To think this is an unacceptable wage?

[Youthiswastedontheyoung]

I'm a qualified teacher with 21 years' experience who has just started supply so flexibility with a poorly husband and three kids of my own.
Just did a full day supply (8.30-3.30) and came out with £112 net.
Hubby thinks decent wage, I think piss-take!
Opinions please!

You don't get paid £16 an hour though, you get at least £21, maybe £23 depending on your lunch break. I dont really understand your issue, a full time salary would be over £40k so comparably it's decent. If you have another job you will pay tax on every penny for the supply work so it seems less.

I pay pension on my wages also but I would never quote my net hourly rate as its misleading, my original hourly rate is good before deductions.

You are still supposed to do a tax return and pay NI and tax. Cash in hand doesn't mean you don't pay tax FFS, there is no such thing as cash in hand.

That's not loads more though and they are skilled workers, presumably they are self employed though? If PAYE then that's exceptionally good. I am an accountant and most companies I deal with do not employ many workers, most are sub contractors or self employed so really 46k isn't amazing as that is earnings before profit for self employed.

Also anyone doing PAYE should be getting holiday pay at the legal minimum of 12..07% even 0 hours staff.

Did I say somewhere it was “loads more”? I don’t recall. I was replying to a different poster and I am not convinced she mentioned “loads more” in her post either. We are comparing salaries in different industries with various levels of education and are talking about how tertiary education does not always mean higher income. In that context, I mentioned that my partner pays his workers more (not “loads more”) than I make in a day which is accurate.

OP you will not make more retraining as a counsellor. You say you've been awarded a scholarship for the course (never heard of that but ok) but you still have to pay for private therapy - at least £50 a week. And spend time studying that you could be spending earning Then when you start placement you'll have to pay travel costs and spend time you could be earning, working voluntarily in your placement, plus possibly also paying for your supervision, which is at least £50 a month.

Then after you qualify you still have to work for free, again paying for your own travel, spending hours you could be earning in, and possibly paying your own supervision, to get your hours for accreditation. Then once accredited employed jobs as a counsellor are rarer than hen's teeth (I work for an NHS Trust which employs 20,000 people, of whom 2 are counsellors) and sessional rates are no higher than what you're getting now. Or if you go into private practice instead, you will pay insurance and private supervision,and it's hard to see how you'd see clients in your overcrowded home with a husband who WFH and falls a lot due to his health, clients want privacy and your full attention. And you have to keep paying for BACP membership and ongoing CPD for life.

If your family finances are as tight as you say, your DH needs to swallow his pride and apply for PIP. That will make much more impact on your finances than a counselling course. You will spend a lot to train and likely not make it back again once qualified, if you think teaching is badly paid counselling is worse as there are fewer employed jobs and a lot of upfront and ongoing costs.

Essentially, as a supply you are not using many of the skills you are equating with your length of service. Many schools wouldn't use a 'supply teacher' as it is a lot more expensive for merely delivering material designed and marked by someone else.

If you did this full time, you would be on around £2500 after tax, free and clear from 330 every day, with no real after school care needed, no responsibilities outside of your working hours. That's pretty good tbh. You chose to do it for the flexibility, that's what it gets you...you get paid by what the role demands not by what you have done in the past.

You are falsely conflating net and gross pay to try to prove a point, ignoring the fact that for many roles, minimum wage or thereabouts is paid gross, with a lot more demands on the time of the person employed.

You can't have it all ways! Your degree (most people have degrees now anyway) and experience are irrelevant to what you are doing and you get the flexibility you wanted.

Please don't become a counsellor. You do not have the right personality type you are to judgemental and you seem to really lack empathy and are massively out of touch with reality. Comments about people on benefits being lazy and how everyone should work no excuses. And how you feel your above others because you have a degree. You also seem highly sensitive to any kind of criticism or questions. You will not be able to build up a client base as after 5 minutes talking to you people will be gone and won't be coming back.

With 150 posts over the last 24 hrs, a great many of which are attacking anyone making suggestions or simiply ranting, perhaps the OP could take on a full time influencing job...

I agree with this-I actually know a surprising number of people who have gone down this route (OP I think has a place on a masters-does that scholarship pay full fees?). The supervision and personal therapy costs were horrific! I think one was paying £50 for personal therapy sessions alone! Two dropped out for those reasons alone-it was simply costing the family too much money.

