Thank you for listening! Find a transcript of this episode below.
In this episode I'm going to discuss an important topic that I don't hear discussed very often. We're covering what jobs can you get when you have limited experience in the workforce. The reason I bring this topic up is because I have had a lot of discussion about this subject on coaching calls for the last few months and I think that it would be very helpful to talk about some of these things in the podcast.
This topic, excuse, me is much more important than many people think and for two particular reasons. Reason number one, if you are facing divorce and you might not have worked during the marriage, maybe you were taking care of the kids or doing other things, one of the big questions is what jobs can I find after divorce that might pay me a decent income so I can get on with my life. I want to give you some ideas in this episode of some jobs that actually pay pretty well. Now, you might not be making six figures on day one but you can make a decent salary.
Now, the other reason, reason number two that this is an important topic has to do with all of you on the other side of the equation, which is if you are going to be the person paying support particularly spousal support or alimony, one of the very important things you should be thinking about and trying to negotiate is what jobs your soon to be ex-spouse could obtain.
What's important about this because if your spouse, your spouse may not have worked during the duration of your marriage. Might be five years, might be 20 years or more or anywhere in between. If your spouse didn't work that's very understandable for a number of reasons. If your spouse has skills or has the capability of getting a job, even if that job only makes $20,000 or if it makes $50,000 or makes $100,000 or more. Well that money you can oftentimes subtract from the spousal support burden that you would have to be paying that spouse.
So, let me crystallize it for you very simply to make sure that that point is clear. Let's just say I'm going to keep the numbers very simple, but these might be higher for some people or lower depending upon who's listening. Let's say that you have to pay $50,000 a year in spousal support to your soon to be ex-spouse. Well, if you know that they can make $20,000 in income, be it as a teacher or an assistant or any number of jobs I'm going to talk about in a bit, well you can request and negotiate that instead of paying $50,000 a year in spousal support, you only pay $30,000 a year. That can be a substantial substantial savings to you.
I want to stay on this point for a bit before I get more into the jobs. Even though many people listening might not have an extensive work resume, if you are or if your spouse is of solid physical and mental functioning, there are a lot of job opportunities out there when you put your effort in. One of the frustrations that I hear from a lot of people is that they'll say or particularly people about to pay support is they'll say one of two things. Either they'll say that my spouse didn't work and so I have to pay them more. That's partially true. They'll also say my spouse doesn't want to work.
Well, if your spouse doesn't want to work and you're going to have to pay them support, you know, most people don't want to work. We would all like to have a permanent vacation or hang out with our friends or just raise our kids exclusively. Unfortunately in divorce situation you may have to or that person may have to realize that they now need to work.
One of the things is that there are often jobs available for them. Another thing to think about is that there are people called vocational experts and if you go to episode 164 of the Divorce in Your Money podcast I discuss that in depth as well and that can be a great source for you. If you're looking for a job you can go speak to a vocational expert but also if you have a spouse who's capable of working but maybe has some skills and could find a job, well, you can present to the court or to, as part of the negotiations, you can present how much income they could be making given their experiences. That could directly subtract from the support that you may be thinking about paying.
Now, I could talk about this topic for a long time and I am going to get into it quite a bit on this episode but I could stay on this point about vocational experts and jobs. It even surprises me the range of scenarios I see every day as I get to work with you in terms of who wants to find a job, who doesn't. I have some clients who have never worked before who are very ambitious about taking control of this process. I also have clients who were the earners and their spouses were trying to figure out well what kind of job could their spouse who might not have ever worked before, what kind of job could they get and how much could that be and does it make sense given their situation.
Anyways, what kind of jobs are we talking about? The point of this is to discuss jobs that don't require a lot of experience. I know that oftentimes one person may have just graduated high school and that was it. Then they raised the kids, took care of the family and that's the extent of their work experience is just a high school diploma. Others may have graduated college, maybe worked a couple years, anywhere in between, or were on the path with a successful career but chose to stay at home with the family. This applies believe it or not with both men and women.
I deal with a ton of women who were the earners in the family and the father stayed at home. They're the ones without the extensive job experience. So it applies to most families that I see and get to work with. I'll just say many families that I get to work with and people I get to work with during this process.
The question as I said what are the low paying, what are the limited experience jobs that pay a decent salary? I'm going to go through some job ideas and these jobs I know can pay you between 25 to 75 thousand dollars a year even if you don't have any experience. This means day one you're starting with a decent salary. There's plenty of articles online about some of these things as well. So you should look for high paying jobs or take some job quizzes if you don't know which one of these is going to fit for you. There's tons that I'm not even going to get into or get into with any depth that have a lot of opportunity within them.
So, let's jump in. I'm going to just jump into different ideas. I want to provide some ideas and some thoughts on different careers that you may need to think about or keep in the back your head because the job requirements are you show up and do the job, you don't have to have specialized degrees in many cases. The first category is assistant. Assistant, I'm going to break down to several subcategories because assistants can apply to a variety of fields. You can work as a public relations assistant. You can work as a legal assistant in a law firm. You can work as a medical assistant. You can work at any kind of administrative assistant if you have that type of skill sets.
Actually, when you think about an administrative assistant in the more general category of assistant, a lot of those jobs are work from home. A lot of those are part time and that's actually what I use. I have work from home and part time assistants and that works very, very well. They get to work flexible hours and I don't always have a full time staff person because I don't always need a full time staff person or at least in terms of the assistant categories. So it works for all of us very well. So, that's a great job to think about that almost anyone can do.
