Could you point me in the right direction please?

[heretobeanonymous]

Inspired by a thread I've just seen about income and lifestyles. Seems that people are earning so much more than me and I might have to look at changing careers. Our current situation is - I earn £21,500pa while DH earns £32,000pa. We're still young (24) adults with a 2yo DC. Looking at said thread, a lot of people seem to take home double what we normally get! We are paying off some loans which will be up in the next 2 years, have 2 cars on finance and rent out a 2 bedroom house for £750. Normally get to save around £400 per month, if that! I am an accounts Assistant with an almost finished AAT course (I was looking into finishing this and starting ACCA/CIMA but now I'm not sure if it's worth it.) I've just realised that even if I was to work my way up in finance and work as a financial controller(for example) in our area, I wouldn't be getting more than £40Kpa. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Ideally I'd like to earn over £50/£60K at least and buy a house, be able to afford holidays, etc!

I guess my questions are -

If you are in accounts/finance and are earning over £50K - what courses did you do that I could look into and how did you work your way up?

If you earn around this amount doing something else, what do you do that I could possibly look into as a new career and how did you get started/work your way up?

I'm an accountant in practice, work part time but fte is £60k. Cambridge - as I'm sure location makes a difference.
I'm 47 and did a degree then ACA, so qualified at 24.

I stayed in practice, albeit with a couple of years as an expat. I've been with the same from since I came back to the UK 20 years ago.

I'm not in finance currently but projects. I'm CCAB qualified though, and work in the public sector. I'm 28 and on £46k. DH earns £35k plus about £5k bonus usually. He's 31. I think finance is a reasonably 'safe' industry in many ways, particularly accountancy type finance. We bought our first house when we were earning the same as you, no DC though. We put 10% down on a £210k property, then moved 18 months later into a bigger house in a cheaper area.

My friend went down the CIMA route and I believe earns £50k as a management accountant - in the North West

CIMA FD on 60k (pre corona), without being desperately career focused..

So my advice would be to carry on.

Hi all, thank you for the replies. I think I might stick with it as I really enjoy it. Any tips/advice on working my way up? I've only ever done accounts Assistant roles or roles focusing solely on just payables or receivables. Would love to finish my studies and carry on. I just don't know what role to apply for next going forward! How long did your CIMA/ACCA take you to finish?

@EnglishRain your household income seems just perfect! Thank you for the tip. I don't think we're quite ready to buy just yet as we would like to relocate at some point. We're currently in WM.