to worry that DD's chosen career can only earn a maximum of £27,000??

[soups1]

dd is clever. she has 3 a-levels in maths, psychology and law. She has a lot of potential for many areas. They are not amazing a-level grades, so uni is possible but maybe having to do 4 years or just a local uni, but there are lots of jobs she could do with those a-levels and go on to earn well.

She has decided she wants to do embalming/funeral work. I don't have an issue with the chosen career (although i don't get it!) but it doesn't pay well. A maximum of 27,000 and that is a lot of graduates starter money! she is hoping to go on an embalmer 2 year course soon and a lot of the time they can get jobs through there, as people contact that school and ask for people who are finishing. i am just worried about her choice.

aibu? 27000 forever isnt that much

On a starting salary of £18k at the age of 21 and gradually creeping up to £30k by the time I was thirty, I would say I'm in a similar salary bracket.

I also chose to go for a career choice based on what I fancied doing rather than one that is well paid or sounds impressive.

At 23 I bought my own flat in London (was tough but just doable, though wouldn't be now), at 30 I moved out of London to the countryside, and now at 34 my life is rather nice.

If I were to meet someone who earned the same as me, we'd be laughing financially (in that we could have a modest house mortgage free, run a decent car, have some holidays and some nice material possessions). It wouldn't be living in a mansion, driving around in a Mercedes and having four holidays a year to the Bahamas or similar, but quite frankly that is not what I am aspiring to in life anyway.

If I were you, I'd be pleased that your DC has a sense of direction and is aiming to train for something where there will always be jobs. Its quite clever of her really!

All the debate about the job and whether £27k is OK or not is immaterial. Your daughter has her A-levels, so is presumably an adult now. YABU to think that you have any say in her career plans. It is her decision to make.

You are also being unreasonable to assume that what she wants to do initially is what she will do for the rest of her life. She might decide to change careers completely at some point, or she might move to a new role in a related field. Most people I know aren't doing exactly the same thing now that they were doing when they graduated or got their A-levels. Just stop fretting and accept that this is beyond your control now, as it should be.

All the posts here saying "But what about what her partner earns? What about childcare? What about where she lives?" are very premature. You are trying to map out someone else's life according to your own perspective. She might not have kids. She might move to a part of the country where £27k is a better salary. She might emigrate. She might chuck it all in and go and live in a commune in a cave in the Hebrides for all we know. All this is unknown and can't even be planned for by her at this stage, let alone anyone else.

Just let her get on with it and stop trying to engineer her life. My parents wouldn't have dreamed have poking their noses into my career choices as an adult, and not once did they ever ask me what salary I could expect to earn, and I would have thought they were being unnecessarily interfering if they did.

I'm a support worker and I earn £16k. Unless I go into management (which is unlikely as I don't want the responsibility) I will never be on more than £18k. I absolutely love what I do, I love going into work every day, it doesn't feel like work. Yes the salary is shit but I couldn't imagine anything more soul destroying than working a job that I hated for more ££ and being unhappy.

Admittedly I don't live in the south and money goes a lot further where I live but still. I'd be happy if my DS wanted to be a bin man if that's what made him happy. There is no price on happiness.

I recently lost my DF and the kindness and sensitivity of all the staff at the funeral home made all the difference at a very difficult time.

They quietly and efficiently took care of all the practicalities and it was such a comfort to know that Dad was being looked after with such respect.

Can't think of a more rewarding career.

I know a lot of graduates with jobs on low incomes. My DD is in a low salary job but she loves it and is really happy , luckily she lives in an area where cost of living is low. As long as she feels she has job satisfaction I would not worry . It might not be for ever anyway.

What does maximum salary mean though? Is it what the top people earn and the average person in that industry will never reach it or is it the top salary for everyone?
27k is a very good salary where I live, but is she guaranteed to reach that?

I earn a lot less than £27,000 im married and have a child. When being single I had the same job and managed quite comfortably. If it's something she wants to do, back her in it.

I have worked with the funerals sectors. You do know that many private equity firms are investing in these businesses at present (nothing is as certain as death and taxes) and if she ends up owning a business and buying say 10 more she could be a millionaire!

My daughters are London City lawyers and earn pretty high sums (plus £100k and a bit under £100k) (and I as a lawyer earn a fair bit) and their graduate brother is a postman earning about £22k plus the rent he makes from a house he lets out. They all have to make their own choices. Whatever may younger children choose will be fine too.

However I will always treat them the same whatever choices they make.

It's obviously her decision but I think it would be worth talking through with her - because at her age she probably hasn't got the experience to know - what the implications of that would be for her lifestyle. So, encourage her to look at how much it would cost to rent a flat, council tax, bills, what it would leave her to save for a house deposit, etc. Perhaps even what childcare costs would be like.

