Is an apprenticeship wage liveable?

kmb500

Hi, I have been working for a while and over the past year or so have been coming to the realisation that I would like to be a mechanic and do an apprenticeship.
Apprenticeship wage for the first year, is £3/hour, I believe specifically it's £8,100 per year, that's alongside the cost of the training which is not free once you pass age of 21.
Setting aside whether it's right or wrong that employer can pay you so little.. this is a -60% earnings decrease for me. 
I don't consider myself earning much at the moment.. so only 0.4x that, just seems insane to me. I would have some help from family... but still it's a lot and I don't know  how manageable £156/week is. 

KatrinaWaves

The idea of an apprenticeship is that you receive on site training. That has a value, therefore the pay reflects that. You are not being paid to work you are being paid to work AND learn. 

JGB1955

It's an investment in your future.

Mrsn

If you are living at home and have relatively low outgoings then now would be the perfect time to do this... £3ph for over 21’s seems low but I’m not fully informed with the hourly rates so very well could be correct. As for the cost of training I believe that you would be able to apply for an advanced learner loan which would be repayable when you are earning over £21,000 per year.

kmb500

KatrinaWaves said:

The idea of an apprenticeship is that you receive on site training. That has a value, therefore the pay reflects that. You are not being paid to work you are being paid to work AND learn. 

JGB1955 said:

It's an investment in your future.

Thanks for the unhelpful replies, I am aware that it is "an investment in my future", I'm asking if it is manageable to live on the extremely low wages without going into debt, which I REALLY do not want to do, having only just got out of my £3000 overdraft debt.

KatrinaWaves

How on earth is anyone supposed to help you with no idea of your house hold outgoings!

Go over to the debt free wannabe board if you want budgeting and debt advice, its not an employment question, rather than moaning people arent helping you... 

DCFC79

kmb500 said:

KatrinaWaves said:

The idea of an apprenticeship is that you receive on site training. That has a value, therefore the pay reflects that. You are not being paid to work you are being paid to work AND learn. 

JGB1955 said:

It's an investment in your future.

Thanks for the unhelpful replies, I am aware that it is "an investment in my future", I'm asking if it is manageable to live on the extremely low wages without going into debt, which I REALLY do not want to do, having only just got out of my £3000 overdraft debt.

Unhelpful replies no.
Get a pen and paper or create a spreadsheet in excel listing all your expenses per month and work out your monthly wage and take your outgoings from your wage.

ReadingTim

I think the apprenticeship wage generally assume you'll be living at home with your parents and have fairly low outgoings as a result - if that's not the case then it's obviously going to be tighter, but how much tighter will depend on each individual's outgoings.  

Appreciate you don't want to get in debt, but maybe it's just short term evil for long term gain.  And don't forget, you are being paid whilst you learn a valuable trade - compare that to university students who can find themselves in over fifty grand's worth of debt, a degree which doesn't necessarily have any direct use in the world of work, and no job afterwards!  

kmb500

I understand how to do my own budget, thank you.
I am more asking for peoples experience of how they managed to do it.

Darkslider

As a mechanic who's done the apprenticeship route, I really wouldn't bother in this day and age. I loved cars and motorbikes, so thought tinkering with them for a living seemed a sensible choice. But it's quite literally the lowest paid trade whilst simultaneously being one of the hardest to learn. Vehicles now are ridiculously complex, poorly designed and difficult to work on, and even as a qualified technician you'll be lucky to break £10-11 p/h. You'll earn more putting up scaffolding or laying bricks! 

If it's a technical career you're interested in look at utilities, power, water, gas. Transport, rail, air and road networks all have technical apprenticeships with £30k salaries after 3 years, a figure you'll never see on the spanners unless you open your own garage.

kmb500

Darkslider said:

As a mechanic who's done the apprenticeship route, I really wouldn't bother in this day and age. I loved cars and motorbikes, so thought tinkering with them for a living seemed a sensible choice. But it's quite literally the lowest paid trade whilst simultaneously being one of the hardest to learn. Vehicles now are ridiculously complex, poorly designed and difficult to work on, and even as a qualified technician you'll be lucky to break £10-11 p/h. You'll earn more putting up scaffolding or laying bricks! 

If it's a technical career you're interested in look at utilities, power, water, gas. Transport, rail, air and road networks all have technical apprenticeships with £30k salaries after 3 years, a figure you'll never see on the spanners unless you open your own garage.

Thanks for your perspective. You aren't the first mechanic to tell me this. 
But I also have friends who've done an apprenticeship and now really enjoying their jobs, doing interesting mechanic jobs after finishing their apprenticeships.

I know it's lower paid than other trades, but it's an interest of mine, unlike say plumbing or gas.
I have been working for 5 years and I want to have a job that I actually enjoy or find interesting. Doing something which aligns to my hobby is very appealing. I would not be against a different engineer type career; I work for a building services unit and I would happily do the jobs that my colleagues do. But it does not appeal to me enough to make me want to suffer through poor wages to get there, whereas car mechanic does.
I am not after a job that's really highly paid or anything. I more want something that is rewarding to me personally. And will have skills that set me up for long into the future.