To wonder how people afford to live with these jobs

[Dreamer14]

I have worked in the private sector for nearly 20 years. In a high paying industry too. However… I’m bored. So very bored.

My Monday dread starts on Friday nights. I’ve changed company and the feeling is the same. I feel isolated because I work at home all the time. I don’t feel like I’m being the best version of myself. I’m grumpy as I’m unhappy etc.

I’ve thought for years, I’d love to go do something completely different. Each time I try… I give up because I simply can’t afford to work 37 hours (with all the childcare I’d need) for £20k.

I would love a job helping others. I look at NHS and school jobs, council jobs, charity jobs etc. but the pay simply isn’t enough. Am I doing something wrong? Have I missed something?

We would like to move in next few years but if I went to bank and said I earn 20k they wouldn’t lend me nearly enough. I don’t have a rich husband! I’m the main earner.

I'm working 37 hours a week and hate every moment. My dream situation would be slightly less hours so I can pick my kids up one day a week and something I love that involves a bit more human interaction.

@Heavymetaldetector
Just out of interest what does your husband do which means he's out of the house 6am-7pm every day but only earning 13k?

I'd rather be bored at my lucrative job than in a rewarding-but-pish-poor salaried job stressed out of my box trying to figure out how to pay the leccy bill, put food on the table, and stop the bank for repossessing the house from under me.

As others have suggested, if your job is as interesting as watching paint dry, find satisfaction in other things:

1. Volunteer
2. Learn a language
3. New hobby
4. Remodel your home office
5. Learn a new skill

I work in a SEN school, doing a job I absolutely love (not a teacher, but a job with a lot of responsibility and impact on the students' lives). I am paid a pittance. It is a joke. I worked in the private sector for many years, and I earn less now than I did in my mid-twenties - 25 years ago.
My job is hugely important and hugely rewarding, and I am very good at it, yet I could earn more if I worked stacking shelves at Tesco. The ONLY reason I can afford to do my job is because my husband earns a decent salary that pays the bills, however I may need to move back to a better paid, less worthy job due to the cost of living crisis. This is a totally sh*t situation. Schools are totally dependent on good, talented people who are prepared to use their skills for next to nothing, because they care. Unsurprisingly though, it is getting increasingly hard to recruit people to these positions. Where will this end, I wonder?

Lots of public sector/ charity jobs pay more than 20k... Depends what type of thing your looking at.

@Dreamer14

Why not look at the academic sector. Whilst pay varies, they have higher paying roles for niche skills. Exh earns over £70k

Have you looked at NED roles?

You could combine a few of these to free up some time for your family and volunteering.

What area are you in?

The the poster that spoke about people on lots of money being bad with money… at one point I had three children in nursery 4 days a week. It was almost all my take home. It really was eye watering the cost. We used credit cards to survive and were In constant debt. At that point I was on around £35k.

everyone's in school now but there’s still after school club and holidays to cover, which again adds up! Oh and before everyone says “it’s your choice to have that many kids”… some of them are surprise twins!

I think she means 39k before tax. What she actually gets at £2500x12 is 30k.
My UC payments are around £1800, then I get my wage on top which is not a lot as I work term time. The UC payment doesn’t include childcare costs, and my rent is £750.

I’d take lower paid and happy over high paid and miserable any day. It depends on your priorities though and what matters. I have the oldest car of any of my friends which doesn’t bother me in the sense my car is comfy and works but I’m aware they judge me /think they must earn more. I actually don’t think they do but I travel which they rarely do. It’s odd how people see you. It is about balance and what you’re used to.

I work part time (school hours) and I'm a singer parent to a 18 month old and a 4 yr old. Not a sibgke parent through choice (is anyone?). I'm a qualified professional with 2 degrees and the debt that goes with it. I don't earn loads. I get around 150 pm from UC- the biggest help is that UC pays 80% towards childcare. If I didn't have that I wouldn't be able to work. Equally I can't go above the UC threshold (take on private agency work for example) because it would take me above UC limit but not earn me enough to pay for the childcare i would need. I'm stuck. Carefully balancing a very small budget and paying a mortgage at the same time (no help towards mortgage- understandbly). My career is frozen. I'm just treading water. My mortgage is likely to double if interest rates remain the same- but there's absolutely no room in my budget for this.

The grass is definitely greener. I absolutely love my job but can't truly progress. Public sector workers are notoriously underpaid and over worked. The NHS, education and local authority sector survive on the uncorked snd unpaid hours loyal staff work. The burnout rate is so high it is ridiculous.