On here, you see loads of women saying casually "oh, I just don't have the earning capacity of my DH" and that has a lot of implications for how your home life works which I don't (personal bias) think is great for women.

I would not discourage her from pursuing this idea. It doesn't have to be forever. She might choose a different career and go to uni or retrain in her 20s. Or she might love it and work her way towards running her own business. It's a reasonable place to start. What you choose at 18 or 19 is rarely fixed for life.

My parents discouraged me from nursing as they felt it was very hard work and low paid, which aims have no doubt it is. However my friends that went in to nursing all earn more than me now we are 40 and they gradually over time specialised and moved away from the really hard general shift nursing but still use the skills. Maybe I wouldn't have coped but the money factor was a bit misguided really.

Money isn't everything. If she's interested then that's great.
For what it's worth, I earn £8 an hour (approx 14k a year?) my partner is just a little more at £9 an hour. We're both band 2 in the nhs.
We live quite comfortably in our house - which we bought ourselves - and if we want a treat we still buy them.

Like I said, money isn't everything ☺️

She could one day go on to own her own funeral home, and have earning potential of far more than £27,000. Or she could eventually run the embalming course herself. And even if she never earns more than £27,000, at least she will be doing what she wants to do. I wouldn't be worried at all.

The way the world is going (living longer and expected to work for longer) we will be in work for many many decades and big career changes will be the norm.

This might be her first career. Her second may well be entirely different.

A postman earns 22k???
Is that in London?

"their graduate brother is a postman earning about £22k plus the rent he makes from a house he lets out."

Yeah like most postmen have a (presumably) inherited house to let to top up their income

Outer London at the end of a tube line. I think the basic full time pay is £20k or £21k and there is usually some over time. Are you surprised it's so high or so low? I expect he's a pretty good postman as he's good with dogs, reliability and old ladies. Apparently it's harder to get the full time jobs now and he has one of those.

Example of funeral directors for sale www.daltonsbusiness.com/funeral-directors-for-sale/funeral-directors-north-yorkshire-north-yorkshire-uk/383079

Money isn't everything. If this is what she wants to do then support her. And as horrible as it sounds, because of the absolute eventuality of people dying, there will always be jobs in the funeral sector. So at least she has that stability.

And FWIW, my partner currently earns a little over £33K, we are expecting our first child. We've had a few discussions and feel we could quite comfortably live off his salary alone, even adding another child into the mix later on. Okay it means we'd have to forgo lavish holidays, expensive clothes every week, etc but it wouldn't be important to us, our family is. I'm actually hoping to go self employed next year and my partner is happy to support us while I get set up. So yes, supporting a family on her wage can be done. Plus unless she's intending to become a lone parent, I'm presuming she'll have a partner so their combined income will be a lot higher to have a family.

Brilliant career move. Will never be out of work.
I know someone who is a funeral director, having trained as a young man and bought/taken over a business when an older guy retired.

He and his wife are EXTREMELY successful because they have the right sort of caring personalities, driven to expand the business and willing to work hard.

Your DD should be under no illusions though - this couple have to be on available 24/7 (often get overnight calls) and have had to re-establish an old business which has included muscling in on work done by another company fairly nearby. He's exactly right for the job, though.

She is 19, she will probably have to work until she is over 70. She will have many careers over her life. If she likes the idea of embalming for now, whats the problem?? Lots of graduates get nowhere near £27k and are saddled with a lifetime of debt which reduces their take home pay, which may or may not be more than a college leaver with 3 years work experience extra could get.

I really can't see what the issue is.

She isn't signing herself up for a lifetime of indentured servitude, she tries it and finds it is her life's vocation: brilliant! She tries and doesn't like it, no panic, she can think again and try something else, with a great line in 'what did you do before you started here.'

She's 19 and she knows what she wants to do now. That's great. So many people are utterly rudderless at that age.

And also, she's 19... It's unlikely embalming will be her career for life, and uni will always be there. But it's a solid job to start off with, and if/when she does change course frankly it will a brilliant thing to have on her CV. Who isn't going to want to meet the woman who got into embalming people in her early twenties when the world was her oyster?

nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/job-profiles/embalmer careers service says up to £30k - not that different but a little bit more.

Whilst it's not a huge salary, she basically has a job for (excuse the pun) life. I know someone who went in as an apprentice and 20 years later he's got his own firm with three locations. It's one of those careers where you'll never be out of work and the profit on the funerals is a huge markup.

She should try archaeology for a career. 10 years experience and a masters degree. I specialised so higher pay and position than 'diggers'.

I earnt more as a pa before i went to uni

I would be really happy on £27k.