What careers let you earn lots of money without working full time?

[mousiemousie]

Just wondering which careers are best to advise young girls to go for if they want to earn good money without working full time whilst they have a young family...

...any suggestions?

Blueshoes, I am a journalist. I work four days a week and work bloody hard. And don't get paid masses. It is far from a doss.

I agree with Hat and NQC. Go for work you love, and you feel fulfilled by - you are much more likely in any case to progress in it and make a fair bit of money. If and when you are thinking of having children, look for an employer with a decent attitude to 'family friendly' hours. And that goes for your partner too.

Freelancing is not madly the easy option, by the way. You get no maternity pay, no paid leave, and you still obviously have to pay for childcare if you're trying to do a reasonable number of hours per week.

Hmmm, appreciate earlier post about becoming a celeb/footballers wife! Why make your own money when you can spend someone elses!

Sadly, I am not married to someone famous, although I wouldn't say we struggle.

I work part-time 26.25 hrs as a nurse manager and bring home a nice sum. Certainly don't struggle for money and NEVER work over my hours. Started nurse training in 1992 and started my present post in 2003. Not a long time in the great scheme of things!

Ah Mother inferior - so youre a journalist. Fancy a drink and I'll give you some chat?

Agree with MI about freelancing. I was freelance until quite recently (copywriter/PR) and it's bloody difficult to do part time unless you've got one or two really regular clients. You go on maternity leave and they forget about you when you get back. Or they're using you so much that they work out it would be cheaper and more reliable to take someone on as staff. Or your contact moves jobs and his/her replacement already has a favourite freelancer. Or they lose the account you were working on, etc etc. When I did it full time for a couple of years I was doing really well, but then 2 kids came along in 4 years and I never really got back the momentum.

...and one (or two) of the things I'm really enjoying about having a 'proper job' is that I can take days off without losing money, don't have to worry about putting money by for a tax bill that you can never accurately calculate, and knowing that unless I lose my job I will have a certain amount in the bank at the end of the month. Plus I am lucky to have found a job which offers flexible hours.

Teaching is great regarding the holidays. It wan be a PITA if your holidays don't match up with your kids (MIL is bailing me out next week as my kids have a week off more then me).

The upside is that you do have long holdays. The downside is that these holidays are set, and there is no flexibility, so you can forget seeing your kids nativity, you'll be too busy organising the one in your school

Forget going into supply teaching, these jobs are now being filled by cover supervisors instead.

The money isn't bad, but is no-where near the pay of others with the same qualifications. You'll need either a subject degree with a PGCE (or equaivalent) or a BEd (normally a 4 year course)

Teaching in secondary is a better bet if you want part time, it is harder to organise in Primary, although you might be able to arrage it if you could specialise in something like Science or a language......many primary schools are getting round theachers PPA time by emplying a specialist teacher that the children go to for some lessons.

I work an 80% timetable, effectivlt this means I work 4 days out of 5.....but I don't get a full day off, I get 3 afternoons (we teach 3/4 lessons before lunch)

You do have to work at home, I have reports to write this morning, some sixth form lessons to plan, and 84 bits of c/w to give a preliminary mark! . But I can do this with one ear on my kids (6 and 9) and if they are good, and let muumy work this morning we will all go for a swim this afternoon.

I love it, but it isn't the doss people think it is, and is not for the faint hearted.

I work 2 days a week for £250 - just as an EA in Docklands.

Have been doing it for most of my life but all of the jobs around there pay that much and they aren't hard to get.

I am a music teacher (instruments and preschool groups)

I think the money I earn is bloomin good with 12-13 weeks holiday, completely flexible hours, tax write offs for house stuff I would have to pay for anyway and minimal travel time.

Not do-able without dh though.

My friend is a lawyer (corporate) and earns good money for part time hours. factor in a decent commute and lawyer type clothes though and I reckon I come out better off.

Ok, I don't normally talk about what I do. I work in MLM (not everyone's cup of tea but ANYONE can do it) and although you need to put effort in to build an income (you don't get paid to start with) it is possible to have very high income working on a part time basis. I work very few hours a week, totally around my family commitments and am well on the way to earning way more than I ever could in teaching. (Am an ex-teacher). Much of my income is residual too.

Just an Executive Assistant as oppossed to a PA - means I get paid more than they do!!

Call my self secretary normally!!

what is MLM ghosty?

ghosty, what is MLM?

Must be multi-level marketing...where you sell things to your friends/contacts and hopefully get them to also start selling things too which is how you get multi level.

What do you sell ghosty?

MLM is Multi Level Marketing. Known as Network Marketing. It is a big business and can be very lucrative. People either love it or hate it. The key is to work with the right company .... some companies and network marketers out there have given the industry a bad name. But I am lucky enough to work with one of the best ... would never go back to traditional work/business again.

which IT courses are good OofyProsser?
i mean which company doing good courses and help you find a job?

