To wish i’d known when younger the importance of going into a career with money

[Watermelonlollies]

I don’t remember my parents stressing this to me.

I’m a teacher and used to have an okay lifestyle, got by happily and could have holidays and a few treats here and there.
Life isn’t like that now, as i’m sure it isn’t for many.

I’m not materialistic in any way, but as I’ve got older it’s really dawned on me the importance having money makes and I wish i’d gone down a different path

Does anyone feel the same and do/will any of you be expressing this to your kids?

I agree with this.

I'm frankly amazed at the amount of people in this thread saying that you're an idiot I'd you didn't know what would make you rich in mid-life by the time you are 15-16.

Like PPs say, it is a ridiculous way of doing things expecting children to map our their lives at 13-14 if you count GCSE choices.

Plus, jobs and the labour market change, often unpredictably. And then there's luck, which countless lucky people don't acknowledge.

I grew up in a small town nowhere near a city, and everyone’s parents that I knew had very similar jobs to my parents, eg there were lots of teachers in the mix, and that sort of level of career. I knew of no-one who had a high salary, and it did not really feature on my radar as a thing. My parents would also not have known or seen anyone who was a very high earner. So I certainly wasn’t aware of potential massive wage disparities / super high salaries, so it didn’t really feature as part of my decision-making process at age 18. I can’t ‘blame’ anyone for that.. and I am old enough that there was no internet, and the only type of careers research you could do was a ‘cascade’ form, or looking in leaflets on careers in the careers library at sixth form. And there was certainly no information on salaries in all of the information that I saw..

Yanbu. I was encouraged to ‘follow my heart’ so I did an arts degree then trained as a teacher. I left teaching a few years ago and with a lot of effort I am now in a higher paid career, but not at the 6 figure mark. My DC are lucky to be quite able academically and would have the options to follow pathways towards lucrative careers - I will be encouraging this - I want them not to have a lifetime of worrying about money or not being able to do anything nice.

i knew you’d be a teacher! Let me spell it out OP: you get unbelievable time off that no one else outside of retirement can dream of. Your weekly working hours, when you do work, are less than the UK average working week. You have a gold plated final salary pension that in no way could you accumulate in the private sector and which other tax payers subsidise. You have incredible job security which is a factor keeping most others awake at night. Count your blessings.

I absolutely feel like this. I am nearing retirement and desperately wish I could go earlier. I work in local government and the salary was fine at the start of my career - but not now! I told all my nieces and nephews (and my daughter) to go into remunerative jobs and they have done! It's sad as I've enjoyed my work and feel I've made a difference, but if I had my time again I'd go for something that pays much better. An unwanted divorce and years of being a single parent have brought home to me as Jane Austen said ((paraphrased!) that sound teeth and a decent bank balance are worth far more than love!

I have often been snarked at on here for saying that in my twenties, it wasn't the avocado toast that made a difference - that was a small, discretionary spend.

It was choosing a cheap banger of a car, a SIM only refurbished smartphone, and using Freeview rather than Sky.

All my city friends had lease cars to the tune of £300/month, £50/M iPhones and £100/month Sky.

It is the big, fixed monthly costs that get you every time - save and invest that instead, and yes, occasionally you'd need to fix the car, but you could do that with the... Savings! My car averaged £50/month all in over its lifetime, including the odd taxi or train if it was in the garage.

No, that’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying that you can be as successful as you like in a career, but if you make the mistake of marrying a lazy leech (and there are a lot of them out there) then you may as well not have bothered. This is a growing problem as women under 30 outearn men under 30 now.

And as for an affluent background, if you marry someone whose family can afford to give them cash for a deposit on a house and have a holiday home in a south of France (thinking of one of my friend’s husbands!) then you’re probably going to have a nicer lifestyle than if you marry someone whose family can’t - irrespective of how successful you are.

Choosing a life partner is a bloody important decision, especially for a woman.

I agree with PP who have pointed out how times have changed. I think my generation (millennial) grew up with an assumption that if you had a steady job you’d be comfortable.

I think our parents’ generation were much more frugal in a lot of ways (Holidays, new clothes, eating out), but on the other hand property ownership was much more attainable and you could be fairly well to do on professional incomes.

On the flip side I have family who are multi millionaires with nice cars, holidays in st tropez and Caribbean etc in a job that has money. 1 child is a drug user, 1 is an abusive relationship and 1 is a registered sex offender so can’t agree that money buys happiness.

This. It isn’t your choice of teaching that’s the problem. It’s just that things have changed for everyone. There are far fewer options that give the sort of lifestyle you are describing because the cost of living, especially housing, has risen so much. The days of 1 income sustaining a middle class family with 2 kids and holidays abroad etc are long gone, teacher or otherwise.

This aside, it’s still not a lucrative career is it? Particularly in the face of rising costs that we are all feeling. The op is saying she wishes she went into something higher paid, and wishes she had had advice to that tune - she wasn’t complaining about her holiday or her pension.

Well its all very nice and can bring job satisfaction knowing the work you have done makes a difference to society in a positive way

Unfortunaly that satisfaction soon fades when money is constantly tight and your wage barely covers the general costs of living because our wages have not increased as living costs have

The answer should not be retraining it should be pay workers a decent liveable wage

Well yes, that’s true for both men and women. Anyone marrying a lazy leech who doesn’t work is going to experience a drop in lifestyle. My point is you don’t need to marry someone rich to have the lifestyle you want, you can earn it yourself. As a woman or as a man.

I know what you mean OP. At school when we were given career advice it was all about finding a good fit for your skills and something that would make you happy.

