My middle grandchild, age 20, is at a loss for a profession. She's an artist by inclination but we all know why the term "starving artist" is so ubiquitous and she works at a pre-school while she figures out her life. Her sister completed her Master's and has a great job but she is lost as to what path she can follow (big age difference.)

Lovely, personable, HONEST and RELIABLE girl - no tats, piercings, doesn't smoke anything, doesn't drink: people are always trying to hire her as a nanny, and she was a "keykeeper" at her last retail job (promoted as soon as she turned 18 and was eligible) and is well-regarded by all who know her, not just me.

I've been trying to talk her into bookkeeping - she has two prepaid years of Community College on the books through an old VA529 program so it's great from a financial perspective. She lives in Northern Virginia so has an excellent CC available. We are not talking CPA material here - bookkeeping is something that requires only a certificate and dedication and could be done reasonably fast, while also working her regular job.

Here's a scary fact though: she had never even HEARD the term bookkeeper. Had no idea what they are or what they do! She knew about Cratchit from Dickens of course but did not know it was a real and still-valid profession. Unlike my mom's or my generation where it was a time-honored profession, especially for a working woman - but am I steering her in the wrong direction? I don't think so but maybe?

I told her our family business could use her but she could also market to all kinds of small businesses out there and have a life while making good money.

The court reporter/shorthand transcriptionist is the highest paid person in our local courthouse, apart from one of the judges. If I'd heard of it as an option, I would have pursued that years ago.

Only about 15% of people finish the program. It's not easy. But if you have a knack for it, you have a near-guaranteed job and income for as long as you want it. And your court transcription is your personal property, so anyone who wants a copy of it for appeals has to buy it from you personally.

Or so I'm told.

At that young age very few people know what they want to do.

In some parts of the world when young people get done with high school or junior college, they take a year or two off and travel the world or at least the country, experiencing things and so on. Doing that gives much exposure to different places, things and people and doing that sometimes leads to a decision.

One of the things I've noticed over the years is that society punches the young to make choices, to go to college (and have massive student debt) too soon. then they get stuck in something or someplace they wind up hating, stuck in a crappy job they despise.

Here's what I'd recommend - she should sit down and think about whether she wants to spend a lifetine as an employee, making someone else's dream come true and making someone else a pile of money or as an entrepreneur, making her dreams come true and having many other people working for her. Either way is still ok, but whichever way she leans, she will likely be dissatisfied if she does the other route.

Next would be to decide where to start. (We all start at the bottom, no?) Have an idea? Try it! Maybe start an art gallery and sell others works as well as her own. Maybe this, maybe that. Try things.

Try to separate the dead end jobs (if that's the route she takes) from the type jobs that have HIGH potential, (not waitress, fast food, gas stations, stuff like that) (no offense to those who did that). These days, look at whatever she chooses and think about if it will become obsolete - replaced by robots or by artificial intelligence). Now some jobs likely can't be replaced by either robots or AI, like trades, like property management, like jobs that require evaluation of something or discernment.

Also, there is no shame or bad thing about changing your mind about a job or a type of work. Sometimes we don't know we don't like something until we get a good dose of it. In this world, we get to change our minds.

When I was young I wanted to be an astronaut, a cowboy, a policeman. I wound up owning a handyman business and a construction company. Both worked out well and I was able to retire young. Then I took that knowledge and invested in real estate and used what I learned and knew to do that.

There's an endless world of opportunity out there.

Think of the possibility of living in a great place like the Outer Banks and having many properties that provide more than enough to be happy. What a world of opportunity.

Why not offer her to be your husband's helper and learn the business and have her wind up by 30 or 35 with knowledge and a bunch of houses, retired and living on the beach. You mentioned in another post that driving down the road in the Outer Banks that there were several/many run down places. Grab some, fix them, rent them, retire young.

I think you are giving great advice. The role of a bookkeeper is to accurately classify each income and expense, to produce reports, to hand off the clean books to the accountant.

Perfect job to find out what you want to do, or what you don’t want to do for a living…..you see various businesses up close.

She's been working since grade school, usually in education. After-school care aide, teacher's classroom aide, babysitting. She branched out and went into retail (hated it) then waitressed, as we all should, and hated that too. She went back to a school because they love her and she enjoys the little ones (pre-k.)

