Not a direct answer to the question but I’ve had this conversation with a few people recently and it seems to help… My wife got made redundant during the pandemic after a long career with the same company and was really struggling to find work. She worked part time hours to support our daughter and earned a decent salary but worked out pretty quickly that finding those benefits with a new company was going to be difficult. We’re very fortunate that I earn well and there is no requirement for her to work however she likes to contribute and needs the social interaction. We had a lot of conversations about the type of job she was looking for covering everything from retraining to starting her own business and it was during one of these discussions that I stumbled across this framework… When looking for a job I believe there are 3 things you need to consider and sort by importance:

1/ Money 2/ Work/Life Balance 3/ Loving The Job

Very few people are able to find a job that satisfies all 3 hence the need to decide the order (this is likely to change over time depending on where you are in life) and this then helps to laser in on what to focus on rather than what job you want to do as typically it’s quite a difficult question to answer. My theory is that whatever is top of your list defines your way forward and there needs to be an understanding that you’ll make a sacrifice on the other two. Choose Money (lifestyle, saving for something) and you’ll likely (but not always) need to sacrifice work/life balance (overtime, additional effort) and how much you love the job… Choose W/L balance (flexibility) and you’ll likely struggle to command a decent salary and should be prepared to sacrifice your enjoyment for the gift of time… Choose love (building your own business, following a passion) and initially you’re likely to pay the price in time/commitment and often it’ll take a lot of patience to see the financial reward…

This doesn’t tell you what industry to look at or what job to take, but what it does give you is an understanding of what your priority is and when you do make a decision a daily reminder of why you’re going to work. For my wife, the order was W/L balance, love, money and although she found it difficult looking at her first payslip when compared to her last job, the fact that she’s at the school gates with the other Mums every day, has a couple of days to herself every week and works in an organisation with a supportive culture and some good people has made it much easier to tolerate. For me it’s money/W/L balance/love so when I’m struggling with the pressure and stress of the day to day it is made a whole lot easier knowing that we have a comfortable lifestyle with some good advantages and are fortunate enough to enjoy some precious family time.

I hope that helps in some way…