Does anyone have a job they actually enjoy. That offers enough to live on.

[Mydogatemypurse]

Just that really. Most of my peers are teachers, nhs and public sector workers. All stressed, all skint.. bar a couple.

Is there actually any nice jobs out there, that are easy to access and offer work/ life balance?

If you were to have a realistic career change what would you do?

OT (not nhs)

I'm self employed in two of my "dream" jobs.

I work as a gardener and seamstress. The pay isn't amazing, averaging £15 per hour, but I choose my hours, can pick and choose work, there's no shortage at all here (Peak District) for work.
I can earn more than enough to live on but it helps that I don't have a mortgage or debts of any kind.

I choose to work with holiday homers and residents who need a high standard of gardening care without getting involved in huge landscaping projects so I don't charge as much per hour as other gardeners here who would do more heavyweight work.

I have a niche in the seamstress work because I drive to collect/drop off clothes and work from home, so have no overheads there. My Instagram and Facebook pages are set up to attract local people, but I have gained over 100k followers despite the fact the Peak District has a population of about 40k! I customize, up-cycle, refit, fix everything and anything and can sew from scratch.

Both jobs are a dream come true, especially seeing as in my not too distant memory I was in a mental instute with paranoid psychosis... Can't believe my life sometimes.

How did you get into this? I would be interested

What a lovely story @Circumferences Well done you!!

Me. I'm a primary teacher in Ireland and I adore my job. I earn very good salary and the hours and holidays are an excellent bonus, of course.
Our expectations are entirely different than in the UK.

I'm a PA I moved into the travel sector recently (,from education) and absolutely love my job, the people are lovely, the sector is interesting and something I'm passionate about. My boss is hot on work/life balance (even if he doesn't do it himself), and I'm learning about stuff I would never have done before.

We work hard but then we get rewarded for it.

I’m an Executive Assistant in a small biotech (rare diseases) and love it. The company has a laser focus on patients, my whole team are medics or scientists all working to develop therapies for patients with certain rare diseases, and I know that my work each day has an impact on that effort. Many of my colleagues were once NHS doctors / healthcare professionals who have moved into “industry”. Big pharma has a bad name (I’d never go there) but your medical background could be great for a small pharma or biotech.

I am busy and sometimes feel stressed but that’s more from the knowledge that what we achieve directly impacts patients. Pay is very good too in biotech.

I work in HR, in leadership development for a large org, I work from home, occasionally in the office but I can pretty much pick and choose. My job is endless interesting and I work with really smart, talented people and I really enjoy it. I’m well paid and senior enough that I have plenty of flexibility around my kids, who are now early teens but one has SEN. It has its moments of pure stress but I wouldn’t do anything else.

As someone said upthread for HR, CIPD is pretty much required and I also have other relevant qualifications, but I enjoyed the study and my org funded, so if you are interested in HR, it’s worth it imo.

I work in business development in the travel industry. Entry level roles in travel are notoriously poorly paid but there is a lot of opportunity if you look for it. Salary is good, car allowance, bonus, great perks and decent work life balance. I can't imagine working in any other industry. I started my career in a different sector but wouldn't go back even for double the pay!

I’m a land agent/estate manager. I received free accommodation and all my bills paid and managed a large country estate. Lots of time spent out in the countryside managing the farm or looking after historic buildings and gardens. Can be accessed with a one year masters.

Otherwise I’ve been a Parish Clerk. Pretty easily accessible and 100% flexible apart from the monthly parish meeting which you know a year in advance. Most will fund you through training on the job!

Same here 😁

I love my job and it’s well paid but it takes quite a lot of experience to do it properly.
I am a Business Advisor- a proper one, I didn’t do an online course for a month and then set myself up as a Coach

I've always worked as a fundraiser for non profits/charities. There are loads of different roles in the charity sector and although entry level is poorly paid I've always seen hard working positive people rise up into better paid positions quickly. Recommend it as a sector to explore.

I’m a clinical psychologist and absolutely love it! But it takes a horrendously long time to train for. As someone said above I know a lot of Speech and Language therapists and Occupational Therapists who seem to love their job!

Speech and Language and Occupational Therapy are both great jobs in that you can work in a huge range of settings, changing settings mid career is possible, and unlike teachers if you work with kids you can do one-to-one and small groups. You can do conversion courses if you already have a degree but they are intense. I don’t know so much about other AHP roles but I know two happy radiographers. I think the AHP life can be a good balanced one with lots of opportunities!

I love my job as a lecturer teaching a healthcare profession. It's less well paid than my previous clinical role but far far less stressful. If I was on my own money would be v tight though. That's the reality.

I'm head of HR at a small firm. Decent salary, huge flexibility and I am supported to train and develop etc. great team around me. Stressful at times and quite a bit of pressure but good days tend to outweigh the bad. Also to give you hope in the HR world it's something I moved into after a career in a different direction, so it is possible to change and I did my qualification online in my own time. It did take a while but was affordable through monthly payments.

I earn 55k for 4 days pw in a big engineering firm looking at people development - I’m in a weird subset of HR operations/workforce development.

I have quite strong boundaries with work so I don’t take work home with me, wfh half the week (more if I want to) & apart from a dickhead boss who I don’t deal with, everyone else is lovely.

I’m a Company Secretary - currently in insurance, which I genuinely find really interesting: I was unsure when they headhunted me but actually the way that the industry works and some of the stuff we do is fascinating. So don’t write off “finance” or “corporate” just because you think you’d dislike it as its a broad area and it’s rarely what many people’s preconceptions of it are. I’ve previously been in a small local housing association, a large national housing association and developer, and the civil service - once you’ve practiced and developed the skill sets of governance they’re very transferable.

If you start off at a junior level in a large team at a large organisation, you rarely need specific skills beyond a good grounding in admin and business support. It’s only when you gain seniority (or move to a PLC) that they’ll expect you to be or be willing to qualify as a chartered Secretary.

Id love a job that stops when you go home. It sounds like youve got a great balance xx

How do you get into jobs like this. It sounds great. Good for you with setting boundaries, think i need to be a bit stricter with that.

Ooh id love to be an occupational therapist. I cant afford to retrain though. Im just interested in what other people do and how they got there.

Wow this is fabulous. Well done you. I cant imagine there are many jobs like this though??

I work with people, I work school hours, run my own diary, take most school holidays off (not all). Low stress most of the time. I love it. Interesting, technical, people based. Soft skills are important.

It is finance based and takes exams to do it.

There aren’t many well paid jobs that don’t require training.

Well done, never forget who made that happen. You built your life and you deserve every bit of it.