Trainee Bookkeeper vs Trainee Pensions Administrator

[WinterLove22]

I'm 28 and doing a career change .
I've been offered 2 jobs.
One is as a Trainee Bookkeeper and one is as a Trainee Pensions Administrator.
I don't know which one to take. Both starting salaries are the same.

I have no kids but plan on TTC in 2 years time. Which career path will offer me more flexibility, money, prospects etc?

All opinions welcome.

The Pensions admin job will lead to higher pay and better career prospects. But there are no part time jobs in this field and, in my experience, they aren’t family friendly and are very rigid employers.

The bookkeeping on the other hand won’t pay so much, but there are far far more part time/ flexible employment opportunities.

This is just my opinion/experience though. Others might have different thoughts!

Bookkeeper... you could work your way up to qualified accountant

I'm a book keeper. Its really flexible and you can wfh as most software these days is cloud based.

Being qualified/experienced in book-keeping will almost certainty give you more "local" job options in years to come, and would be good if you wanted to become self employed as a book-keeper, as there'll always be small/local businesses wanting book-keepers.

Pension admin roles will lead to jobs in pension firms, so less likely to be local, you're less likely to be able to start your own self employed business etc., but probably better long term prospects if you intend to remain employed throughout having children and beyond.

A lot depends on where you live, proximity to cities with larger pension firms, etc.

Pensions admin can be pretty dull, but there are reasonable jobs in maintaining the systems and becoming a manager for clients in future.
Bookkeeping can lead to a career in accounting which is a broad field.
Personally I'd opt for bookkeeping.

I’ve worked as a pensions administrator and there is not much room for progression past a certain point. It’s a really dull job and I don’t recommend it.

Thank you so much for everyone's responses. Really helpful. I didn't really think about how limited I would be with a Pensions career if I was to relocate or move somewhere more remote. And it's clearly not as flexible and with less opportunities.

Sounds like bookkeeping is the way forward. How much experience would I need before I could realistically go self employed?

The only thing putting me off is that I'm starting on 20K (Which is basically half of what I'm currently on in a field I hate). But I'm trying to think long term and hopefully it will be more flexible and enjoyable and I could one day work for myself, especially when I hopefully have a baby.

I spent a decade working as pensions admin for one of the big Salisbury firms. Won't mention specifics but it's name could be a Top Gear presenters name. It was ok, didn't pay brilliantly, no progression to speak of once you'd gotten past Senior Admin position but depending on who your team leader was there was flexibility there. There was no issues in me dropping down to three days a week once I'd had my firstborn and others on my team worked flexibly around school hours.

Plus points also for the fact that they actively encouraged you to take your A/L and lunch breaks.

A few of my colleagues did their IFA qualifications whilst there, partly sponsored by the company and have gone on to greatness.

@WinterLove22

How much experience would I need before I could realistically go self employed?

That depends on the type of work experience you gain and what qualifications you achieve. Small businesses want a book-keeper who is multi-talented, i.e. not just book-keeping, but also the VAT returns, payroll, CIS tax for builders etc, import/export taxes for e-commerce/online traders, maybe management accounting etc., so quite a wide skill set needed really. If your "job" is to be basic book-keeping for a single firm as an employee, then, realistically, your experience is going to be quite limited, even moreso if the job entails only customer invoices/credit control or only purchase ledger/supplier payments, that's not really enough to go self employed. You'd also need experience on the different types of software, especially since it's all going to be digital submissions to HMRC soon - one business may do their books on Sage, another on Quickbooks, another on Xero, etc., so ideally you'd need to build up enough experience on more than one type of software or go on courses for different products. The usual route is to do a book-keeping course (or AAT) at a local college alongside the job to gain a qualification, and then start with small/simple business clients that you can cope with and build up with more complicated clients as time passes with you learning more along the way. Realistically, I'd say 2-3 years of experience and some kind of qualification/course would give you enough to set up small scale, but you'd be limited by your experience - a building firm isn't going to pay a self employed book-keeper who knows nothing about VAT or CIS/subbie tax.

@Notglam @throwawayafteruse

Since you have both left pensions admin jobs, can I ask what you do now? And was it easy to transition out of Pensions or were you basically starting from scratch at a different career/job?

[quote WinterLove22]**@Notglam* @throwawayafteruse*

Since you have both left pensions admin jobs, can I ask what you do now? And was it easy to transition out of Pensions or were you basically starting from scratch at a different career/job?[/quote]
It was easy for me as I worked in a back office capacity with skills easily transferable to other office jobs (finance based). How easy it would be for a portfolio administrator I couldn't say, but I would t have thought it would be hard as it's all good customer service/admin skills. I don't want to say where I am now as it's quite niche and potentially outing given the context of my last post. I can say that working there gave me a solid foundation for progression in the career I am in now though.