Hello everybody, hope you can spare some time to help.
Im a 48 year primary school teacher. Ive loved my job for the last 25 years and wouldnt change the past for the world, but Im not sure Ive got another 20 years of teaching left in me.
Many years ago I worked for a bank and did some banking exams and found the accountancy side easy and enjoyable. Ive recently spent a few evenings at an adult education centre on an introduction to basic bookkeeping course and found I still like it and seem to be good at it.
So, is it worth me considering taking it further as a possible career change? What I really want to know is what would my job prospects be as a 50 year old, or older, with no experience? I dont want to spend 3 or 4 years studying along with a few thousand pounds (Im thinking of studying up to AAT Level 4) if my job prospects are nil. Ive had a look on the job websites and they all seem to want experience.
Do you think its worth embarking on this at my age or would it be a waste of time?
I am a few years younger than you but made the decision I wanted to spend more time as a mum and less time on office politics. So I took AAT exams last year, I aimed for one exam a month but ended up doing them slightly quicker than that as some of them aren't that hard. I studied on my own at home to keep costs down (you have to do a few modules with a learning provider as they have to mark them) and then set up as self employed. I had a part time job with a local accountancy firm for a while to get some experience and now work loosely with a local chartered accountant who helps me out from time to time if I get stuck. I pass him stuff that is too hard for me and he recommends me as a bookkeeper. The business is growing faster than I anticipated it would and although I'm not yet earning as much as I was when I had a full time job I will be soon if the business keeps growing, and there does seem to be the work out there in the area I live in. If you could take the exams whilst keeping your exising job, you could then start up and earn a bit on the side until your business grows enough for you to give up the teaching. It's better paid per hour than if you get a job employed as a bookkeeper and you have more freedom.
I found BPP books to be very easy to understand and the website that accompanies them gives you the opportunity to practice exam questions. You can pay providers such as BPP or Kaplan to sit the tests. I found BPP cheapest as they only charged the AAT fee and no additional admin fee but the Kaplan admin was £15 at the time which isn't too steep.
I don't see the age as a problem, more like the salary you will get. I would thought I Primary school teacher would get alot more than a bookkeeper who is starting out, either self=employed or full-time employment. Also its the experience you would need to get, like while you are studying maybe offering your services for free to like the PTA at school, the Treasurer roll is always one that no one wants. Its a good one to start with and gives you experience at the same time.
AAT is a good qualification to go for and would really help in employment afterwards. You may even find someone who will take you on as a part-qualified AAT and maybe pay for the rest of the course. But saying that the salary will be considerably less than you are on now. Off course we don't know you personal financial circumstances, and don't know if this is feasible or not.
This is just my take on it and I'm sure others will be on here at some point and say otherwise.
It was not meant to be a negative, its just that some training schools say you can earn a fortune, and they are not always correct. Employment you often have to go in at the bottom end and work your way up.
As for not having twenty years left in you, if you think that children and their parents wear you down just wait until you are dealing with clients and HMRC.
Personally I don't think that you should give up anything.
By all means train in bookkeeping and eventually get a couple of clients in addition to your day job. Or alternatively as Neil suggests, start tutoring bookkeeping at night school. If it takes off then great, by all means jump ship.
If you can't find enough clients to make this venture a viable alternative then you haven't broken your existing career (or affected your pension).
Note that comparatively this isn't an expensive profession to start but it's not free and your annual expenses before getting to taking any money will include :
- Professional Memberships - Professional Indemnity Insurance - Continued Professional development costs (a requirement of your professional body membership) - Practicing license fee's - Money Laundering costs (if not through your professional body) - Software licenses : Accounts / Bookkeeping software, Payroll Software, Tax Software plus MS Office - Computer hardware
All in all the average book- keeper is looking at £1k to £2k per year in costs.
One thing worth noting is that to become self employed it's not your age that's an issue as I find that clients are somewhat happier putting their financial well being in the hand of people older than themselves.
Conversely if you are looking for employment then ageism is rife as is the view that experience is king and unless you come from this industry then it is very, very (very, very, very) difficult to get a foot in the door.
I don't know if you have read any of the leaflets from training companies professing guaranteed income in a recession proof profession.
If you have, a good rule of thumb is to take the minimum salary expectation that they are advertising and divide that by your shoe size to get something closer to reality.
I'm not looking to discourage you but you need to think long and hard about what you would be giving up before looking at jumping ship.
kind regards,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I had forgotten about the pension side of it Shaun, mind you that's because I don't have one!!! Well I have always worked in industry and its very different to working in the public sector. I have frozen pensions but refuse to start a new one and even if I was young enough to start one I wouldn't bother, there are other investments out there that are better.
Thats a good idea about teaching it one night a week at night school as well as your job.
Thanks for all your replies. I had thought about the pay drop and pension.My main plan is to enjoy being a teacher for 15-20 years and then retire. The issue is I'm not sure I can do another 20 years. I do really enjoy working with figures and feel this could be an option if I find I can't face 32 7 year olds for 6 hours a day 190 days a year. I'm not sure the HMRC are worse, at least the don't spit on you and throw chairs if they can't find a red colouring pencil!
I would have a look at the various jobsites to see the rates that are being offered for book-keeping and accountancy roles in employment. Near me CCAB qualified with several years PQE management accountant and Financial Controller roles are sub £30k and they seem to get many applications. Trainee positions are £13 - 15k.
Given the length of study and time to get CCAB qualified i.e. ACA,ACCA etc; I would imagine that it would be quite a sustained drop in income.
On the otherhand if you can, as Shamus, suggested run a practice as well as your existing job I can see that as being more appealing. Of course if you prove to be very good at not only the book-keeping and accountancy side but also running the business it may make your eventual career decision easy.
on the low wages front, one that stood out to me was an accounts assistant role in Wolverhampton.
The role was paying little more than minimum wage (I'm pretty sure from memory it was £8.25 per hour) and it got 935 application inside 2 hours!
The issue around this area is that so many people are believing the hype about bookkeepers getting £35k+ per year to work standard office hours in a recession proof industry that they are spending large chunks of their redundancy monies on training courses. Many of those people will not even make back from this profession the amount of money that they have invested in training.
I'm sure that other parts of the country have lower bookkeeper to business ratio's but around my part of the Midlands my impression is that the only real winners are training companies who are churning out thousands of hopefuls each year.
kind regards,
Shaun.
__________________
Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
