The 5 year plan to £50k

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AndyT said:
Give it a rest, the guy is trying to make a change in his life and had asked for advice, not a critique of his life. You gave advice, but in the same breath, put him down. We all get that you work in the oil and gas industry and have been offshore, and are clearly very proud of it. Plenty of your posts refer back to that fact. This doesn't make you anything special though.
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I've never said it does, I've just tried to give my honest opinion, if hes wanting to get into certain industries he's going to have to work, draughtpersons normally have HNDs/HNCs in Mechanical engineering and start off on around 15k a year and train for 10 years, not exactly the fast track into what hes looking at.

KaHn
 
neodude said:
I went from £22K to £60K in 4 years so it's defo possible. I was around the same age also.
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Mind if I ask what profession?

Luke_Bowman said:
I'm surprised that being on OcUk for 8 years and living in your parents basement hasn't taught you anything more than basic IT skills.

Did you not even code or do something useful as a hobby/passtime?
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People learn useful skills on OcUK? :p Where? :p

I can code badly. I imagine most of us here can ;) But I've only ever messed around with coding. A bit of JS here, a bit of C there, a bit of Java and Lisp at uni. But it wasn't software development. It was messing around. I've written the odd SQL query at work.

Basically yes I can understand some code and basic stuff. But that does not a programmer make. I couldn't actually get hired as a coder with what I've done.

Why didn't I learn more in that time? I was extremely lazy and spent most of my days unemployed playing MMOs. That's the honest version, and obviously I'm not proud of it.
 
Why in gods name do you still live in your mums basement if you are 34 and earn 27k?

I have average IT skills for someone on OcUK. But nothing "skilled" because most 1st/2nd line stuff is child's play, and a monkey could do it.
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Have you ever worked in 1st line / 2nd line? Do you even know what sort of knowledge is required for 2nd line work?

-sorry, I have read only the OP's first post and not the entire thread

edit - now read all the read and everyone opinions of you seem valid. Why the hell dont you have money saved if you have been living at home for year, or have only only been at home for a year or so?
 
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Raymond Lin said:
My advice is that don't set a salary as a target, set a life style that you want as a target, put happiness before money. Yes, money makes it easier to be happy but £27k in Cornwall surely is a good wage to be in. I would say a lot of people would be envious of your situation.
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I would largely agree with this. I set myself a £target before I reached 30. I hit the figure very early on, became incredibly unhappy with my work/life balance as I was working so hard, and subsequently quit a few years later.

I now earn considerably less, but work for myself and am much happier.

I would strongly urge you to ignore the £salary initially, and focus on something that you feel may provide contentment, development and longevity in a professional sense. The salary levels can be addressed later on once you've established yourself in a particular industry.

In terms of your current situation, given your recent salary increase, I would hang around at your current place for another year or so in order to save some cash. In the meantime, I would pursue avenues that may lead to a new career - networking, courses, even using some of your annual leave doing work experience. Then, once you've saved a decent amount you could pack up your bags and head to city/company that might offer you a career.

I'd also recommend that you stop spending lots of time applying for jobs online that you have no chance of getting. Recruiters are paid their fee by clients in order to find a certain candidate type with a specific skill set. If you don't possess necessary skills or experience, it's highly unlikely/less likely that you'll be selected. An alternative is to find companies in an industry that interests you, or an industry you've decided to target, and contact their HR department directly indicating that you'd be keen to highlight your candidacy which might be relevant further down the line (once courses or experience have been undertaken on your behalf).

Good luck :)
 
Captain Planet said:
You can't. You "don't listen to advice from internet randoms".
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Let's not carry on our argument from that other thread. And that's not what I said, either, as well you know. Context is a wonderful thing. But bringing an argument from another thread here is a bit childish.

Guest2 said:
Why in gods name do you still live in your mums basement if you are 34 and earn 27k?

Have you ever worked in 1st line / 2nd line? Do you even know what sort of knowledge is required for 2nd line work?

-sorry, I have read only the OP's first post and not the entire thread

edit - now read all the read and everyone opinions of you seem valid. Why the hell dont you have money saved if you have been living at home for year, or have only only been at home for a year or so?
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Mate, I explained that. A few years unemployed. Large debt. Paid off debt with min wage job. Pay rise only a couple months ago. Back in black now, just.

1st/2nd line is what I did in the min wage job btw. I wasn't great at it, but I know what's involved.
 
TBH a £27k job where you can just doss about on the internet, in Cornwall with just GCSEs sounds pretty good to me. Especially if it has public sector job security, pension package etc.

I suspect you are likely in the upper quartile in terms of salary for people in Cornwall with just GCSEs.
 
HangTime said:
I suspect you are likely in the upper quartile in terms of salary for people in Cornwall with just GCSEs.
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You'd probably be in the upper quartile of people in Cornwall just by having GCSEs tbh...

