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 could have written this word for word. Except swap Eastern Europe for Asia!

So, DH also works in finance, but in something quite niche. He works 9-5 (not a speck of overtime) and isn’t stressed at all. Mid 30’s, £200k a year (so substantially less than your DH), but the work/life balance is great.

He researched careers thoroughly before picking his exact one, for exactly those reasons. I’ve always thought that showed astonishing foresight for a teenager. I certainly wasn’t thinking like that when I went to uni!

I am the same as you. I went into nursing despite my teachers encouraging me to purse a career/ study IT as I was good at computing science and as they all said there will be a lot more money in it! I was only interested in nursing, I wanted to work with people and in a capacity that I was helping them etc. academically my loves were biology and English, not computing science.

Now looking back 30 years later, on the one hand i don’t have any regrets, I have had a very broad ranging and interesting career where I have never stopped learning and developing, but now even as a senior nurse on a high banding, my pay is crap and I do think maybe I should have chosen a career with better financial prospects, but not IT, that I don’t regret.

My advice to my children has been choose something you are interested in but makes sure it pays well enough!

Can I ask if there’s a reason you wanted to be a nurse, as opposed to a doctor?

I also know someone who had incredible insight as a teenager. In the early 90’s (or was it late 80’s, I don’t know), he bought the rights to lots of basic web addresses (think www.”insert name of nationwide supermarket”.com. He was a multi millionaire many time over by the time he was in his early 30’s.

Yes same. I don’t feel like I was given much guidance in my choices with going to uni and what course to choose, but on the other hand I don’t know whether I’d of listened. I wish I’d of gone into a vocational university course with a real, tangible skill at the end, rather then a broad subject. I’ve always ended up in bottom of the rung admin type jobs because I’ve not got a skill to work on and grow my knowledge in. Not blaming my parents for this at all as I know I could have retrained, but the motivation has just never been there.

An ambitious teacher could work their way right up to being the head of a multi academy trust and earn in excess of £200kpa.

A non ambitious person who doesn't climb up the ranks will be earning less than than a teacher in almost all fields.

You can't compare someone who's never progressed from the first rank of 'class teacher' to someone who's worked their way up to partner in a law firm, or chief exec, or investment banker etc.

I know a couple of teachers in the leadership grades (not head/deputy or alike) who are on over £50k. Other than in central London this is a good wage.

The problem is that nowadays it takes two people bringing home a reasonable salary to have a good standard of living.

People who live alone need to earn very well to have a good standard of living. Thats the problem.

Yeah, but think about your pension and how amazing that will be compared to everyone in jobs earning the same as you but in the private sector

I completely agree that sometimes we recieved advice for an economy that was long gone

I saw people in my nhs career and thought they had a good lifestyle. I far out earn my middle class parents careers so thought I would have a better lifestyle than them.

I do not. The wage doesn't buy you what it did in those days so a nurse in 2025 doesn't have what I saw in the 90s

My next door neighbour is only 10 years older than me, in a really similar role in an identical house. However her lifestyle is wildly different because her mortgage is half what mine is based on her house prices before I could buy.

So my life is very different to hers, and nurses that came before me that I was comparing to

I also vastly underestimated how much others were being supported by generational wealth, and what a difference that makes even when it's only a small amount of help

You’re so right. My parents expected that I would get married have children and never work again, as my mum had done, so they pushed me into admin jobs. Some people might know what they want to do as 15 years olds but I needed guidance, and I didn’t get it. I’m now studying so I can get a career in a highly paid industry, I’m prepared to work long hours and do stressful work because I really like having money and spending it more than anything else!

I voted YABU as while being a teacher doesn't usually make you very wealthy, you can be well off with it and it is a solid professional role, and with some career paths you could be very well paid.

Having grown up with getting a proper job drummed into me and soon realising that money isn't everything, I absolutely hated big corporates, and finding a way to do my job that I can actually do and is interesting rather than the best paid, I absolutely haven't drummed into DDs that money is all. I would have really liked the headspace when younger to be able to go into a more creative career and spent a few years not necessarily earning well but thinking about what I wanted to do rather than feeling like I had to do an academic subject at university and get a proper career job straight afterwards.

Both DDs want to pursue creative yet practical careers and I'm so pleased for them. It might not lead to vast wealth but it depends which way you go. I've always brought them up to think outside the box as the best jobs are often ones where you carve out a niche for yourself and are not found down the job centre or necessarily by doing a standard school - A Levels - university - corporate grad scheme route.

People always complain about teaching and I wonder if it’s because they have no concept of a career where you only get 4 weeks of leave a year maximum & find it hard to fit that in and routinely do long hours. The holidays for teachers are amazing. It always seems to be teachers who complain more than nurses and I really don’t think the same careers compare in terms of stress. I’m not saying teachers don’t have it hard but it isn’t as hard as we hear.