I might get done for advertising now ... which I don't want to do. Mumsnet is not usually my place to talk to people about this. But I sell a top brand (IMO the best) of nutritional supplements and skin care.... not very well known in the UK but it is there. I don't go around 'recruiting' people ... I approach people if I know they are looking to own their own business, I sell to my family and friends, yes, but the products speak for themselves so very little 'selling' is done tbh. Jimjams knows all about it too

thanks, ghosty. I appreciate you don't want to publicise but that is very enlightening.

very interesting reading.

I think you have to factor in the financial stability of your career. When you have a familiy, and/or regular financial commitments, it is difficult to balance everything if your monthly income varies by hundreds of pounds. Really stressful too, IME. Even if you freelance part time, if you are worrying about work and money full time, what's the point?

I found this when I ran market stalls selling retro clothes. At the time I was the family's main breadwinner (also worked mon -fri in other job but market stall money was a necessary top-up).

Some weeks I could make lots if a Japanese buyer bought 20 dresses for silly money and the sun shone all day bringing out lots of punters. Other times I could be faced with an unforcast thunderstorm and see all the customers deserting the market in droves, get my precious stock wet in the rain, and be lucky to make any money at all.

Now if I had relatively low outgoings, for instance as a single woman living in a flatshare, I could more easily survive the bad weeks. Once mortgaged and with children, with bill paying dependant on what I bought home, a bad week could have really bad repercussions.

Now, had my market stall income merely supplemented my partner's income, merely providing us with luxuries, it would have been a nice way of making money. But IME freelance work is not so workable if you need to depend on it.

Like wordsmith, I have also freelanced as a copywriter and found this is a very up and down way of earning money, too.

So in answer to the OP, if young girls choose a career that offers part time/freelance options, this may be at the cost of their financial security and independence. Sure they can freelance but will be more dependent on their partner earning regular money.

I can't say chosing a 'career'/way to earn a living/job based on some hypothetical future events - which may or may not occur - is a wise decision.

Do what you have passion for.

I've got a few friends who work part-time & make good money. They are GPs, Dentists, lawyers & one who sells jewellry.
I work part-time in PR & make reasonablish money - certainly by national standards, but not by London standards.

Ooh Tigermoth that sounds so familiar (apart from the market stall bit). It is difficult to do anything when your income varies by hundreds of pounds each month. It's even more difficult if your partner's in the same boat! I have just received my first full month's payslip and am amazed by how much has been taken in tax/NI but then I thought - that's it, it's done, I don't have to worry about a tax bill for this.

As I get older I realise there's a lot to be said for financial stability. I am not looking forward to my pensionable years, while all my friends who are teachers/work for big corporations/public sector orgs in safe and dependable jobs with index-linked pensions will be able to retire at 55!

consulting

I'm not sure if it qualifies as "lots of money", but by the Spring my firm hopes to be in the position where we need at least one resourcer.
The job is work through a list of people, ring them, and try to get some basic info out of them, or at least the latest version of their CV. Initially it will be people we know, but will grow to include others.
We need people with clear "educated" voices, but due to the fact that 50% of our people aren't British, we don't care what accent you have.
They are based all over the world, and some have terribly bad English and/or horrible mobile connections.
So patience and the ability to simulate a happy personality are critical.

There is no selling.
The hours are very good for people with childcare commitments, since we don't care when you ring them, and many calls are best made after they have gone to bed.
This is not a job advert (yet).

I'm interested in how we should set up the pay so that you have an incentive to do the job well, but aren't feeling exploited.

My preference of course is for 100% pure payment by success. I can see how that lacks an attraction for many people, so I'm open to suggestions.

We would of course pay phone bills.

I also work in Market Research and have negotiated PT work ( first 3 days a week, now 4 days).

I would say that quant freelancing from home is much more difficult than qualitative freelancing.
Generally it is only possible if you have clients who want to keep you so much they are willing to use you direct. This can be tricky assuming you signed the usual contract with your employer which protects against client poaching. You can start from scratch contacting new clients but it is often a hard slog to get going and there is much less demand for quant researchers than qual ones.

It is sometimes possible to negotiate PT working or working from home etc for your employer but only really if you are fairly senior so that many of the mundane daily tasks can be dumped on juniors. For instance calls at 4.30 pm asking for stuff for the next day are common (something that can't be done from home for example)- if you have a child to pick up at 6pm and need to leave at 5.30pm you have a dilema.

I usually solve this by asking my junior exec to do the staying late. I could never have worked PT in my 20's as I was the one doing the menial tasks.

On the whole I don't find Market Research work easy to find or do on a PT basis. It is very service orientated and deadline driven so can be difficult. When I was working 3 days a week I was not around enough to be involved in the more interesting stuff and it only really worked because we were not very busy at the time and I partly job shared with another member of staff.

Now the other staff member is on maternity leave and we're really busy so though I now work 4 days a week I find myself working weekends and evenings just to keep up with the deadlines.