She has traveled a bit, more than I did at her age! Her uncle took her to Europe last year on a long cruise, she's been to Mexico a few times...she's been coming to the beach since before she was born and is definitely not interested in living here.

Also, to actually take over the biz, she has to get in line behind her dad and her other uncle.

Is this a good career choice? Certainly there is a need. The bigger question is whether it's a good match for her skill set and interest.

I have a friend that is a bookkeeper, working for a CPA. It's a good fit for her. She prioritizes predictability above everything else. So even though her boss is a terrible person, she has stayed for years because the devil you know....

You really have to look at her gifts and talents. For example, bookkeeping tends to be an office job with little human interaction. If she is a people person she will hate it and ultimately not be a good at it. On the income scale, bookkeepers are just above entry level jobs. Not bad but definitely not in the higher income ranges.

With the same schooling (2 year degree) here are some national averages, as you can see there are many career fields with the same schooling requirements that will net twice the income:

Bookkeeper $47K

ASN (Associate nurse) $75K

Dental hygienist $87K

Court reporter $62K

Air Traffic Controller $137K

I don't know your area well enough to know the jobs that are available but I would encourage the artistic types around here to look into computer arts, graphic design or animation. There are a lot of sub categories but I don't know them well.

A bookkeeper who is proficient with quickbooks would be a nice job, but, I do not think they make a lot of money.

Take a look at her skill set and compare that to what she can afford with 2 years of a 529.

She could earn an RN degree in 2 years at the Virginia community college. A starting RN can make $80k/year. A lot more with a little bit of overtime.

How about one of the skilled trades?

If she really likes the daycare idea, get an early childcare degree and then open a daycare center. Those seem to be recession proof.

What profession can you guide her into so that she can build the net worth in 40 years that you have built?

A former co-worker's daughter went to university in the southern tier and became completely brainwashed with leftist indoctrination. She changed her major from engineering to archeology. BIG mistake. She's had a series of fru fru government leftist jobs and now she's been chronically un and under employed.

Being an RN is a thankless and really difficult job. She has Zero.ZERO interest in that.

Her dad is a graphic designer and he has steered her away from the profession: AI, foreign influence, all things Anime etc. It is not an up-and-coming profession. Or at least, it's a changing profession and one doesn't know where it's going to end up. AI is changing everything in that field as much as anything ever will. She knows as much about that as she does anything, I guess.

I had thought that all the computerized bookkeeping programs had just about killed the profession.

My first thought was nursing, but if she knows she doesn't want to do that, my mother, after she retired from teaching, started a business tutoring children with reading disabilities and teaching them how to overcome their reading problems so that they could read.

My mother happened to have a masters degree in reading specialties, but what she did while tutoring was basically tricks that anyone with any teaching ability and sympathy could learn to do. Twenty years ago, she was making $50 a hour and turning away a lot of the work because she didn't have time for it.

It takes a special mindset to be a teacher or a care giver.

I know in my heart that I do not have the patience or qualities for either of those.

Not only are people NOT having kids, the few that ARE are staying home to raise them. "Trad" families are on the rise, with a subtle difference in that it's not always Mom that stays home, but one of them often is. Covid taught people it could work - plus US childcare averages $11k per year (it's half that in subsidized Canada.) At what point does it just not make sense to pay someone else to raise your kids? Better to cut back and one of you stays home for many families.

And with women entering the C suites more often than the trades, they are often the higher money earners.

While teachers/teachers aides ( paraprofessionals) don’t make a whole lot, it is very enjoyable for those of us with a knack for it. And, over summers one has time to learn the real estate industry, or maybe regenerative farming.

Running a state licensed daycare is how one of my tenants supported herself and her two kids since high school. Another of my current tenants does that, makes pretty good money actually. Key seems to be being the owner, not just the employee. And getting families whose day are costs are subsidized by the state, so one does not have to constantly chase clients.

