Career change advice

Gu11y

Hi, I'm hoping some on here will be able to help with some thoughts I have been mulling over on my 'career'.

I'm heading for my mid-thirties and have been stuck in a dead-end back office customer service job at a local authority for nearly 8 years. The pay is ok (24k) but being public sector is not getting much better. I get no real sense of achievement from my work and feel embarrassed to tell people that as I work for a local authority.

I consider myself to be fairly intelligent and often get told that I could achieve more, i just dont have any direction and have never known what I wanted to do. I have A levels and GNVQs etc but dropped out of a degree course after a week due to it changing during my year out. Since then i did an IT course but fell out of love for it once I started a junior role and fell into local authority work after being made redundant.

I have looked at possibly training to be a mortgage/financial advisor as I seemed to understand this quite well when purchasing our house and wondered if anyone else had done the same? What are the best ways to get into this? Is it best to work for a bank, broker or estate agent?

I am happy to do home study for a new role but cant afford to take too much of a hit in pay in the meantime. I have seen that courses aren't too expensive for mortgage advice, are these best to do before looking for a relevant role or is it better to look for a trainee role first? Will an organisation take me on with no experience and what could I expect to earn from the start? I have looked at some trainee roles and they seem to offer around 21k-24k basic from the start, is this realistic?

It's not all about the money but my wife earns much more than I do and really puts a lot of stress on to herself to do this as I cant. We are also looking to start a family soon so I need to step up and provide more as well as reduce the stress for her.

Any help or other ideas would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Jb005

Hi

I thought I would reply to this thread as I'm looking for general advice on career changes too, although I haven't had any ideas yet.

You might find work as a Paraplanner - I know a place that is looking for one at the moment but they want someone who knows what they're doing rather than to train on the job. I'm not sure if this is the norm.

A paraplanner is basically an assistant to a financial planner, so you can do the administrative side of finding suitable mortgages, pension plans, investment options etc. The going rate is £20-30k as the role varies in responsibility.

Obviously there are a lot of qualifications to be had in this field, I don't know much about them but look up 'Financial Planning Qualifications'. Sorry I can't tell you how much they cost or how long they take. If you don't have kids yet do you have any scope for reducing expenses?

Hope this at least gets the thread moving for you.

Gu11y

Thanks a lot for you response, I'll add paraplanner to my list to look into in more detail. We're not really in a position where we need to cut back as such, I just want to take on more of the responsibility for earning and build a career for myself at the same time.

I have seen that cemap claims to be the industry favourite for mortgage advice at about £500 and presume this is a good starting point to then progress onto a full financial adviser qualification?

Kayalana99

It's something I have thought about M/A but it doesn't really interest me. I would say I know of two and they are doing veerry well. Not that one admits it (family member) he complains about the pay but is driving round his new expensive car toy he brought a couple weeks ago.

Just make sure whatever course you want to do is recognised by the people who would be hiring you (unless you were planning on being independent)

ACG

I am a Mortgage advisor, I work for myself and I am 31 so similar age.
I love the job most of the time. But the main reason I love it is that I work for myself. I have no boss and the only target I have is to ensure I cover my bills. I get up when I want, work mostly when I want (subject to clients availability).

However, it has taken 4-5 years to get here. 1 or 2 years working for someone else, and another 1 or 2 years building up a business. 2 years ago I was probably earning half what you do. Im not loaded now, I could be a higher rate tax payer if I wanted to be, but taking on that much work on my own would be quite stressful.

If I did this job working for an estate agent I would hate it. Someone on my case with sales targets, wanting me to push things clients do not want. Or working for a bank (which I have done) the pay is not that great, I was on about £18k working for a bank.

So yes, I love the job. The wage isnt too bad. But it is stressful and it can take a few years doing the exams, building up a client base which in turn may give you a poor income for a few years.

Becoming an advisor also isnt that easy. You have to do a couple of exams but then you have to get what is known as CAS - basically this is where a manager of some description signs you off as competent. So you have to rely on someone else signing you off to do the job. That was the bit I found hardest.

Gu11y

I would definitely research some job descriptions first to see what qualifications employers were after. Don't think I would be able to go independent for quite a while but sounds like something that would appeal to me. I don't have any sales experience so wouldn't fancy someone forcing me to sell something. Am I right in thinking that a broker offering whole of market would be best as you could let the best products do the selling?

As I also don't have any experience in a finance environment either would it be best to get qualified first? I am presuming this would also allow me to progress quicker and therefore minimise any drop in wages I might have to take?

Is there much difference between the work a mortgage advisor would do versus a financial advisor or is it similar just with different specialities?