Intellectual challenge. Maths, finance?

[finfitrulesok]

I think I want a challenge. I have been in my job for a while, and it is not demanding. I have been a mother for over a decade. All my achievements for the past while have not really been hard enough to make me feel like I really earned them. I feel like I need a really hard intellectual challenge. Dementia runs in my family, so maybe I should exercise my brain a bit.
Naturally, I have always been drawn to language, literature, music and creative subjects. But at school I was an all rounder. In theory I could have been a doctor. It's too late for that, and I don't have money to study.
Any ideas for something I can do alongside work and kids, that is hard but not costly? Some sort of maths or economics diploma? I don't know anything about these domains, but would love to do something practical, or just intellectually stimulating.
Any ideas?

If you are drawn to language learn a foreign one. Challenging and practical!

Learn Arabic

Thank you. I should. But I already know two foreign languages, so I feel something that maybe challenges me in a different way would be harder, which is what I think i'm aiming for.

Yes. Arabic is a great idea! I already live languages. Can anyone advocate for anything maths or economics related? I wonder if I would find it too dry.

Learn coding - there are free courses

Almost any worthwhile diploma will be expensive. A PGcert can easily be £5,000 in fees, plus the costs of doing it, even if it's mostly remote.

Learning a language properly (i.e., not with Duolingo) is challenging and practical. Maybe learn Arabic and set yourself the target of being to volunteer with Syrian refugees within X years. You could swap Arabic for English conversation classes with people near you, depending on where you live. (Arabic is just an example — I don't know anything about it other than that you need to learn a new alphabet as well, which seems hard to me!)

Take up a musical instrument.

This is interesting. I love the idea of Arabic and working with refugees. It would actually work nicely with my current job, actually. I'll explore it.

Well, I taught maths first many years.

you certainly can learn it but depending on what level you have already it can be quite expensive to learn.

if you don’t have gcse or equivalent then that’s cheap as the government (England) will pay for classes. If you do have gcse and want to do a level there are various distance providers where it’s not too expensive - https://cloudlearn.co.uk/course/online-a-level-maths-course-edexcel?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21257273986&gbraid=0AAAAADxxnBFx2c0KFkJZ77yZi8LvLfCKy&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5t6A1qzbjQMV9ZVQBh0OpDL9EAAYASAAEgILP_D_BwE

it can be tricky to learn without a classroom environment though.

if you have a level then you are looking at degree level maths which ain’t cheap. OU is probably the easiest but that’s thousands.

Yes. Coding would be a huge challenge as I am a technophobe. I will look into it.

A musical instrument. I would love that. I can't afford piano lessons, but maybe I can try to learn online.

Brilliant ideas.

I’m a mathematician. Do you know what a complex number is? They are very interesting and answer a lot of maths questions that you may not realise you have. Eg what is the square root of -1?

A quick google found all sorts of teaching about it plus worksheets. With maths it is best to work your way through worksheets in my view. Maths is a “doing” thing. Just reading / watching is not enough.

Thank you for the maths advice. I might look into an A Level.
Alongside piano and Arabic! If I had more time I would do them all, but I should probably commit to one.
Arabic is the most tempting, but also the closest to my comfort zone.

There’s often electronic keyboards on eBay/facebook marketplace for quite cheap - I got mine for a tenner from someone who was moving house. Plenty of YouTube videos on learning piano as well and many books to help you learn - I used the Schaum series - again, eBay is your friend.

I’m also playing recorder - cheap instrument but nice to play.

I can read the treble clef, and recently inherited a piano, so that is another obvious one. It would bring me great joy for sure. But I don't know if it would be hard enough. I really want to try something that challenges me in a way I haven't been challenged before, or for a very long time.

There's lots of 'maths for the layperson' type books and podcasts you could read or listen to, to learn more about you to the sort of concepts you could be interested in.

Will also make you see how most news headlines/statistics are misleading or how unrepresentative MN is of the population as a whole.

Look up books and podcasts by Hannah Fry, David Spiegelhalter, Rob Easterway or Tim Harford.

Would you be interested in learning more about personal finance? Take control of your finances, make your money go a lot further, free up money to invest, understand how the markets work. Meaningful Money is a great podcast with Pete Matthew who's also written a couple of books and has a you tube channel.

There's a huge back catalogue of podcasts, but a good place to start would be the season covering the financial flow chart, which goes through everything you need to know from setting a budget through to learning to invest and sorting pensions. He also runs various courses in investing.

https://meaningfulmoney.tv/category/podcast/season-25-finance-os/

Thank you so much. Yes, this is a world I know little about so far. And I like to think I could get me head around it.

I plan to work my way through the Nobel and Field prize winners.
I will read the books of the writers and study the work of the others.

Learn computer programming (python) or data science on coursera. It will stretch your brain and might get you a good job.

AAT accounting courses? Usually evening classes & not especially expensive to start with - if you like it, there are usually part-time roles available which are matched to the skill level as you progress.

If you take to it, might work as a career pivot, or a way to add to your existing experience & branch out/progress slightly differently through that?

Plenty of time to go all the way through to chartered accountant & path to finance director if you take to it. Fully salaried roles & day release for study & exams are the norm...

Accounting sounds really good. I'll look it up. Computer programming would be a real challenge. I'm not sure I would know where to begin.