I’m curious about work, qualifications, and income and how they all relate.

[DoubtfulCat]

My dc has been asking how to become rich. I’ve no idea (🤣) but as I was musing that question I thought I would ask a few more:

What do you do as your main source of income?
What salary or income does this bring you?
What qualifications and experience do you have?
Did you have material and/or cultural capital support growing up and as a young adult - eg parents’ networks, paid tuition fees or ability to stay living at home and save on rent, support in mapping out a career path?

My answers:
I’m mainly a wellbeing practitioner in a school.
My FTE salary is £27,407.
I have a good joint honours BA, a postgraduate teaching qualification with 20 years’ experience in teaching, a Level 6 qualification in what I do now (which is related) plus over 2000 hours’ experience and CPD in that field. I also have experience in running a business, marketing, administration, bookkeeping, customer service…
I had cultural capital growing up but very little material support (I took loans and had a tiny grant at uni as they were phasing those out then), and no help with how to embark upon a career rather than get a job.

I love my work, I am super fortunate to enjoy working at what I do and rarely dread having to go to work. I don’t feel the pay matches the value of what I do. I don’t think it matches my expertise and experience. For me, I think it’s worth the low pay because I burned out before; however, it would be nice to get to the end of the month before the end of the money.

I work in another job as well which tops up my income. It’s as a lecturer in FE and there, my FTE salary would be £41,080. I don’t love the admin side of that job or the pressure, and I don’t think the pay there reflects the qualifications, skill, and demands of the job either. It has a reasonable pension (but not one of the old-style kind) but we are expected to take our holidays (during the college holidays of course) as booked leave and be on site if we aren’t on holiday. We get 21 days holiday FTE.

I’m curious about other people’s experiences in these areas. Are you willing to share?

Both of us are relatively high earners. We love our jobs, interesting, varied, challenging. We both paid our own way at university. We both have masters degrees, and I have a further postgraduate qualification.

Firstly avoid anything public sector or charity that could be considered "women's work". Don't get hung up on meaningful. If it's legal it's fine. Change jobs every 5 years. Never disclose your old salary to your new employer. If you are a woman assume the employer is intending to pay you 10% less than they would pay a man. A professional qualification can help.

Same. I made B7 6 years after qualifying, now am 24 years post qualifying and have been top of B7 for 10+ years. There are few clinical 8A positions, but they all ask for a masters, and pay isn't that different.

To answer original question from OP - neither of my parents did a degree at standard point (my Dad did an MBA in his mid 50's for 'fun'), attended a pretty rubbish state school. I worked very hard, got top grades, offered place at Oxford for law, and could have been making big bucks, but I much prefer my job and less money and the ability to work part time and be around for my girls

Rich

Financial
Freedom
Choice

Being financially independant

Not being lazy

Not taking the easy option

I agree with another poster, avoid female dominated careers

I have a PGCE ( post grad certificate in education). I also.have undiagnosed ADHD/autism. I never felt I belonged anywhere. I survive being a supply teacher in primary schools. I am good at my job but I only earn £18 000/ year . I would be on £46 000/ year fte if I was permanently employed ( which I'd hate).
I feel I am severely undervalued but I can't face having to mask all the time ( I do it 6 hours a day but not every day as supply is not always steady, and not during the school holiday). I've been looking at jobs for £25 k + but I can't see myself thriving in any of these ( major imposter syndrome and finding social relationships a minefield).

I am an assistant headteacher in a secondary school - 75k a year .

BA(hons) in Maths. Initially did an accountancy apprenticeship with KPMG straight out of university but hated it. Dabbled in marketing briefly before volunteering to tutor maths at a local high school (high deprivation). Absolutely fell in love with it. Trained to teach maths 10 years ago and have worked upwards.

Specifically chose to work in deprived, local areas after a short stint at a private school which I despised entirely and made me genuinely consider leaving teaching.

Specialised in SEND and voila. Not rich (I often get told I could have earned more and had a better work life balance had I stuck out accountancy or done something more academic with my maths degree) but very comfortable and extremely happy in my job.

I grew up to teenage parents (middle class mum and working class dad) who worked their arse off to both crone degree educated and earn 6 figures whilst raising 3 children. Mum is a head teacher and dad was the ceo of a national company. We didn’t do much as young children, such as clubs etc as my parents couldn’t afford it, but there was an expectation I perform well academically and go to university. It worked - my sister is a teacher, my brother a doctor. My mum and dad paid my tuition fees (I still got a maintenance loan) and also did all my food shopping whilst at university, as well as gifting me (and my siblings) a very large deposit for our first house. We are exceptionally lucky.

As a teacher - my advice to your daughter - build a career around what you love and live your life within those financial means if possible!

Degree and masters. Earn 58k as a senior social worker. Not especially rich, but doing more than okay in comparison to certain peers.

Mine is probably a slightly unconventional form of social capital 😂
I grew up in a council house and have lived most of my life in fairly diverse, working-class areas, so I’ve had genuine exposure to people from lots of different backgrounds and socioeconomic circumstances. My wider family experience includes alcoholism, serious mental illness, poverty, neglect and criminality, so I’ve also had a front-row seat to some of the things that social workers encounter professionally.

Ironically, I think that ended up making me a much better social worker. I can walk into very different environments without being shocked, intimidated or overly judgemental, and I understand a lot of the dynamics without needing everything explained to me in textbook language.

Then education gave me another layer: I gained the academic/professional vocabulary to understand and contextualise things I’d already encountered in real life.

So I suppose my particular form of social capital is being able to move between worlds. I know the culture and realities of the communities I’ve come from, but I also know how to navigate professional/academic environments. I’m a talented social chameleon. That combination is actually pretty powerful in my line of work.

The only slightly surreal downside is occasionally realising that I know far too much about people who operate on the wrong side of the law 😂. But even that gives you a certain level of street awareness.

I tried a corporate job once and was good at it, but ultimately it wasn’t where I ended up.

I make about 250k but never don’t work.
i have a bsc and MSc.
i am self employed. On a visa where i dont pay tax on dividends which makes a huge difference.
didn t make much money until my late 30s, then suddenly I made more than I ever thought I would.

What do you do as your main source of income? Information Security Governance, Risk & Compliance - Senior leadership level

What salary or income does this bring you? £110k + up to 30% bonus, 30 days AL

What qualifications and experience do you have? No qualifications, dropped out of uni at the end of yr 1. Worked my way up from telesales advisor through various call centre management positions, then into IT service desk management which led to ISO27001, SOC2 and PCI compliance, that experience put me in position to lead ISO14001, 9001 & 22301 implementation, then GovRAMP, StateRAMP and FedRAMP, now working on ISO42001. I teach myself anything I need to know by reading the frameworks, listening to podcasts, attending conferences and general Googling.

Did you have material and/or cultural capital support growing up and as a young adult - No. Parents both working class, mum was mainly SAHM with some call centre work and dad worked in factories. Both were supportive and loving but neither they nor anyone else in the extended family had ever even been to uni, both parents grew up in council houses. They did manage to buy their own home and my childhood was comfortable but money was tight at times. My brothers went into apprenticeships and did really well in much more practical/physical jobs than me.