To give up this "easy" money?

[DietC0keandLime]

I currently work for a fairly small manufacturing business, when I joined the office was an absolute mess and the business on the brink of collapsing, so I was given a profit share in the business as an incentive to help turn it around, but I don't own shares or anything like that.

The business has really grown over the past ten years since I started, and I have ended up being paid really well these past couple of years for what I do (around £50k, the role would normally be about £20-25k if not for the profit share) and I think that would continue to be the case for the next few years as well.

The owner of the business is really lovely, but I don't actually like the job for the most part, I find it really stressful, my mental health has been quite bad for the past year and I think it is a big contributing factor. There's nowhere for me to grow within the company, and I feel like I'm just fed up.

I really want to completely retrain in something different, I have a career in mind but I would need to go back to Uni and do a full degree to even get started in it, which would take 3/4 years and the maximum salary I could ever realistically earn would be £40k. Probably this industry would be more demanding and have it's own stresses, but I think it would be more rewarding as well.

I'm 35, no kids, but DH isn't supportive. He can't believe I'm even considering it. He thinks I've dropped really lucky with my current job and I'd be crazy to give up the "easy" money. DH earns around £70k, we've made good financial decisions in the past and we only have a small mortgage and have an additional joint income of £1k per month on two rental properties we inherited. I don't expect him to support me through Uni, I would get a loan to cover my half of the bills and have a small amount of savings too.

I'm grateful for my current job, I really am, I feel guilty for thinking about giving it up but I hate the thought of still being here in five years time. It's like Groundhog Day.

I need some perspective please. What do you think, WIBU to change careers?

Maybe fostering.

Or step up to social work

@DietC0keandLime

Yes, it's teaching I want to retrain in 🙈 I thought I was being very mysterious, obviously not!

About 60% of my friends and family all work in schools, and I do get very mixed reviews about it from them. Some would love to get out, some love their jobs. I have worked with children before in a different setting, and I have done quite a bit of volunteering in schools as well, but that was ten years ago as I was going to go to uni then but got this job instead.

So I do feel I am fairly aware of some of the realities of it, I might still be being naive though. Any of you who might be teachers (especially primary), I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts

It’s quite difficult to get a job as a primary teacher at the moment, unless you work at an inner city requires improvement school or a pupil referral unit. There’s upwards of 60+ applicants for a single job. Maybe find a new job you enjoy and once you’ve been offered the job, hand in your resignation for your current job.

Teaching is relentless OP and will seriously fuck up your mental health. You will easily work 60+ hours a week and the pressure is endless. You will have no flexibility in terms of time off or even anything more than a 15 minute break in the day. Even getting to the loo can be tricky during a teaching day (bladder issues are higher in teachers and nurses).
I am employed 0.6 (3 days) but easily do 35+ hours a week, often more and am often contacted on my day off.
It will also be a good number of years before you earn the top rate (M6) which is approx 37k.
Please really get some time shadowing in school as previous posters have suggested. Working with children is the least of the job and indeed, isn't that lovely when you're faced with 30 single- handedly!
A good benchmark re the hours involved is that the prep time for every lesson is on average the same duration as the lesson itself. Add to that meetings, paperwork, admin, displays, constant criticism and you get an idea of the pressures involved.
However, I do think you should leave your current job. Don't be miserable.

I was all for it OP until I saw it was teaching! Also, you wouldnt be on 40k!!
A friend of mine is on 35k but that's after quite a few years. She loves it and does primary.

If you were going to take a year to get a teaching qualification, then maybe it'd be worth a try. But I wouldn't recommend committing 3/4 years to it for anyone planning a move from a secure job.

At my school, we had three teachers who came to the job in their late 30s/40s from established careers in other fields. One quit after a year and went back to their old job, and the other two managed to stick it for two years. All three said the job was nothing like they'd thought/hoped for. One of them, now I recall, didn't finish the second year as he went off sick with mental health issues due to the stress (having never had stress problems before).

I also have a friend who retrained. She gave up after two terms. And my best friend's SIL lasted only a year.

