How can I get a job when I can't make enough to cover childcare?
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Anonymous
| Seriously, what can I do that pays more than $15/hour with a limited skill set (I haven't touched Excel in over 5 years and I don't even know what Adobe is, for instance) and a junk degree? |
Anonymous
|
Teaching. With a master's degree, you would cover childcare, pay into retirement, and be on the kids' schedule.
Now it's teaching, so that's another bag of worms. |
Anonymous
| How old are your children and where do you live? Some counties subsidize childcare costs but depends on the jurisdiction and there may be a waiting list. Do you live with your children's father? If not, does he pay support? Child support costs should be factored in to the support amount. |
Anonymous
Where did she say she had a master's degree? OP, what is your skill set, however limited? What kind of jobs have you held in the past? |
Anonymous
| You can get childcare that is 10-12/hour even a nanny |
Anonymous
| Hmmm ... customer service rep in a call center type place, maybe? If you have a degree and can type well and answer phones and stuff (maybe brush up on Office on your own) a legal assistant, secretary, etc.? |
Anonymous
| If you could find a job in insurance, see if you could start out in the customer service department and then get them to pay for your state license. That's a stepping stone to a lot of decent jobs but you do need to be licensed first. |
Anonymous
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You need to self teach yourself excel/word/adobe. They're extremely easy to use.
Secretaries all make that much money |
Anonymous
|
OP, an office job is your best bet. If you have ANY experience with Microsoft Office, even if it's from 5 years ago, then you should be fine. Even if the position calls for more advanced techniques, you can search YouTube for a video tutorial. Actually, you can find a video tutorial for just about anything on YouTube, so if you don't know it, you can learn without paying a cent!
However, I am a more senior secretary in my department and I make less than $50,000. My net wages cover daycare for an infant and probably most of our rent (both $1400/mo). If you are receiving child support, that should go toward paying for childcare and will hopefully help you get up and stay on your feet. A brief explainer on Adobe: In an office setting, you use it for PDF documents with a program called Adobe Acrobat. These are essentially documents that you can't edit, so I use PDFs as the final version of a letter or something that I send to someone. Adobe also makes a series of software programs that artists and designers use to accomplish just about anything design-related, from web pages to brochures to taking a plain picture and turning everyone's skin blue just for fun. |
Anonymous
| housecleaning business - $30/ hour /++ and tax free if you don't have honest values. |
Anonymous
| If you're crafty, look into an Etsy store. Mine covers our daycare cost for the year. |
Anonymous
Our cleaner only comes in about once ever 2-3 months but I think about this every time I hand her payment. I have a master's and work for a state university doing grants management, working with faculty, provost level administration and outside funders and per hour she definitely makes more than I do! |
Anonymous
| Talk to a temp agency, you may be surprised how much you know about MS Office and what they have that isn't advertised. |
Anonymous
| Legal secretary - just work on being able to type quickly |
Anonymous
also temp agencies will do tests of your skills and they also might offer short training classes for you to get up to speed. |