I want to earn more money-tell me how?!

[badlifechoices]

Having just read a thread of £150k salaries and seeing the lifestyles of I would say...all of my friends. How normal is a £100k plus salary?! I have a maths degree, no clue what to do after graduation, so decided I would move to London, train to be a teacher for a year, teach for a year then get a well paid city job. Turns out I loved my job, loved my school, within 2 years was promoted and earning £40k (15 years ago) and thought I had made it, worked up to Deputy Headtecher and earning £70k by 30! Had children, couldn't keep doing 12 hour days and stopped work. Survived on husband's modest salary and massively cut back on everything, but happy to be home with children. Children got into an amazing out of catchment school in a London commuter belt and I had my eyes opened to another world, of bankers and who knows whatters, as no one seems to work much, odd remote meetings, parents always at pick up and I can't help but feel where did we go so wrong?! Play dates are embarrassing as all my friends live in multi million pound houses!! My husband is on £8k more than he was 15 years ago, just over £50k, which is another issue as sees nothing wrong with this and has zero aspirations. And now knowing these people who earn so much, I just think, whatever you do, I can do it! As modest/arrogant as that sounds, I just feel like I made some seriously bad life choices and should have gone into the city (London) and got a high powered/paid job I could have equally done well in and enjoyed but earned a fortune more! So basically my question...I'm now 40, I am more than happy to go back and retrain from scratch with the youngsters but I want to say to someone, what is the exact job title I should be going for and with which company in London if I want to be earning £100k plus. I feel I can't ask friends without sounding like all I care about is money. But if I'm working full time, why not work and earn well!

Be careful what you wish for. For big salaries, employers will want their pound of flesh. What are you prepared to compromise for more money or bigger debts (bigger house) .... time with your family, evenings, weekends, not being physically or emotionally available etc etc?
Take stock of what you have and what are your family needs.Sure, if you are driven by money and lifestyle ... and all your family are prepared to compromise for your desire... go for it. Otherwise, consider what is a reasonable compromise to do better... and go for that. Sometimes ... people will choose quality of life over large salaries, lifestyle and material possessions ... and for them that brings more contentment.

Finally.. dont get sucked into comparing peoples outward material wealth. Its impossible to know how it was funded by others... by family money or huge loans being paid? You will never get contentment by comparing your situation with others. Make your own life, on your own decisions... that will bring contentment to you and your family.

I do have friends who earn over £100k (over £300k in some cases) but they all have partners who look after the house/kids and their stress and work levels are through the roof. The only one I know at that level who looks to have a stress free life is a tax lawyer with an investment bank but it would take years./decades to get to his level.

I worked in investment banking for years and the salary wasn't worth the stress level and the general feeling that all I was doing was generating mega bucks for someone else. I did not feel like a useful and productive member of society.

And the tax you pay...!!!

I agree. It is never black and white and whilst I might be able to be at the school gates at kick out time most people are not aware that I might have been on a call at 6.00am or quite recently 9/10pm at night. Famously also sitting up in bed on a Sunday morning about 3.00am emailing a colleague in Australia..

Justgoback to maths teaching. You'd probably get HoD straightaway with your dh experience. Many schools pay large retention and recruitment bonus for maths, some give tlrs with no real responsibility, your country needs you! Maybe have to go down to m6 but can get up ups again quickly if you want. I'd go state though not private, you just don't get the same protection or salary in private schools.

If you get into a good quire close by out of catchment your kids might be eligible too. In my grammar that's the case,have to pass but that's it.

I agree with everyone saying go back into teaching. It’s not great at the moment but having been out of work for a while it’ll be the easiest option to get back into, and you’ll be able to start relatively high up.

In your position I’d look for and apply to head of maths roles and do that for a year or two and then start looking at senior leadership again.

If you hate it then it’ll be a lot easier to move sector if you’ve got some relevant recent experience.

Okay, with a math degree do you want to do a programming & computer science masters.

Most of these starting salaries of data scientist is very high. My company pay quants coming out masters 150k base + bonus.

With programming you can also work quite flexible hours and the entire tech and fintech industry is opened to you

I’m a quant. The preference is currently for data scientists with numerate degrees with data analyst or computing experience. The days of hiring inexperienced maths grads is over I’m afraid unless they qualified recently and want a grad scheme.

I said does OP want to do a computer science masters. If you actually read what I am saying.

One word (maybe 2)
…. CyberSecurity! Get qualifications in cybersecurity, learn to code, hack….. and really really understand it…..

The recruitment for a role that earns £150k+ wouldn’t settle for a conversion masters in computing - you’d need a first degree or significant experience (I know, I have one).

Not in any industry.

I think this misconception needs to be cleared up because data science is a popular workstream with a lot of people with conversion masters and yet we still need to recruit in India because conversion masters don’t even touch the sides of what you need to do in the job.

Best thing anyone can do for their career if they want to be a data scientist is: Google Professional Analytics Cert (it teaches sql practically), followed by 6 mths high quality data analyst experience during which you take the IBM data science professional / deep mind quals or work on some machine learning projects. Then apply for Junior Data Scientist. Should be able to earn £70k+ doing this.

