How can I make a comfortable income from home

[Sweetly1]

Hi Ladies I want to find out what ladies are doing to make a comfortable income around their primary school children and still have time for family? Kindly advise?

I hate to pile on as well, but ‘admin’ and £50k aren’t often (ever) seen on a job vacancy ad. particularly as you want to work around school hours so only really available part time, unless it’s a super flexible place that allows you to log back on in the evenings. These are the dream roles, not the run of the mill.

There’s potential for you to get an admin role and work your way up after some experience back in the workforce and as you gain your qualifications. Things have changed massively in the last few years, let alone the last 15.

WFH jobs are becoming increasingly rare. Which most companies going to hybrid which requires office attendance. Some companies have gone fully back to the office. My company for example hired 100% homeworkers 3 years. It hasn’t gone well and they won’t be offering it again.

Not really. I work for an insurance company. We are hybrid. The majority of insurance companies in my sector are also hybrid. Some have gone fully back to the office.

Yeah I am very aware of this tbh I meant a company that offers wfh even as a hybrid. I have to be on site 2-3 days a week now too. But the flexi time helps as I can still do drop off on those days. It helps I have a really cool boss, she gets it as she is in the same position.

I have a PhD. and do postgraduate private tutoring, fully remote. I charge £50-£80 per hour. Sometimes more depending on the level of support needed. Do you have any specialist knowledge you could use in that way?

sorry I quoted you by mistake. I was supposed to quote OP 🤦🏾‍♀️

Maybe that kind of salary is possible in London but not for someone that hasn’t been in that field for 15yrs.

I think you’ll need to lower your salary expectations. I’m a fully qualified accountant and my full time equivalent is under £50k. I work part time to enable myself to be there for my kids before and after school. I work equivalent to 3 full days and earn just over £28k.

Are you wanting something that you can leave to pick up the kids up from school then work with them at home? Some employers wouldn’t be happy with that arrangement (dependant on the age of the children ofcourse).

Have you thought about being a childminder? A bit different from admin but had the potential to have a good income from the government funded rates

A job opportunity earning £50k exclusively wfh after 15 years out of the workforce would be a miracle. I’d look for a job which allows wfh 3 days a week and start from there.

You're joking right?

50k for an admin role and you've been out of the workforce for 15yrs? WFH around school hours?!

Ok, so you must realise you won't get an actual job with that experience, part time hours and that salary.

Beware of all the influencer/social media/get rich easy rubbish out there. They lie. If it were that simple, we'd all be doing it.

The only way is to start a proper small business - but that's a ton of hard work for at least 5 years and with no guarantee of success. Most fail. It doesn't sound as though that's what you'd be interested in either.

You need to get real.

And hours of work non flexibility

Set yourself up as a virtual PA business to lots of small businesses. Diminishing market due to AI, but for the moment there are probably people who need it. You could branch out into physically organising and tidying for people.

Thanks, that's interesting. The ones I'm thinking of sold off a lot of office space so are stuck with a lot of home working staff for now. Though lots of industries seem to be pushing for regular office attendance. I'm in law and could do 90% of my job from home but they made it a condition of our bonuses that we had to come in minimum 2 days a week to be able to qualify for the bonus scheme. (Some people dont care about the bonus and turn up less often but I think there will be a further crack down.)

I think you need to adjust your expectations here.

An “admin” role and 15 years out of the workplace isn’t going to equate to anywhere near it.

What are you basing this on?

What you need to earn? What you think you should be paid? For how many hours/week?

It seems pretty 'plucked out of the air' given that 15 years ago you worked for the public sector in an administrative role - surely this was relatively low paid then as it would be now. The social workers in the same office won't be on 50k and they are registered graduate professionals and will be attending court etc.

I have worked my whole adult life, have undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications, am a registered professional (paying registration fees and cpd etc), sometimes work more than ft and still don't earn 50k....

If you really want to make your way back into work, you may need to start with volunteering and lower paid roles to have something more up to date on your cv?

Same for me. I can do 100% of my job at home. It mainly involves talking on teams and the person underneath me works in another country. But my company wants regular attendance back to the office. 3 days a week. Lucky I have a very understanding manager they they have allowed me to stay home for now with some attendance.

I think you'll struggle to make 50k part time doing business admin if you've not worked at all for 15 years and even then not private sector.

You'd most likely need to start on living wage or just above. So you'd need years of progression.

Even if you had been working up until today I don't think you'd get that for part time hours. Even as an EA to the CEO of a large FS company.

It won’t be 50k right away if ever but
-freelance writing, graphic design, website design, social media (think local shop without a teen help)
-bookeeping/tax prep
-very busy dogwalker/doggy daycare
-daycare or overnight care for shift workers

Start your own business

Fully remote or some office attendance flexibility?

I've been a teacher for 20 years and am only just hitting 50k. Works well around kids but only after 10 years did the workload decrease enough that I could have kids.
I split my time between teaching and a management role meaning I work 5 mornings (DH has to do school run) and 3 afternoons. 1 do 2 pick ups and DH does 2. I day at after school club.
So take your TA experience, do teacher training, earn 30k working every minute god sends then in 10 years you might earn closer to 50k but the kids will have grown up. You'll get the holidays though.....

Ok I'll bite @Sweetly1
So, you havent worked for 15 years and you want to jump straight back into a work from home job that pays you 50k a year. You have literally nil to no chance of this. Literally zero. What is your education level? degree? or just the qualifications you list. I suggest you dramatically lower your expectations and aim at an entry level job somewhere that lets you work from home occassionally and manage child care for the rest of the time.

Why did you do the teaching assistant qualification if you had no intention of being one because you cant do that remotely?

Honestly you are going to be lucky to find any sort of NMW job

I think anything in admin will be NMW -28K. Probably towards the latter if you have no recent experience.

You could try the civil service but you’d need to work at least 2-3 days in the office. Councils used to be more flexible with this (at least before Covid).

I employ someone in a finance role. It’s 40 hours per week, she is wfh 9 days out of 10 and has a primary age kid. It’s a busy job and she has been working non stop for over a decade. She is also a nearly-qualified accountant so she can easily command a salary of £40k+

If you had not worked for 15 years I would want you to be office based at least for first 6 months , and I don’t think I’d want to pay you more than minimum wage unless you could show some very up to date skills.

You could try training in HR and payroll, it might suit your admin skills?