I don't think money was ever mentioned, but nor were other practical considerations. 3.g. work life balance (if you are planning to have kids would you like to consider doing something where it's possible to get flexible hours, for instance).

Or the practicalities of something that required a lot of travel. Me at 16 thought this sounded cool but then I did it a bit and it's mostly just really inconvenient - you can't have a regular gym membership or class and it's hard to build a social group where you live.

when I talk to my kids about it I do mention this kind of thing as well as that it's important to find something you don't hate doing because it is a huge part of your waking life.

Ok, I've mulled it over for days and actually someone has to say it. This is harsh, so please look away if you're feeling sensitive about your career progress.

If you reached the age of 21 with a degree and still didn't understand that money is needed for bills, housing, holidays etc... Or if you did understand, but didn't have the capability to look on the internet for salaries in different industries... Then you have never had the capability to take on the highest paid jobs in financial services, consultancy, nor law. You also would never have passed interview stages in the milk rounds. You haven't missed out, because even if you were hired later you never would have made it to the top anyway.

I think you can understand it in principle without understanding how much life costs.

I started at PWC on a training contract salary of £19k. It seemed like an absolute fortune to me at the time because I had about £50 each month I could spend on luxuries without worrying about it. I had never really had any money before except peanuts from a part time supermarket job.

Hold on. What an utterly simplistic view.

When I was 21, there was no internet.

And also I stand by you don't know what you don't know.

Just because the daughter of a coal miner didn't know about finance or banking roles - their very existence - doesn't mean she wouldn't have performed amazingly at them.

I can see that if you grow up surrounded by people who have only ever had low paid jobs then you haven't had your eyes opened to all the career possibilities out there.

However, when I was at uni there were so many people just coasting through without a plan.

My friend did internships every single summer with a large company and managed to get accepted into their graduate training program the Christmas before finals. He was so pissed off with everyone telling him he was "lucky". He wasn't. He went out and found it.

I studied languages. I didn't have a career plan at all, so every summer holiday I went and worked abroad using my 2 foreign languages. In doing this I made friends in my target country and they explained how their system worked for finding the best jobs (what qualifications you need etc) and by the time I did my finals, I was accepted to do a masters in that country which led to me discovering lots of career paths and then choosing my own. I didn't have a full plan at 16/17 but I did spend the next few years actively researching and creating one as I went along.

Everyone else I know spent their summers working in retail/hospitality back home and/or going on holiday. Then being surprised in the final year that they needed to find a career....

Everyone else I know spent their summers working in retail/hospitality back home and/or going on holiday.

this was me 100%. I had no idea what I wanted to do, was terrified of people who did, and seriously intimidated by people who got 'proper' graduate intern jobs in the summer.

luckily for me this was in the late 90s when there were plenty of graduate opportunities so it worked out ok.

Everyone else I know spent their summers working in retail/hospitality back home and/or going on holiday.

In Iceland, it's normal to spend several years doing this sort of thing before you do a degree.

You travel to other countries, have a lot of fun, get a better sense of self outside of the narrow confines of school/your community, THEN you do your degree.

I am saving so my son will have the freedom to do this too. Not to give up learning - but to live life to the full whilst he's young. I deeply regret not having a gap year.

And for what it's worth, I regret not having a basic summer job too - we lived remotely and my parents were against it, so no way to do it myself. They were dead set on worthy, academic employment.

I'd probably have plumped for a more lucrative career if given the time off to enjoy myself, because graduate careers were in the doldrums when I graduated anyway.

I have tried to say this to my DC, ultimately they ignored me.
It's really tricky as part of you wants to say follow your dreams, do something you love, and another part of me thinks it's going to be really hard to get a decent standard of living/buy a house in those fields. Or that role is going to be very stressful.
So I have pointed this out gently-feeling like the grinch.
Honestly as a parent youre dammed if you do and dammed if you don't.
Teaching is a secure professional job which a career path and which allows you to diversify to tutoring, exam marking etc so I don't think it's a bad career choice but clearly it's stressful.

My Mother had been a professional dancer when young. My Dad was an immigrant and they ran a restaurant till they divorced. Career advice was work hard and my Mother went on about marrying well. I had a childhood of my Mother doing ballet in the kitchen and my Dad banging on about how to steam fish perfectly. I can do the fish but my ballet was mediocre. They sadly divorced.

I helped in their restaurant when very young and hospitality when at school, then in the NHS nursing but realised it wasn’t for me. Then retrained and worked in higher education. Met DH working at the same University. He has friends that work in banking and are on six figure salaries, only 2% of the UK population earn this amount. We managed to hit top 5% of joint household income for a few years before we took very early retirement in our mid fifties. We made most of our money through investing though. We do have solid defined benefits pensions and did certainly earn well enough but it’s the investing and being good with money that has us better off than our salaries. I haggle, DH told me he dies a little inside sometimes when I ask for discounts. It’s not a very English way, I say thanks Dad. The nursing does come in handy I assisted when a woman had a medical emergency yesterday when out shopping.

Oh wow you don't know any teachers do you?? All the ones I know get to school at 7.30am and leave at 5pm, then do another 2 or 3 hours marking and planning after dinner. Also work most weekends and during holidays. "Work less hours than the average" is an absolute joke! Even the ones lucky enough to leave school at 3.30 will have already done 8 hours by the time they leave.

Ahh similar to me, my parents don't have a gcsr between them and noine in my family has a cirporate job. But ai watched 80s movies and there were women and men in glass offices doing advertising and media stuff and it looked so glam, I wanted to do that, so I did!

DP is head of year - so yes, quite aware of the hours.