If all your teen wants to do in life is "earn bare dollar"

[Candide]

Read that phrase on another thread on here but it struck a chord.

Any discussion about what DS wants to do mainly ends with him saying he wants to do something that earns a lot of money and me wondering where all those attempts to instill values/ care for your community yada yada went wrong

Plus why can't he speak English properly too? (Old fogey alert ....)

Tell him to study economics. That's all the students talk about 🙄

Honestly? Get him to research the ten highest paying grad professions and try to get work experience in some of them. I was a City lawyer. I went into it for the same reason. Lots of people do, whether they admit it or not.

I have to say I concur with the advice to study Economics. I used to live in a University City and had loads of student friends. The ones who did Economics are the ones earning Bare Dollar In London. All of them are doing well.

Forgot to add - on discussion his main career strategies appear to be - be a banker, be a professional footballer or be a plumber.

Sometimes I say to him - being happy is the most important thing but he thinks he will only be happy if he has a penthouse flat and a gold AMEX card.

Maybe I should call Jeremy Corbyn

People are motivated by different things, be it money, recognition, helping others.

Maybe your son is motivated by money?

Or actually maybe I should call George Osbourne. Although weirdly DS thinks JC is nice and GO is a tosser.

He is mainly motivated by spending money not the actual earning bit

I grew up wanting a job that earned lots of money I expected to be single for my whole life.

I realized that this wasn't going to make me happy an I now live my perfect life off grid in the woods with my family, away from society. I wouldn't change it for all the money in the world........attitudes change

I do agree Kursk. I wanted to be a dentist for a brief period for the same reasons.

I suppose the serious point to my post is that as he has GCSE's coming up, even though I can't buy in to his values, could I use them to get him to maybe do a bit more revision. I have got a friend who works in the City - should I get him to give him a motivational speech or will he just think he is an old gimmer?

Yeh tell him to do a levels
Economics or maths
Business
History
English

Study a classical subject at uni eg politics and economics, business subject at rebrick

Get a few vac schemes and voila earning £65k min by 30.

You're welcome

tbf - it's much easier to be happy if you have more choices. You get a lot more choices, if you are wealthy...... do I need to work FT, can I take 3 lovely relaxing holidays a year, can we each have a reliable, comfortable car rather than relying on public transport, can we have the security of owning our own home, can I afford to cut my hours / choose to be a SAHP, even fly business rather than cattle class - or should I say fly at all. It's nice not to have to choose between heating or school shoes for the dc. It's nice not to have to use foodbanks. .... and so on and so forth.
If they are capable, I'd encourage all my dc to go for the well paid careers - they can still be altruistic in their private lives - volunteering, caring, donating, etc.

agreed. better to have ambition to get a well paid job and therefore work hard at exams etc. At least then you have a choice.

Highest paid grad jobs last year came off geology course apparently (oil industry) plus there is somewhere that does golf studies and has 100% grad employment on the golf circuit. F1 is also highly paid, not just for the drivers, and apparently they hire off mech engineering courses. Not that I have researched this of course :)

Imo and ime the happiest people or the ones with the most pleasant lives now are the ones who made or inherited a lot of money early on in life. Depressing but it's pretty miserable being poor.

I agree with the above, he's pretty smart and probably could work hard and do well. But actually what he's most keen on is skipping the hard work/ pass exams stage and becoming an instant dollar magnet (even though we live in UK) by doing something "easy".

Sigh!!

The economics students I knew were by no means the brightest and didn't seem to work particularly hard but nevertheless went on to good graduate schemes and placements. They weren't well connected either so it wasn't that. Choose your course carefully and suck up to the right people.

Plumber isn't a bad option... I would pay good money for one that a) answered the phone, b) turned up and c) didn't charge an arm and a leg
Although my private dentist drives a Ferrari...

I'd personally be DELIGHTED if my DC wanted to be plumbers/carpenters/electricians - there's always work, in a range of places, with a clear career path.

Ollivander - my DS could probably do all of those things but not actually be able to mend your toilet. He is one of the least practical people I know.

He is however an optimist so hopefully that will stand him in good stead in life.

He's only trying to wind you up, you know.

I have one exactly like it. Used to be ever so interested in current events and a fair deal for the third world, but when he realised I approved he stopped almost overnight. He's even tried to make me believe he's in favour of Brexit, but hasn't quite managed to make that one sound convincing. Told me the other day that he wants a tattoo when he gets older and looked rather disappointed when I made "well, I'm sure that will be very nice, dear" noises.