The one that has made it work and is happy, has a lovely detached 4-bed home in a village and her children have all left home. Her DH converted her a room on the side of their house into a therapy room/with bathroom (it’s beautiful) and she can work from there. She has about 10-15 clients a week and says doing any more than that would be too much for her own wellbeing. She loves doing it but freely admits that she can only do it because her husband earns loads and their mortgage is long paid off. She earned more as a part time teacher but is going to do this for a few more years till they retire.

If you are in a rented house that’s already overcrowded and worried about money and an unwell husband, those weekly supervision and therapy costs could be a nightmare, let alone the insurance/overheads when qualified.

My close friend who dropped out really wished she’d gone into it with her eyes open and properly costed it out first. Thinking, ‘anything is better than teaching’ when you would be putting the family further in debt with no long-term scope for a better situation, could be an expensive mistake.

Do you have no self respect? People claim UC because they can’t find work or because they’re on much lower incomes than you and so the state tops up their income.

You’re a teacher earning a salary higher than the UK average and choosing to work part-time. Yet you want to take advantage of everyone else who works so you don’t have to and can “get your rent paid”.

People in social housing pay rent, it’s just proportionate to what they can afford. There’s huge waiting lists of homeless families living in BnBs desperate for a house to become available. You have a well paid job (relative to UK salaries) and can afford to rent privately but want to stop working and get into social housing and take a house from a family who actually needs it so you “don’t have to pay rent”.

And this person is teaching our children. Lord give me strength.

And for some it is a lifestyle choice, @Plum02. And who can blame them? Probably better off financially not working and help given with paying rent. Social housing also far more secure than private and more protected in terms of landlord responsibility.

Anyway, I'll leave all you women with wealthy husbands to snipe to yourselves. I've got work to do.

I pay my cleaner by bank transfer.

Stop reducing other women to their DHs income. It's pathetic and you come across as insecure and jealous. Your attitude is appalling, there's no way it doesn't come across in your classroom.

You're right. No one retrains as a counsellor for the money. It's expensive! It's also very time consuming and emotionally demanding.

No, you mean for you it is a lifestyle choice.

Wealthy husbands? Who has a wealthy husband? Your misogyny is showing.

According to another of OPs threads, she had a wealthy husband. But got shafted in the divorce.

If it makes any difference OP, I don't have a husband, wealthy or otherwise. And I still think you're wrong.

I wonder if the comment about ‘wealthy husbands’ was because of my post. I don’t have one, but I was trying to make the point that counselling is a career that often isn’t lucrative and can only be possible if you have a partner who earns enough that your wage isn’t needed and the household financial set up means they can provide you with a home therapy room without having to hire one.

If you are in an overcrowded house, with an unwell husband, small children, no paid off mortgage and are already upset about your low wage, maybe counselling is an unwise career move.

Yes, that’s probably really unfair that people with high earning partners have more choices and can plan their careers around financial stability to begin with, but it is what it is. I just know my friend wishes she’d known more about the pathway to begin with as she’d never have started it. She was using her overdraft to pay for therapy:(

If they only do 4 hours a week they are under tax and NIC thresholds.

I doubt it, the OP has history for attacking women whose contribution is the unpaid work they do for the rest of the family. Usually omits to mention her own part time status. The misogyny is depressing.

There has been quite a wave of varying attacks on SAHMs on this site lately. It appears on a lot of the MiL/DiL threads but also threads like this. AS is enlightening.

What isnt?

What subject do you teach?

She's a primary school teacher.

She's also working 2.5 days per week in a permanent role so will be using up all her personal allowance on that pay cheque so her deductions from her one day per week supply work will be pretty high, which will be why she thinks her take home pay from that role is too low. I think the problem is is a very basic misunderstanding of how taxation works, and I find it pretty terrifying that someone we rely upon to educate our children has made it to her 40s without working this sort of stuff out!

MN is clearly the place to come if you enjoy caterwauling and have nothing of use to add to a debate isn't it?
I suppose it's to be expected when the majority of posters are women.

I had to use a credit card to pay for my training. It took me nine years to pay it off. I did the work alongside full time paid employment for years after that.