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 worked in a very niche business admin role prior to becoming a SAHM a year ago. I earned £60k. I should be able to get a WFH role or 1 day in the office role if I return to work, and I’d expect to earn £50k+. It is a niche, in demand specialism though and I specifically manoeuvred myself into it between my two DCs. I also live/ work in London which I’m sure helps.

OP I don’t think it’s impossible to achieve £50k but it’s going to take years, and you’re going to have to develop some in-demand skills so that employers are more likely to afford you the flexibility you want.

For a reality check, if you were a qualified nurse and had the experience to work as a ward manager you would be looking at earning from £47k - £54k. This would involve maanaging a staff team, managing budgets and overseeing patient care and of course would be site based and full time. Hoping for a WFH part-time admin job that fits with school hours is total fantasy

I was in pretty much your exact position over a year ago OP and I'm sorry to tell you that all I've managed to get is cleaning jobs, the first of which I literally only got because a family member worked for the company and put a good word in for me! After that long out of the workplace no one is going to want to hire you and your skills/experience will be years out of date, and that's before we even get to wanting wfh and your salary expectations.

The job market is unbelievably grim right now and I've come to the conclusion that even retraining/starting my own business is unlikely to get me anywhere close to £50k so I'm just picking up as much cleaning work as I can and keeping my eyes peeled for any and all opportunities, paid or otherwise, to get a foot in the door to anything else. Cleaning is hard but thankfully fairly flexible so I'm making it work for now, on the plus side I've lost 3 stone and am physically in better shape than I have been for years

Sorry if most of that was a bit doom and gloom but I can tell you from experience that what you're looking for doesn't exist in our circumstances, I wasted far too long looking!

I earn 45-50k working 2.5 days a week as a freelancer in a creative profession. However I have been in my industry for 15 years. If you are creative and good at it it might be worth exploring, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket unless you’re sure it will pay off.

I work from home, but only get minimum wage. These salaries leave me breathless.

How about a virtual PA?

In the average 40 hour a week job someone works 2,080 hours in a year. On this pattern (assuming a 9.30am start and 2.30pm to fit around family time - or more truthfully school pickup's) you would be working for 1,275 hours (5 hours a day, 5 days a week for 4.25 weeks in a month).

So basically you want £50k a year for just 60% of the time of a full time job. As an administrator. Get a grip.

That sort of salary for part time,at home and flexible? Sorry but that’s cloud cuckoo territory for all but the most specialist and sought after skills

I don’t think 50k is something to be lying about…

I have just recruited two jobs that are administrators, both 5 days/wk, deliberately flexible 5 hours daily so that someone can do drop off at school and be back at the school gate, and term time only. Both flexible WFH or our office, most folk do three days at home and two in the office. I will have another job like this in near future, but as PA to senior staff team. There are a lot of good reasons why ensuring jobs accessible by carers, parents and more is a Very Good Thing for my organisation.

Gross they are jobs which pay £26,500-30k, and we pay higher than our competitors. So term time only and 25 hours a week they end up 30% or so less than gross (£19-24k) per year net. We offer to pay people 'as you go hours' or even salary out over 12 months - and everyone chooses the 'evened out' salary to get a pay day every month.

£50k from home on shortened hours seems improbable for administration.

If you had told me you were a specialist computer programmer with in-demand skills and could run your own consultancy, I would have said you might have a fighting chance of £50k...But you do not have specialist, high demand skills or an entrepreneurial approach.

I went back into the workplace after a 10yr+ career break in an admin type role fully remote, totally flexible and was on £28k for the past 3 years (inflation increase got me to £29.5k eventually). I've just got a promotion and now on £36k with some line management responsibility but very low stress easy job still. I work for a charity and would definitely suggest looking at this sector if you want fully remote with more flexibility.

So many unnecessarily harsh responses on here. I get managing people's expectations but the OP asked for advice, not a scolding.

OP, in your position I would look into virtual PA jobs, as others have mentioned. I would also consider training in QuickBooks and becoming a bookkeeper, as last time I checked the training and access to their client database is free. I would also potentially look into buying second hand items in high demand and selling them on Vinted or Ebay (such as the most popular books of 2025 and going into various charity shops in your local area and buying any on the list you see.)

Another option, if you have some money to put into the initial training, is to qualify in a trade, such as becoming an electrician or a painter/decorator. This is massively overlooked by women yet can offer great money depending on how many jobs you take on, and great flexibility.

You could also do cleaning, with the view to managing your own cleaning business in the future. Ditto pet sitting, pet walking or pet grooming.

If you have any talent with beauty and some money for an initial qualification, you could do nails, eyelash extensions, etc. from home.

Don't jump into any of the above on a whim though, take time and consider all the options.

Good luck, don't let this thread dishearten you. It's great that you're considering getting back into the workforce.

i think you've made a typo and have put the thousands separator in the wrong column.

I agree. It is possible to earn the £50k but you need a lot more skills than a course.

Yes but everyone knows the nhs is generally underpaid. Private sector can sometimes be more generous. I do agree op is living in la la land though.

Very noticeable how in the past few years the job market has been turned on its head (COVID I guess).
Before, you worked on your chosen career to make the income you required and you worked around that career to make your home life work.
Now, people (well, the OP at least but there have been others) are asking for a well paying career (with no real plan of what that career might be) which fits around their home life, often WFH.

