Submitted by lostaoldier481 t3_11bkq8e in personalfinance
Tl:dr My partner is limited in their ability to work. My current career path salary is rather low for a single earner household. Should I consider switching? And to what? Open to anything and everything as long as it makes 100k+/yr.
So my partner has a very real possibility of being unable to work, possibly indefinitely. We are working on her possibly qualifying for state disability, but I'm not sure how much that will bring in and whether that will make a significant difference in our financial future.
Because of this, I've been considering whether my current career will allow us any kind of financial future that doesn't require us staying with her parents or living in the cheapest living situation we can find.
The goal: Ultimately we would like to be able to own a house, have 2 kids, and be able to feed them and us rather consistently while also keeping all the bills on autopay (something my mom would say only rich people could do).
The numbers: Currently our combined take home income is ~3300/mo - 39,600/yr, with my income being ~75% of that. We're not sure yet if she will be going on state disability or working for a family business, but it will likely not make a significant change from what she's earning now.
We live in THE BEST HCOL area (SoCal), which means the lowest rent we can find is ~2000-2200/mo (at the moment we've luckily found a place that will rent to us for 1100/mo but that will be ending in August, when that building will be torn down due to code violations...) with food costs around 4-600/mo. I pay about 1k in debts/mo, 150-200 in gas, with the rest going to cell phone bills, insurances, and medical bills.
At the moment I'm waiting on grad school applications to return, but therein lies the issue.
The issue: Even with my current trajectory (a Masters of Social Work leading into a licensure), my potential salary looks to average at 85k, after another 5 years of training. That still puts us below the median income of our area by about 20%, effectively locking us out of the possibility of ever attempting to buy a house here. Moving may be an option but this will remove most of our familial safety net, which we already rely on extensively. It can be done, but will be several years in the making.
The question: With all of this in mind, I've started to consider whether my current earning potential is really worth "pursuing my dream". This has been my only career path so far, and I have enjoyed my time here. I can't say that I enjoy coming to work so much that I would limit mine and my partner's life outside of work due to finances.
At this point I've decided that if I'm denied from grad school I'll be changing careers. The question is to what? I really do feel like I'm capable of pretty much anything short of long term professional school (doctor/lawyer/PhD). I'm proficient at STEM, computer literate with some outdated coding knowledge, and very basic trade skills across the board (day laborer construction level).
Mostly the question is whether I should try and go back to something academic or switch to a trade. I have more contacts into trades than I do academics at the moment, but all of my previous experience up to this point has been academic. As stated in the beginning, I'm open to anything and everything as long as it's capable of making 100k+/yr.
I appreciate any and all insight, thank you all for reading to the end.