I went into a career with money, hated it, have now left to set up my own business. Was speaking to a young girl in her 20s whose doing my dream (very badly paid job) and if I had my time again I would do that. I think often the grass is greener and we can look back and regret the other path regardless of what we chose

I totally hear you OP. I’m 52.

its not on my parents exactly, it’s more that among the people they knew and spent time with and our wider family, earning big salaries was not really talked about. My parents were a farmer and a teacher, and they were far more impressed by academic achievements than they were by income. so they really pushed us to do well at school but they didn’t really have any advice on what to do after all those exams. so my sister went down an academic route (we both have PhDs) and I ended up in local government but also being a SAHM for a long time.

I honestly wasn’t aware of what careers to aim for in order to earn money. We didn’t know anyone who had their own businesses or any drs / lawyers / bankers etc. Careers advice at school was non existent. And there was a weird inverted snobbery about ‘commercial / business’ careers. One family friend worked in management for a big life insurance company (hardly a super high earner!) and my parents clearly thought of him as a bit of a chancer, a spiv, a wise guy.

I was really good at school, all As - but no one ever suggested trying for médecine or law. Finance / economics / business wasn’t even on the radar!

I actually think it's the middle classes who are more vulnerable to this (I was)

My more working class friends saw the impact of living with limited money and were desperate to climb out of it. Things like artist careers were less encouraged by parents who didn't have the ability to fund it

The wealthier parents around me were able to boost their children via getting them on the property market earlier (which can make a massive difference in outgoings!), and funding things like internships. For example psychologists are one of the highest clinical bands, often with far more progression opportunities than other clinicians, but are fairly exclusively wealthy people because until recently its required masses of unpaid internships.

Then you have the people in the middle. My parents had a comfortable life, and I assumed if I had a similar career to them then I would have a similar lifestyle. I was completely wrong and have a lifestyle drop compared to them. They assumed as long as I earnt in comparison to them I'd have a similar lifestyle. I actually earn more than the both of them put together, so am extremely successful in their eyes, but live in a house half the value of theirs, paying three times (at least) the mortgage, with far less disposable income

This is true for lots of my middleclass friends,

I think these in Academia are the last people who should be giving career advice The environment is so insular there is often a real disconnect with the real world and what is available career wise. Being in academia is also a notoriously low paying profession (with some exceptions) so it’s one of those area that is a big investment money wise to attain the needed degrees but little payoff salary wise. So very much a ‘follow your passion’ profession. It then sort of perpetuates this odd almost MLM like system that then recruits students into academia.

I think I was fortunate that the university I attended was vary hands on and practical. We had the standard philosophy and sociology general ed courses but in addition to that we also had courses like ‘design for industry’ which meant building things to solve a problem. They also made use of part time associate professors who actually worked in the fields that they taught. So my business law professor was actually a lawyer who was also working in corporate law. My logistics professor also worked at a household name manufacturer. I was able to receive a lot of real world instruction.

Most of the majors offered leant itself to the practical vs. academic. To name a few Hotel and Tourism, Industrial Packaging (holy hell this is a profession to steer kids into the published graduate results has historically shown a 95% + relevant placement rate with near 6 figure starting salaries)

This university was unique then (90’s) and is almost unicorn like now.

I think that actually your choice of partner is far more consequential to life outcomes, including financial, than your choice of career. It’s like compounding, which if you truly understand, can be utterly life changing almost despite yourself. This works both ways, of course.

Then why are people leaving in droves and not training? I outlined my teaching job above but I appreciate I'm at outlier in a v nice peaceful school.

Times have changed. You could live a good, cheap life back then if you wanted to.

Careers services were utterly shit in 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. I don't know what they're like now.

And you don't know what you don't know.

When I was a teen and early 20s, I had no idea that there were jobs that you could actually make great money at apart from doctors. It just didn't occur to me that it was an option.

This is also where I give the advice to anyone with kids in the 13+ age ranges.

Tell your kids (or grandkids) to start asking every adult what they do for a living and what is liked or disliked about it.

This is where they will start to hear about the wide world of careers. They will also start to hear about the ‘silent’ careers. You know those ones that never get talked about and nobody seems to hear about. Supply Chain, Logistics, Industrial Packaging (from my previous post), Manufacturing Engineering, Actuary, etc.

I’m guessing it’s still shit. Which is why I always give the above advice about kids asking the adults in their lives about what they do.

Same here

Really important to enjoy your work

If your parents didn’t know about money-making careers they couldn’t have told you. Mine didn’t either - neither have degrees (one left school at 15) and have done manual/low paid work all their lives. All they ever said was to pursue what would make me happy. So I did, but like you I realised after some time it wouldn’t make me money in the long run. So I did some research and self study (free online courses etc) had a career pivot and now earn over 80k. I’m self employed so it fluctuates but the minimum I’ve brought home in the last few years is 60k. I made the change myself by learning, networking, making the effort - you can do the same if you want to. No it’s not the MN 6 figures but it’s enough to me to have the life I want which is what matters most.

That said I do agree with the poster who said money isn’t the be all and end all. Yes, of course, living in poverty or just above is difficult and miserable but if you can cover your outgoings and have a bit left over for treats, that is good enough to me. I make active choices that make life cheaper too like living in cheap area in a tiny flat rather than upsizing property when my income increases, and not having a car. If you want more money/disposable income you need to take action to make that happen - I’m sure teaching has plenty of transferable skills to switch careers. Ed tech, for example?