I'm sure there are career changers out there who do love the job, but given the number of those who regret it, I wouldn't risk giving up 3/4 years to train for such a risky change.

If your mental health is wobbling at the moment then pick a different career path! Teaching is brutal. If you don’t need the money could you be a TA? Or keep your existing job and be a scout/browning leader? Or work as a mentor?

I voted YABU because I don't think your alternative plan will work out if you're already saying you're likely to be equally stressed and for less money. Why would you want to take three years out to leap into an unknown possibly worse career? Do you have other options?

Agree being a TA would give you a good insight. I started training but swiftly changed my mind.
BUT it could be the right thing for you? You could organise a week off work and volunteer full time for a week? You'll need to get a DBS before you approach schools regarding this.

Oh - just read teaching. Even worse idea then. And it would be a while before you could get to £40k

I’m one of the teachers that got out and I wouldn’t recommend it as a job. Teaching was probably better 20+ years ago, but now it’s all red tape, politics, declining pupil behaviour, declining parental support and long, long hours. I’m self employed now and still work long hours but I’m doing something I enjoy and doing it for myself. No more trying to please everybody! I could never go back to that kind of stress at this time of my life.

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Honestly DietC0keandlime I thank God every day I don't have to do it anymore and would never ever go back full time.

I should start by saying I did love my job: children are hilarious and I did get a thrill if I ever had the time to sit and think about the fact that probably in part because of my hard work, Holly had learned to read. But like anything in life it depends on your personality: I'm creative but not the best organised - it just doesn't come naturally to me. When I trained and was practising it was all about filling in forms to supposedly "prove" that I'd (for example) gone through at least 6 children per day with the Sh, ch, th sound. Then another sheet to say I'd heard at least 6 children read that day. Another to say I'd sat with a group of 5 or 6 to check they'd learned their 3x table. On top of that you have to plan inspired, interesting, differentiated-for-ability lessons.
It was incredibly frustrating for me to think of how many ideas/resources I could have come up with whilst I was ticking boxes, I knew the children and carried around in my head who needed what done for them.

You spend each week night evening checking and re-checking (either on paper/screen or in your head) whether you have everything ready for the next day. For the first few years it was before on-line resources were readily available so if I didn't have a resource for the visual learners who found number bonds to 10 difficult, I'd sit and make cards. I could sit there easily until 9pm each night, and still remember when I went to bed that ideally I would have also done x, y and z.

You can cancel out all of Sunday afternoon during term-time, too. It takes all of that time to get ready for the week.

This isn't in any way a stealth boast. I just don't seem to be able to do things by halves or switch off easily, and it really isn't possible for one person to do the amount of work that is expected of primary teachers in our country today and remain happy or in good mental health.

That might be okay if it was remunerated and respected proportionally, but as we know it is not.

I think things are worse now .. there are more headaches: children with allergies are on the increase, which in some cases presents life-threatening problems, for example. It's a massive responsibility.

If you'd said you were going to re-train as a costume designer or architect or sculptor (I'm sure those jobs have their stresses of course) I'd be excited for you. But walking away from £50k a year to teach? Nah.

Plan properly adventurous holidays, set yourself challenges in the evenings and at weekends .. or look at a different career. But truly, the grass is not always greener.

I would have killed for £50k a year and being appreciated.

I feel sorry for full-time teachers, I really do; I hope that doesn't sound patronising, but ugh the work load.

Is there anything else you fancy doing OP?
It's a shame your husband isn't more supportive, if you dont have kids you could easily live on a shared income of 70k.

You can earn 40k plus in teaching. I’m on 45, but I have a TLR and am top of pay scale. It’s not worth it though. It’s horrendously stressful and when I can leave, I will.

Do you have any experience of teaching at all? If not then you really need to get into a classroom as a TA or volunteer before you commit yourself.

I thought about teaching for a long time but decided that I just wouldn't be resilient enough to cope with it. It sounds like bloody hard work!