Frankly the OP needs to pick a career direction and get out of there.
 
FoxEye said:
Let's not carry on our argument from that other thread. And that's not what I said, either, as well you know. Context is a wonderful thing. But bringing an argument from another thread here is a bit childish.
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If you class that as an argument then good luck to you if you ever do encounter a real confrontation in life (which you won't living in a basement).

Maybe get off your backside, step outside your basement, move out of your parents and just do something with yourself? It seems like you're almost asking the forum to tell you what you should do. How can anyone who doesn't know you tell you that? You must have particular interests, I'd be aiming to find work in something that motivated me by my interests.
 
sports_brah said:
What's the job like? I applied a few months ago, got through the tests & aptitudes, and then they said they'd invite me to a assessment centre. Haven't heard back from them.

Is it a decent enough career? Whats the stress and difficulty like?
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It's a great career. You are well trained so difficulty isn't a factor.

Stress is obviously down to the individual. I felt pretty stressed throughout the training but the not at all now that I'm fully qualified. It has the odd moment where the adrenaline kicks in but 99% of the time it's fairly standard.

There's been a bit of a slow down with recruitment at the moment because a load of controllers just took voluntary redundancy due to new technology reducing the required number at the area centres. We also lost the Birmingham contract and more recently the Gatwick contract which affects staffing levels. Should pick up again soon though :)
 
Captain Planet said:
Medic? Engineers? numerous other NON-killing roles?

I've had charge of a couple of TA and reservist guys. One was the equivalent of a private, he was in his late 50's and was an executive of a multi-million company. He loved the different challenge of the forces. They take all walks of life at different ages.
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+1 plenty of roles to choose from bud, never really too old and as cpt planet mentions, we take on people from all walks of life.

You be trained how to use a weapon of course and basic infantry skills, but would move on shortly after to specialist training in your chosen role.

I know you've mentioned you're a pacifist, and yes you will be trained to kill if needed, but it's a last resort option.
 
Btw, i'd like to add something,

I know it's a daunting task to undertake, which may involve retraining etc, but your never too old or too late.

I left the Army a few years ago and found civvie street extremely difficult to deal with, coupled with PTSD i found myself in a very dark hole with no way out.

But you have to just kick yourself up the arse, adapt and get things done, i seeked help for my PTSD, i retrained and worked hard to gain the qualifications i needed for the career i wanted and chased after it.

It's taken me a long time, it was bloody hard work but thankfully i've managed it only a few months ago.

The money isn't that great, but it's not that important to me, i have enough to enjoy myself and live a decent, happy and peaceful life with my other half, which is all i want.

I guess what i'm trying to say is don't let the thought of hardwork/change put you off chasing after a better Life/Career, try not to set a target for how much money you'd like to earn, rather set one on how happy you'd like to be.

You sound like you stuck in a hole Foxeye, it's time to start climbing out ;)
 
garriec said:
Turnover doesn't mean you are making money though ;)

Just pointing it out that turnover isn't exactly a good way to determine if you're making money or not. For example, your costs for the month could be 101k, and that 100k turnover is a loss of 1k.

Although you probably already know this.
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I knew I was missing something :p

Back to the drawing board!
 
[FnG]magnolia;26666781 said:
For context and for those who are not living in New Zealand, what happened was some bloody great big earthquakes which essentially demolished Christchurch (a NZ city) and drove demand for builders, painters, sparkies, plasterers etc through the roof. Hourly rates went crazy due to demand/supply and there was a mass influx of trained (and not so trained) personnel into the area. I think the last projection was that this will last for 4 or 5 years.

So to blithely say you don't know how it happened is at best an oversight in your post.

By the way, you're not the former poster Oxygene (oxygen?) who was always talking about moving to NZ but never seemed to get his life in order to manage it? I'm only interested in case there are parallels here between you and the OP but not the ones you've stated.
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No idea who Oxygen is.

My EQ work is ending the first part of 2017. Thank God for that. Unfortunately I have to put up with it until then. Then it's up to Wellington for 3 years of new builds. Wish I can dump this EQ nonsense. No money in it anyway. Government is paranoid of being ripped off
 
FoxEye said:
Mate, I explained that. A few years unemployed. Large debt. Paid off debt with min wage job. Pay rise only a couple months ago. Back in black now, just.

1st/2nd line is what I did in the min wage job btw. I wasn't great at it, but I know what's involved.
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Are right ok, I missed that bit.

Maybe you should have got good at it. I'm doing 2nd line work now and taking ~32k, about to move to 3rd line infrastructure on the same money but obviously learning on the job. Knowledge & skills first, then money
 
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Definitely possible. I went from 13k p.a up to 27k p.a to now touching close to 49k p.a. By the time I'm 30 I'm hoping to be hitting close to 80k.

You just have to put a lot of effort in, and you will be rewarded.
 
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