Real estate agent. Now real estate agent requires a license in every state but usually obtaining the license is not overly burdensome. There are depending upon where you live in the country, it can be in exceptional opportunity. One thing about real estate agents is if you have a good network, you can generate commissions on sales and that can provide a very substantial income boost for you.
Another area speaking of commissions and sales is salesperson. Now salesperson can apply to literally any industry that exists. Every business has sales. You can do it for any type of company. It can be a local business, it can be a national company, it can be anywhere. If you have the ability to sell a product from Tupperware to cyber security software to cars to houses to furniture to absolutely anything, you will have have the ability to have a sales job.
In fact, I am going to toss this out there for the listeners, if you are an excellent salesperson, I have a job for you. There is always opportunity in the sales world. Now, you have to be able to do it, it's not a free job offer but if you are good at sales I always, always and will for the rest of my life have a job opportunities for great sales people. So if you have that personality, that network, that hustle, that ability to generate a sale, there is always a place for you. Those careers can be very, very lucrative.
I have friends who sell everything from water bottles very well and make thousands, tens of thousands and some hundreds of thousand dollars on small products like that. I also have friends who sell multi-billion dollar contracts to governments for military equipment. At the end of the day, we're all just salespeople with different products. All right, I love sales so you can see I spent a lot of time on that one.
Project manager, very important role. It's sort of a step above if I would say administrative assistant so you might be able to command a higher salary. But also a great part time work at home job or a good in person job if you are someone who is organized and can stay on top of multiple projects. Particularly, if anyone is good at raising kids and if you have multiple kids, these days that is identical in many ways to the project manager role. So you might have that skill set and not even realize it already so that could be a great job for you.
Teacher. Teacher is a job that also oftentimes require some sort of certificate or training, but also like a real estate agent is not too burdensome. So teacher can be a great job. Now teaching doesn't pay super high most places on the pay scale. That said, it is a very good job that many people can consider pursuing if you like that. One thing I'm going to toss out, this is just neither here nor there at least in terms of the specific episode, but if you're thinking about the teaching route there is also lots of opportunities in the special needs world which is something that I like to think about a lot. It's not always the classroom, there's lots of great ways you can help in the teaching world if you do your research and figure out where there is a need because there's often a lot of students that are neglected out there that you could certainly make a big impact in someone's life.
The next category. City, state and government jobs. Now, this is a super, super, super, super broad category and it really depends upon where you live. There are tons of government opportunities. It could be in your local city government, it could be for a specific department like the water department or could be in the municipal building or could be at the library. Could be something like that. There could be state jobs that are available. Of course if you have a federal government branch for whatever department, I'm recording this near tax time, so for whatever reason the IRS is on the top of my head.
If you want to work at the IRS good on you but there are many different government jobs. The Federal Reserve Board is also just a few blocks away from me. That is just a government job, a very cool government job but a government job. And so if you have an inclination or if you're looking for a job those jobs are great, they have excellent hours and great benefits and could be a place for you to work.
Then there's always retail and restaurants so you can work at any of the retail stores. There's retail everywhere. I know it's a struggling industry at the moment but there are still jobs available and they will always need help with good people and restaurants as well. I think we all know restaurant jobs.
Then there is this special category that I leave for last that is also near and dear to my heart and that is online work. Now this is an emerging category. It's a very important one. If you have any sort of technical skills or an interest in technical skills, an interest in the internet and the online world, 100% of you are listening to me online in part because I love online and the internet world and I think it's very fascinating. If you have an interest in that world there are jobs for you. You can learn.
There are tons of these coding schools that exist many of which are very good and you can go to class for three months and the tuition is substantial but not overly burdensome. It's in a few thousand to maybe 10 thousand dollars or maybe 15 thousand dollars. But, over those three months, they teach you all you need to know about coding in a particular area and most of the schools have partnerships with employers and you can get jobs in the 60 or 70 or even higher range after just a few months and a few weeks of learning coding skills.
So if you have any inclination in that world and you like computers and I actually have, I know some of you from working with you, particularly those who live out in California certainly are inclined or are tangentially involved in the world but that is also a great opportunity. That's location independent. I get to work with you all across the United States because of the internet and technology and knowing some of the basics that are involved. It is also a great way even if you have no experience, if you're willing to learn and it's something that may interest you, it is an exceptional opportunity out there and there are some great ways to make that work.
These were all just ideas. I hope you find them thought provoking, fascinating. They don't require any experience. Basically, you can take someone off the street, anyone, even if they've never worked before and train people to do these jobs. Depending upon where you live in which job you pick and what the opportunity is, you have the ability to make a very decent income after divorce. Or if it is your spouse that you're thinking about, you should be pushing for a, if your spouse has the mental and physical capacity and they're not full time taking care of the kids, you should consider putting this as part of your settlement or discussing that point saying that within six months that spouse is expected to have found a job or however you want to structure it, that's something that we structure in many different ways.
Could be a year, six months. Could be immediately but they're expected to find a job and to work and that can substantially decrease your support burden for many, many years to come and save you thousands or tens of thousands or if not hundreds of thousand of dollars in support over a lifetime if you think about these jobs and figure out a way to include these as part of the settlement. Then just for the other side of things, it's a good way to be independent and not be dependent upon your spouse's support check coming every month. Because when it doesn't arrive one month that can be an incredibly nerve racking experience.