or investments.
Good to know that this does exist, and what it's called. Now just to find a way in!

Have you thought of training to become a school business manager?

Looks interesting, but my current job is probably more flexible and pays a little better (although not the top end, from what I can see). I'm definitely more interested in the individual stuff though, and not really looking to do something else full time.

I kind of fell into my current career years ago. I'm good at it but it's a little boring. School business manager is something that would have been good to do instead!

I follow quite a few budgeting pages on Instagram, perhaps you could do something like this