What do girls need to be taught about careers/financial matters?

[poshsnobtwit]

This obviously applies to boys and girls, but I'm doing a talk for teen girls so I'm asking about girls specifically. Many times on the careers advice/how to earn £100k threads I've seen posters saying "I wish I knew that when I was young...they don't teach you this in school" and I'm trying to remember what these things were but can't recall a lot of them What I do remember:

1. Working backwards - look at salaries and see what careers fall into this bracket, then choose a career path
2. A salary x3 higher does not mean x3 take home pay
3. The sky's the limit vs the glass ceiling
4. You don't need to be passionate about your work (although it helps)
5. Hard work does not necessarily result in success

Can anyone suggest anything else they wish they had have known, or think is important? Not necessarily positive things, reality is fine too. These are teen girls, from a range of backgrounds, from children of asylum seekers to medical consultants.

I'd change the : "You don't need to be passionate about your work (although it helps)" to "You can be passionate about any subject, it's more about the specific role and skill set than a field you're passionate about. Most people jump between fields. If you have the right skills and experience from the job, you'll get into it very quickly. "

Examples:

1. I have a friend who didn't really like "computers" and coding much but was clever and liked math and went on to study Computer science by accident. Now she has a great job as a project manager in tech, she doesn't have to code at all, but she needs to know what she's talking about.

2. Computer gaming jobs are notoriously bad, because of the sheer demand from applicants who thinks it's their "dream job. They burn out very quickly.

3. You like art, but you'd hate working in a gallery or being a struggling artist. Why not work in sales and find a job connected to art.

4. You are passionate about journalism, but you don't want to be a war zone reporter or a fashion magazine editor. It's very hard to find a journalist job as a journalism grad, the number of students far surpasses the number of good jobs. You could still work as a data analyst at the Financial times.

On the 'passion' thing, I think it's quite hard to get across to teenagers who are generally both naturally a little bit black and white in their thinking and also completely naive/lacking in experience about the world outside school. What I've tried to convey to my own kids is that jobs/careers are not usually either 'passion' jobs which are 100% dreamy and wonderful all the time or 'terrible' boring, life-sucking awfulness. Some are, for sure, but it's more of a bell curve with the vast majority having some elements of both.

There are a few jobs at the very far end of the spectrum which are nearly all fun and no tedium (but even stereotypical dream jobs have their downsides, say being a pop star, maybe it's 95% singing and dancing and receiving adulation but there's still 5% tedious autograph signings or whatever. Or being a professional sports player, you still have to do boring everyday training exercises and have meetings with your accountant from time to time). But what they should really be aiming for anything on the right hand side of the curve, where the positives of the job outweigh the negatives, and ideally where they're on a trajectory to keep moving towards more and more positives. And like PPs have said, the positives of the job go beyond just the content of the work itself, the pay and conditions, the alignment of the organisation to their values and interests (good shout to make the point that if their passion is say arts or the media, but they don't have the talent or interest to pursue being an artist or performer, there are lots of jobs in supportive. administrative or corporate roles in arts organisations), it can even be that the real positive of a job is that it gives them enough time and financial stability to pursue an interest or passion outside the realm of 'work'. Also everyone is different, what is a massive positive of one job to one person may be a huge downside to another, say for instance I don't like dealing with the general public so any job where that was a feature would be a negative to me but someone more extroverted might love it, particularly if it was in a caring role say, or talking to people about something they're mutually enthusiastic about/interested in like in some sales roles. I quite enjoy sitting in a dark room and puzzling my way through lots of data and stats but that would be another person's idea of hell. You may not really know which kind of person you are at 15/until you've had a chance to try different things, you might surprise yourself with what you enjoy and don't, which is another reason not to worry if you don't think you've found your 'passion' at this age.

Like I say I think my own kids looked at me like I had two heads when I tried to explain all this to them but perhaps a seed lodged somewhere, it's worth trying anyway!

I agree, this has absolutely fucked me over. Coming from a poorer background, when I stared college and uni I was offered so much money which I jumped on, not truly understanding interest rates etc.

Don't rely on a man!

@maxelly you don't have two heads. Your post makes a lot of sense to me.

Every dream job has a risk of becoming a drudge eventually if you do it day in and day out and there will inevitably be parts of it which are boring or infuriating. Best to keep your low paying 'passion' as a hobby. THen find a reasonably interesting job that suits your skills and interests that is fulfulling more often than not and gives you enough remuneration and time to indulge your 'passion' as a hobby on the side.