If you do ever jump over... I'd say right now is the absolutely worst time in terms of what is happening nationally and the morale in these areas let alone the pay.

I can afford to work as a TA because my husband already owned his house outright when we met, so we have no rent or mortgage to pay. I am late 20s.

Single**

Nobody is going to just give you your dream job !

You need to update your CV & look & apply for some new job roles

I always think a lot of people misunderstand what success is and are so hung up on being perceived as successful that they trap themselves.

You'd like to move and that requires a high salary. You'd like a job that doesn't make you utterly miserable, but obviously you can't jump to the top of the salary range in a totally new career, so jobs you think you'd enjoy won't be well paid any time soon.

The question is, is "success" earning enough to be accepted for a massive mortgage whilst dreading waking up in the morning?

Or is success enjoying your job and not feeling dread every morning, whilst living somewhere more modest and having less disposable income?

A few people do love their very highly paid job obviously, but there's still usually compromise somewhere (often being extremely time poor at the cost of relationship with partner or children).

You need to be able to pay for food and a warm home - you might not need to take out a new huge mortgage as you already have a home.

For most people success is achieving the compromise with which you are most content.

Uncorked??* meant to read uncontracted**

Having three under five year olds in full time childcare is unusual. Most people on lower wages if they had that many young children would not do paid work.

How is it remotely fair a UC benefit is £1800/month, a decent full time wage after tax?! At to pp’ If you’re a single parent UC is very adequate’ upthread; it’s more than that, it’s generous and comfortable and like having another full time worker without the costs of having to actually feed and house another person. Eye opening. And saying the ‘UC payment doesn’t include childcare costs’ you don’t get some/all of your childcare paid on TOP of that £1800/ month handout do you? Jesus H Christ.

@PorridgewithQuark agree with this completely.

I don't know the answer to your dilemma OP but you're not wrong about public sector jobs.

Your salary is more than a headteacher of a small primary gets with all the child safeguarding and line management and budget management responsibilities that entails. So someone who is ultimately responsible for the education and wellbeing of about 100 or so small children plus the (incredibly difficult to achieve) financial solvency and continued operation of the school is - in market terms - worth less than a project manager for a pharma company. It's not surprising there's a critical shortage of headteachers (and all teachers).

We're becoming a divided society with those in public sector / caring jobs becoming an underclass and unable to survive without benefits even when working full time in difficult jobs. It isn't good and my experience is that people are leaving teaching and the public sector in droves because unfortunately love of the job and desire to do good is becoming fast outweighed by need to feed their own family and heat their homes. The more that leave, the more difficult it becomes for those who remain and the more they are pushed to leave as exhausted and on the edge.

I keep waiting for the 'free market economy of supply and demand' to kick in for nurses wages given there are 40,000 vacancies but it seems I'll be waiting forever.

Not sure on those UC rates... My sister is on UC as a disabled single mum her UC is £950 a month. She only has one child though and can't work at all due to severe illness that occured shortly after birth

Maybe you are looking at the wrong level of public sector jobs. £20k is probably a NHS band 2 or 3. You would be monumentally bored with the sort of admin job that involves.
Look at NHS digital or admin roles band 7. Still less than you earn but you have the right skills even if you have never managed staff.

Band 7 is pretty senior. Ward sister level. OP will not be able to walk into that.
And band 2 or 3 jobs can be very demanding.

I was basing it on roles my DS has done. He's 24 with a life sciences degree.

OP, I do a job such as you mentioned. I can only afford to do it because DH has a much higher paid job in the private sector. No way could I afford to do this job if I were single. I've stuck it out because the hours and location were convenient, and I mostly enjoyed it. Most of my colleagues also have partners who earn a decent amount, although one is single and struggles financially.

It find it strange that the public sector is being proped up in this way.

I earn £14k to £18k gross (self employed) and DH earns £24k gross. So usually just under £40k between us, and no benefits.

We have two teenagers and a mortgage. We share a clapped-out 24 year old car, so often cycle to work. Everything we own seems to be old and broken. Same carpets as when we moved in almost 20 years ago. Small house but almost paid off, because we didn't do what most of my friends did and buy a bigger house once we had children. We've never been able to take them abroad (we went abroad together once, before they were born) but we take them to the seaside every year. DD1 has been on two school trips to Europe and DD2 might well do in the future. They do a few activities. I was doing an evening college course, bit have had to give up for financial reasons.