Young adult inheriting money - what to do with it?

[UnexpectedlyRetired]

Hi everyone,

A bit of background here. DC is late 20s with a degree, but has been out of work for a couple of years and there seems to be nothing on the horizon. Every now and then she gets an interview (first these were in her chosen field, IT, but now it's more likely to be shop work etc.). She never gets the job. She has too much in savings to claim UC, so basically has zero income.

She is due to get an inheritance of a few 10s of thousand. What would you advise? Is there a way to improve her situation? She is really not entrepreneurial, and neither am I, so I can't help her there.

I've been thinking

• deposit on a buy to let - but it seems the time has passed to do this and everyone is now pulling out. I'm not sure if she would get a mortgage for this with no income, and near us you'd be looking at £200k+ to buy somewhere. She'd have the deposit though, if income wasn't required.
• investing the money in retraining - in what? It would need to be something with a high likelihood of a job afterwards in order to be worthwhile. Are there any fields with shortages now?
• invest the money in ISAs etc - simplest but probably the lowest return, and doesn't solve the overall problem of moving on with her life

Any ideas?

As far as I know, she should get NICs as part of a UC claim. It's definitely worth checking out.

I do the same with Child Benefit - don't actually get any payments but I get the NICs.

Spend some of it on a competent professional careers advisor. Be honest with that person about possible ND and how to overcome stumbling blocks.

If she still wants to work in IT she needs to
keep her skills current. She needs to demonstrate that she’s keeping up to date. There are courses in Udemy that can help here. There are vacancies being advertised for graduate roles right now but she’s slightly on the back foot if she’s not kept her skillset up to date.

IT is full of ND people so, really, that shouldn’t hold her back and some firms have specific programmes that hire people with an autism diagnosis.

I work in information/cyber security and it’s a vast area that she’s ideally placed to pivot to. Digital forensics is very technical (if that’s where she leans) but compliance and governance less so.

The people in IT security make software engineers look positively neurotypical and I love it. In a quiet moment we all sit around talking about how this spoon is wrong 😂. Every so often someone will say “no, I don’t think I’m autistic” and we laugh.

Late twenties?

Do you ever see her living independently? Has she ever had a partner? Friends?

I hope she will live independently, but I'm starting to wonder. Never had a partner, and doesn't want one. No friends. She had friends at school and uni, but doesn't do the things you need to do to keep them, like messaging and organising meetups, and it doesn't seem to bother her.

If budget is an issue, the government's National Careers Service offers a free advice from a careers advisor https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/. There's lots of other useful stuff on the site - job profiles, diagnostics.

My nephew spent three years completing an electrical installation qualification at college. It all came to nothing as he couldn't get a tradesman to take him on to complete the necessary "on the job" training required. I suspect there's no money in it for qualified electricians to take on a trainee who in the future will be competing with them for work.

Oh how awful for him!

I think that's only England, we're in Scotland.

What was her degree?

If programming she can keep her skills up to date by mini projects or by online learning, there is so much on YouTube and a subscription for a month would be worth it.

Do you have any connections who might offer an internship? Does she have a work ethic? I would get her a career coach and someone to give her interview practice.

Forget BTL, unless you manage it, it's not for an inexperienced person and returns are no longer worth the hassle (unless you do multi occupancy but that's a major project)

If she isn’t working she needs to do some voluntary work to help her cv, if she doesn’t get a job soon her skills will be out of date and it’ll cost her to bring them up to date.

@Unijourney her degree was biology, after which she got an IT job with a company that trains you and subcontracts you. That was a 2-year contract and she hasn't had anything since. I don't know anyone in a position to take her on, unfortunately.

She did sign up for IT volunteering but didn't get that either! She has been doing other volunteering.

I know someone like your daughter. This girl was ND. She set up her own business doing what she was passionate about. Firstly in a very small scale and she increased to 30 hours a week. She works her own hours. She did get a mentor to help her.

@UnexpectedlyRetired Retrain for something where there IS work. She will have to pay for it, but she can. DD did similar. She’s doing interior design now but had a fashion/art background. I’d get careers advice and have a serious talk about another career. You cannot set up a business if you don’t have skills people want.

Does anyone have tips for finding a good career counsellor? I've just been looking and it's hard to know who would be good, though some seem aimed at mid-career professionals with much more experience than DD has. Others seem focussed on improving confidence. I think DD needs to start from scratch, and reconsider everything.

I suspect she's been graduated too long for her uni careers service.

I think applying to the same thing over and over again and not getting anywhere is pointless and depressing for her. If I was her and had a biology degree, I'd explore where there are jobs in healthcare- like a PP mentioned sonographer or radiographer and I'd spend the money doing an MSC or whatever is required and get into that field. It might be something not patient facing. A course that gives placements and has a clear career path. If she has that degree she is more than halfway there.

Has she/can she look for lab work? NHS or other public sector labs (again, look on Civil Service jobs), both might also recruit via agencies - I work for an organisation that recruits via CS jobs and employs a lot of lab staff but does also use agency staff, eg for maternity cover. Recruitment is tough because pay is relatively low compared with phama and other employers that attract science graduates so often there's only a handful of vaguely suitable applicants, with many others not passing the sift because they're just spamming to get a foot in the door, so they can play the CS job hopping game. So at entry level she might have a chance due to the biology degree even if she doesn't have recent relevant experience.

A couple of years out of work with an IT degree? She won’t get a mortgage on a BTL, and there’s little money and a lot of stress in them these days. I’d suggest she retrains in a trade.

Not an IT degree, a biology degree, followed by an IT job for a couple of years. My IT friend who ended up working in a hotel says there are a lot of other IT people there, who can't get IT jobs. An ex-colleague says the same - he is late 20s, and about half of the people he graduated with (in IT) are either out of work or doing something casual or unrelated.

I'll suggest she looks at lab work, though I don't think she did much of it in her degree.

@UnexpectedlyRetiredIT is a dead end for many. What could she do with the biology degree? What career advice has she accessed. No - she won’t get a mortgage. Buy to let is risky with a mortgage too!

Late 20s is not a young adult OP… she needs to get a job. I’m 30 and there’s never been a time when I couldn’t get ANY job at all.

Even now I’ve gone back to university and didn’t plan to work but things have changed and I now have a 4 week temp contract lined up for summer and a zero-hours flexible job. I got them both sorted within 2 weeks of deciding I needed work. It was really easy.

Something is seriously wrong with her approach if she can’t get any job at all.

And of course an income is required to get a mortgage. That’s how mortgages work - she either has an income to pay or she puts it against another asset.

BTL is not a good idea as it will tie up her money and she won’t be able to access it when she might need it.
Just pop the money is a bond or cash ISA (safe havens are good at these uncertain times)
Sit down with her and go through all the suggestions of finding work on this thread. That needs fixing first. It’s all very well her being a private person, but you need to help her refocus her efforts as what she has done so far hasn’t worked.
Then when she finds stable employment, she has a deposit for her first home.

How on earth could OP use the money to set her up for a life in benefits? She can’t get a mortgage until she has a job, can’t buy a property outright. She can’t go on benefits because of the savings.

@GoldenCupsatHarvestTime I’m 30 and there’s never been a time when I couldn’t get ANY job at all.

Well, lucky you. You are not my DD and evidently don't have the same challenges.

@Tuckshirtin she is not an only child, she has a sibling who is very different, and is doing ok.

I made a shortlist of suggestions from this thread and she has been going through them, so thank you to everyone who has contributed.