Psychiatrists use ‘line staff’ to do in-home autism therapy. I did that for a year just to provide cash flow while I was rehabbing my first property. Problem was, company wasn’t well-managed, lots of serious admin errors, so I finally quit. But , it was challenging, enjoyable. Didn’t pay a whole lot at the first tier of employment but, had I a desire to become a ‘lead’ that would have paid more. And, clearly, the company I worked for needed to pay the administrator much more and then hire a much better administrator! But, that was just that company. In-home therapy staff probably pays what a bookkeeper makes.

I disagree that teachers don't make good money. My DGD#1 makes excellent money, in my opinion.

"As of Apr 29, 2025, the average annual pay for a Master Teacher in Fairfax is $71,295 a year. That works out to be approximately $34.28 an hour. This is the equivalent of $1,371/week or $5,941/month."

Drafter

I am not sure if the book is even published any more but there used to be a book called What Color is Your Parachute. It outlined the search of the individual's strengths and likes to point them in the right direction.

What about a 2 year nursing degree from a community college? Complete that, then get a job with tuition reimbursement and complete her BSN part time while working.

Zero interest in nursing.

I had to change careers in my early 40's and it was a successful process.

I wholeheartedly agree to read "What Color is Your Parachute." It helped me to find my strengths and how the employment system worked.

Additionally, a retired high school counselor gave me an aptitude test that more precisely confirmed my strengths and weaknesses. It gave me much more confidence comparing career options and narrowing down the list.

The best results and confidence came from interviewing department managers about the nature of say, a bookkeeping career. I took 2 managers to lunch separately.

I asked each of them questions such as:

How did you get started in this profession?

What do you like about it?

What would you change?

What did you do to advance?

What would you do differently to advance?

Here are the benefits to this approach:

They overcame their skepticism that I could transfer from commercial loan officer and branch manager to the IT profession.

In a job interview, the interviewer has his defense shields up and is skeptical of my answers to his questions. In this consulting mode that doesn't involve a job interview, he was leaning toward me trying to help me and accept my answers as honest ones.

The manager at a large company invited me to interview for a current job opening. It lead to 2 further interviews.

I am sure that if a manager didn't have a job opening and met a manager with a vacancy inside or outside the company, he would have recommended that the manager call me for a job interview.

A young person asking these type of strategic open-ended questions would impress a manager even further than I did. I guarantee you that an interviewing manager has never met a young person asking such sophisticated questions in the setting of career advice.

Have your daughter prepare some interview questions (What Color is Your Parachute probably has samples). The questions should relate to the nature of the job/career she applies for.

When I interviewed applicants seeking IT jobs in my department, I asked questions that revealed if they liked to learn, read to learn, and adapt to change. Because IT hardware and software was constantly changing.

I had to change careers in my early 40's and it was a successful process.

I wholeheartedly agree to read "What Color is Your Parachute." It helped me to find my strengths and how the employment system worked.

Additionally, a retired high school counselor gave me an aptitude test that more precisely confirmed my strengths and weaknesses. It gave me much more confidence comparing career options and narrowing down the list.

The best results and confidence came from interviewing department managers about the nature of say, a bookkeeping career. I took 2 managers to lunch separately.

I asked each of them questions such as:

How did you get started in this profession?

What do you like about it?

What would you change?

What did you do to advance?

What would you do differently to advance?

Here are the benefits to this approach:

They overcame their skepticism that I could transfer from commercial loan officer and branch manager to the IT profession.

In a job interview, the interviewer has his defense shields up and is skeptical of my answers to his questions. In this consulting mode that doesn't involve a job interview, he was leaning toward me trying to help me and accept my answers as honest ones.

The manager at a large company invited me to interview for a current job opening. It lead to 2 further interviews.

I am sure that if a manager didn't have a job opening and met a manager with a vacancy inside or outside the company, he would have recommended that the manager call me for a job interview.

A young person asking these type of strategic open-ended questions would impress a manager even further than I did. I guarantee you that an interviewing manager has never met a young person asking such sophisticated questions in the setting of career advice.

Have your daughter prepare some interview questions (What Color is Your Parachute probably has samples). The questions should relate to the nature of the job/career she applies for.

When I interviewed applicants seeking IT jobs in my department, I asked questions that revealed if they liked to learn, read to learn, and adapt to change. Because IT hardware and software was constantly changing.