What to do for a career at 40 or even a decent paid job

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40, youngest starts school next year I want to get myself in a half decent position, I’ve looked and nothing is jumping out at me, I’ve noticed since I’ve aged I’ve lost a lot of passion for things. In an ideal world I’d love to re train as something and get a decent paid job and show my kids you work hard you can get a well paid job and a good career. The only thing that stood out at me was a solicitor but I’m not up for getting a uni debt at my time of life, I’ll spend the remainder years of my new career paying that debt off, no point.

between working around kids and school and everything that comes with that, the challenge of getting a job that is protected against AI taking it over and earning a decent wage it’s so hard.

i have gcse and I done an apprenticeship after school then a level 2 book keeping course years later that’s the highest my qualifications go, do I need to do A levels to stand a chance at getting any sort of job? So many ask for high GCSE or A levels my gcses weren’t amazing C/D I’d happily re do them or A level if I knew it would help.

my only passion is crafts and creating things, but, not being negative being realistic, there’s so many people out there doing it and I don’t think even if I broke through a little bit I’d earn enough money.

what do you all do for work that earn you a half decent wage and you still get to work around your kids schedules? I’m utterly lost.

I think it depends on how much you need extra money. You could update your book keeping skills. When ds went to school I started exam invigilating at a local school. Very seasonal and not great pay but it gave me skills and from that 10 or so years on I now work full time after starting a very part time admin job at a charity. I slowly built my skills including IT skills as I went along.

I trained to be a nurse at 40. It was the very best thing I ever did.

If you want a job like solicitor that pays well but doesn’t require lots of expensive retraining I recommend soemthing like data protection. You can get the basic UK GDPR certificate done that’ll give you all the background you need for about £2000 (or find an entry level role where an employer would pay it for you). The hardest part will be finding that first job (be that entry level or if you try to go a little higher if you get the qualification done) as most will want to see some experience, but once you’ve past that hurdle there are loads of opportunities, most medium to large organisations need data protection support.

I have only been doing it about 5 years and earn nearly £90,000 in the public sector. You can make £700 a day easily contracting. I find it genuinely interesting depending on the sector you work in. And I have huge flexibility, own my own diary. Wasn’t even line managing for much of it until recently.

If data protection isn’t of interest I’d look at similar type things like risk, compliance, audit, even information security if you’re willing to learn a bit more about the technical side.

Oh and data protection is pretty integral to AI governance (many data protection functions are taking on AI governance) so it’s pretty AI proof in the sense we are part of the human oversight that’s required. AI has made my job bigger, not smaller!

Oh and I WFH, so very flexible with the kids. Honestly wish I could shout from the roof tops to mums about my job, it’s a unicorn for the best balance of everything. Join us!

@lg77ijodp I’m sorry to jump on this thread, but I’m in a similar position to OP where I need a career to fit around child (used to do event management but too much travel and low paid). Can you recommend a course? It sounds like a great career!

It depends what you deem to be a decent wage.
Minimum wage is around £24/£25k nowadays.
I earn £36k in accounting… could earn more if I train further. AI can be useful in my role but can’t replace the actual role.

As an adult there are free courses available depending on your income. I did AAT level 2 for free at the local college.

@ThatNavyCat have a Google of UK GDPR practitioner certificate, there are a number of providers that do it (mostly remote although I do recommend doing in person) BCS, BSi, QA, ActNow to name a few.

I really recommend seeing if you can get a role to do alongside it though, like driving it’s the practical that teaches you more than the theory! You could go really low level at the start (if the low pay isn’t an issue) but if you’re flexible with where you work and happy to flit around building experience you can work your way up to higher paying roles quite quickly in my experience (or get into contracting).

I love that your job oversees AI so is always going to be necessary.

That’s the hope! I do use AI a lot so my job is changing, gen AI is very good as picking out parts of the legislation, finding case law etc (very carefully checked due to hallucinations etc) but I can only see this improving over time, so we will be leaning much more into the oversight part of the role as time goes on.