I'm on 45k for 4 days at home, school.hours and it took me YEARS of showing up and doing stuff I didn't enjoy to get this level of flex. Even now I'm.landed with all the health and safety shit noone else wants to do, you can't have it all.

You won't find a £50k school.hours job without putting in a lot of groundwork first.

I have two advanced degrees and 15 years in my industry and it's hard to get above £40k full time (including unpaid extra hours).

Go for a rich industry.

You'd be better off setting your sights on £5K per year...

I know this sounds rude, but to be brutally honest, you don't seem to have many discernable skills or qualifications, and you have not worked for 15 years, so you really can't demand high wages. You have to have a very niche skill, and/or some fairly substantial qualifications to make anywhere near the money you are asking for.

You could try ...

Etsy Seller: Creating and selling handmade jewellry, crafts.

Reselling/Flipping: Buying clothes from charity shops, and then selling them on Vinted/Depop, or sell some of your (used) items on eBay/Facebook Marketplace. (Maybe even buy some other stuff - as well as clothes - to try and resell at a bit of a mark-up.)

Data Entry: Inputting information into digital databases for companies

Surveys: Taking online surveys.

Neighbourood Services: Pet Sitting. Ironing. Cleaning.

Best of luck, but you're deluded if you think you are going to make £50K a year from a working-from-home side hustle! As I said, I would set your sights on £5K a year to begin with,

I have 2 roles; one a 12 hour a week test round job where I work from a church office 2 mornings a week and the rest are done at home as needed. The office is 10 minutes walk from home so I do the school drop off and then walk in. In the school holidays I only go in for an hour to get all the printing done; they let me do the rest from home around my children. There’s 1 evening meeting a month that I have to go to but my husband is with the children so it’s not a problem.

Second role is company secretary for a peripatetic music teaching team. Fully remote as they don’t have a base, term time only and we schedule meetings around school hours. Two evening meetings a term, which are usually online, and any in person meetings are scheduled so my husband can cover things if needed.

I earn about 30k a year - could earn more but happy with the super flexibility I have. I used to be a teacher so could be earning more by now but I really value the flexibility.
I do 30 hours a week, with the odd extra bit when my youngest is in bed. I got the first role and worked towards the extra flexibility by showing I could do the job well (also turned down one pay rise in order to keep my current schedule). In my second job they appointed me and then decided to pay me more based on my own teaching qualifications - it means I can offer something extra when communicating with clients. I’d also run my own business before so understood the tutors - it means I can help keep everything running smoothly for everyone as I get both sides of the supply chain. It was absolutely the extra skills that got me the role over all the other people looking for a flexible term time only role.

My husband is remote too - one day a week where he does site visits, the rest from home. Three times a year he stays away for a night for team building things but he runs his diary apart from that so just blocks time out to accommodate the children/me. He earns 100k but has been in his profession since leaving uni and has become chartered etc.

Without more work history and niche experience or qualifications you won’t earn anywhere near 50k doing admin work. If you start at the bottom and up skill as you go you might have a chance but it’s a lot of work.

The thing that is frustrating about these threads is the way people are so vague. I know people don’t want to be identified. I know I am very out of touch (worked in health, pre kids, which is a world of its own) job adverts are the same. They give no clues as to what people actually DO, so I’ve no idea if I could do them. I run a business, so I’m not clueless. I’ve had a professional job and got two degrees, so I’m not stupid and I feel like I could aim higher than customer service. But aim for what? It feels very exclusive and I need a map and interpreter. I think that’s what people are asking.

I would honestly pay good money to have a kind of graduate recruitment thing for post kid-mums or have someone explain to me how to decode things like what phrases like “niche business administrator’ or ‘freelancer in a creative profession’ actually do. I know what the words mean, but they don’t convey any useful information to me. I don’t mean to pick on those people and I don’t want to pressure anyone to say, but it still leaves me at a complete loss - how the fuck do I find out? They’re like cryptic crossword clues. They make sense when they’re explained, but they don’t give me any tools to decipher any more of them. The whole business seems like another language. Perhaps that means I’m deeply unsuited to them, but we’ll never know if unless I find an interpreter!

I’m considering being a climbing arborist. That seems FAR easier to get to grips with from where I’m standing. And if I’ve go to start at the bottom anyway, why not? 😂

Entry level admin at my company is 26k. 50k is very unlikely.

Qualifications like business admin are nice, but the decider is always the interview and tasks. We often have people with certifications who then somehow can’t format an excel or set up a simple pivot table.

It will completely depend on your recent experience. You need some recent experience- in the last 2 years. We would mostly not even read back as far as 10 years on a CV.

Many places would also want 2-3 days a week in the office, especially for the first 6-12 months to see what your actual productivity is.

It’s a tough market, especially for remote working. I’m getting 80-100 applications per admin role currently, and most of those have a lot of recent office experience.

I think its slightly naive to think you'll just be able walk in to a 50k WFH job after 15 years out of work.

Etsy Seller: Creating and selling handmade jewellry, crafts.

DSis sells on Etsy and Ebay (and has her own company). To actually make a profit and do well - particularly in a saturated market - is incredibly hard. There are sellers who have been around for years and barely made half a dozen sales. And unless OP has an actual skill or a 'niche' or funds for start up costs...she's going to be buggered.

DSis made something like a £6K loss in her first year due to insurance costs, overheads, testing her products (to ensure she had the necessary regulatory evidence if something went wrong to ensure her insurance paid out), buying the components to make what she sells etc.