But bearing in mind that the top paying jobs in data science are architecture jobs - so if £150k salaries are needed, she will need to go back to basics by either taking an undergrad comp sci course, or by taking a cloud and back-end pathway and working your way through data engineer jobs.

@Stripycatz I've just sent you a pm asking more about this. Thanks a bunch :)

I am confused didn't she say she's got a maths degree? Albeit I did not ask from which university and what results she's got.

But you are wrong. The desk quant analyst we've hired out of masters doesn't have trading experience but Maths from Cambridge and did a masters in computational finance Imperial. We hired her straight onto the desk with the said salary. I know, as she sits next to me and it's my junior.

Oh and her masters degree is very much related to what I am trading. Forgot to mention this part.

Founds like you need to shop around and work for an American company the competition is MAD

Wow, thank you so much, I really appreciate all the positive responses.

Yes you're right, I'm terrible for comparing, always have been, just seems to be a really common thing now to earn so much.

I have close friends I could ask, but always feels wrong to ask about salary and would probably wind me up to hear what they earn (there goes the comparison and questioning why I didn't go down their career route again!!)

Teaching is an absolute no. I want to see my family. Teaching at a senior leader level, is leaving the house before they wake up, getting home as they're going to bed. It's 10-12 hour days out of the house, then still taking emails at 6am to midnight, later. Working weekends and holidays, just no.

I think I'm just venting as resent seeing other roles now being remote, people can be more flexible which you can't in any school.

I did work myself to the bone in my 20s. I still have a huge appetite for work, I never stop and sleep little, maybe 6 hours tops. I'll happily get up at 6am and work nights if it means having an hour to do school run in morning and a couple of hours to see children, do dinner, club runs each evening then get back to work. So a private sector job with a few days remote, that pays really well, as quite frankly if there's jobs and salaries out there, why can't I have one of them?!

Post grad qualification in computer science or data analyst. Even Nhs England pays around £80k+ for those roles (have a look at today’s job ads on LinkedIn, I was scanning them earlier) : private sector even more

Started on 18k in 1998 and now on £150kish 25 yrs later in same company (pharma). Good luck if you can achieve it in a shorter time. I wish I’d been able to take some shortcuts but comes down to priorities. Work has to become the priority at times. As someone said further up the thread, companies want their pound of flesh.

With a maths degree, start training towards ACA at a firm and work up.

I would also have suggested accountancy but I assume that even post covid, there is an expectation that you are in the office (or at the client site) during training. Given that it would be three years training, it would be at least that before you saw a salary comparable to what you were on as a teacher or any flexibility to wfh.

What about private sector teaching? I know it’s still long days at school but you get the longer holidays so some give then?

Oh and there are 9 teachers on 100k + at my DC private school, 2 on higher than 150k (it has to be disclosed on the charities commission website so I’m sure of my facts. )

OP, I been thinking a bit more and wonder how much of this is you thinking that the grass is greener when it’s not.

DH and I both earn six figures in finance and I’ll be the first to admit that covid has changed our lives so much for the better. Pre covid we both worked up full time in the office, had a full time nanny (which pretty much wiped out all my salary) and usually one of us wouldn’t get home till the children were asleep (we’d take it in turns to stay late).

Post covid, obviously we both work from home more than we did but there is still an expectation to be physically present at work. I’m in the office three days a week and although DH only goes into London approx once a week, he also travels a lot so maybe away for a week a month. We still have a nanny for a minimum of 15 hrs a week and when DH is away she usually ends up working more.

You say, you’d be happy to work from home in the evening but it’s not great when you’re at home and having to ignore the kids and they clearly want you. Last night I was working till about 9pm and my six year old was playing Lego under my desk. Felt pretty shit tbh as although he was good as gold, he obviously wanted me to play with him and I needed to get stuff done.

And I know that teachers work during holidays but I assume you’d still see your kids more during school hols as a teacher than I do, and if you’re happy to work evenings then you’d be able to do most work then. Mine are getting to the point where they hate holiday camps but not old enough to be left alone. We can manage a few days of wfh so they can chill at home each holiday but that’s about it as we have nowhere near enough leave to cover.

Don't resent other roles being remote. Remote means more work if anything. I love my days in the office (with. 2 hour commute) because I do lots of social meetings. At home where I am 90% of the time it's slogging in front of documents having cold impersonal meetings with strict time limits and I work longer (before the DC get up, all day and then after they go to bed) to clear the work. If you don't like long days of a teacher then most jobs at a high salary level won't be much different

I'm going to go against all the other advice here and say it's do-able. You can have a £100k (or thereabouts) job without killing yourself.

Look at IT/Data as a path. With maths as your degree you can get into data analytics with the help of short courses and certifications. It's a highly valued profession and will take you a few years to get there but you can. It's a transferable skill which can be put to use with the Insights department of most companies. Many IT products rely on data mining too. I know some people who earn very high amounts after around 10 years in this line. So 100k should be achievable sooner than that. Be ready to give it your 100%, learn,change jobs and get to the amount you want. Then you can be there and achieve a nice work life balance.