What about Occupational Therapy? You could work with children doing that. Still a bit of bureacracy with the NHS but nowhere near the number of hours. You would need an OT degree or masters so it would be a similar timeframe to qualify.

I’m a teacher and if I was back at college again, I’d absolutely be applying to uni for something else other than teaching. Believe me when I say the state of the education system is an absolute embarrassment - no funding, so much red tape and admin/paperwork, very little time to actually enjoy teaching and supporting young people, jumping through unnecessary hoops seemingly designed to make life harder rather than enhance teaching and learning. For example, you create your resources and lesson plans etc abs gradually over a year or so you accumulate a great inventory of resources. Except the new academic year is coming, and now it’s been decided that the scheme of work template is going to be changed. All the same information on it, they just want it formatted differently. So you then waste a ridiculous amount of time copying and pasting over the same information just into a different layout. Teaching is no longer about teaching, it’s about paperwork.

I teach and I find it very rewarding, the pupils are great and I like my colleagues. However it is a stressful job with long hours. This week has been typical for me; in to work by 7.15, a ten minute mid morning break, a twenty five minute pause at lunchtime, leave work at ten to six and then home for dinner with the family. Work on laptop 7- 9pm and often later. I've just closed my laptop for the evening. I have at least four hours of work to do tomorrow and if I just do four hours I will be leaving things not done. I refuse to work on a Sunday. As a family we only cope because my husband is amazing and does far more than his share of the domestic load.
I've got a first class honours degree from a Russell group university and a master's degree. I'm a key stage lead with a lot of responsibility and I earn less than you do.
I know I make a difference and I am proud of that and, as I said before, it is rewarding. But it's also utterly exhausting and you only have to read Mumsnet to see in what poor regard teachers are held and that grinds one down. My teenage daughters are very, very sure that they don't want to be teachers and I really hope that they stick to that view. I don't want them to teach and I am very sad to be saying that.

If you decide that it’s the right avenue to pursue there are other ways of going about it than 4 years full time study.

Why don’t you do a part-time BA or BSC and continue working part time, and then just go full time for teacher training?

Like saraclara I could give you stacks of examples of people who had breakdowns. It is very sad to see. I remember one woman who had trained for 4 years, spent her last teaching practice (Easter to July) in a school and was then given the position that came up to start in the September. She left before Christmas. All that time incurring debt was wasted.

Another friend took 4 years to train as a mature student. In her first term of qualifying as an upper primary teacher she developed severe problems. OCD being one of them. Thankfully she left immediately so the problems were not so ingrained that she could make a recovery.

I remember someone else who at break time (prepping time) would walk up the stairs, walk around and around then go back down the stairs. I knew she was ill but I was young and did not know what to do about it. She was completely overwhelmed: lost lots of weight, looked very pale, lost became inarticulate. She had to keep going for financial reasons and in the end she just detached.

I could go on all night.

nugget396 so nothing has changed. I used to find that so very, very frustrating. It's soul destroying thinking that the time you're spending isn't even partly an investment.

@DietC0keandLime

I just would really love to work with children. I don't want my own but I do like being around them. When I've volunteered in schools before, or I worked for a while with late primary aged children in a hobby capacity, I've loved it so much. I think I would fit into the "staff culture", and my current job is very isolated and I'm lonely. I'd enjoy being around children and I think I would enjoy the work itself.

I'm not scared of working hard, or having to put the hours in. I'm not worried about the money side of things too much, it would be less money but I just think I might be happier.

Teaching can be very isolating. You spend all day with children and barely see other adults.

Teaching is very different to hobbies and is very data driven.

Could you go part time in your current job, even if it was 3 or 4 days a week and then do voluntary work in a school. That way you wouldn’t have the stress of teaching but would get the rewards and still have a reasonably good salary.

work part time for a while and/or take a sabbatical to think things over?
If you're currently finding the role stressful, it can be hard to make a clear headed decision.

Alternatively, think about what creates the stress for you, and what changes could be arranged to accommodate that.

Don’t do it
Try and find a way to work with children in your spare time and keep the well paid job