Middle-aged career changer here. Hi!

[AmyRnc]

I'm a 50 yo in a small town, looking for a job that will be fairly steady. I've been underemployed for a while. I've done some remote work and enjoyed it because there's no office bs and distractions. Just not enough to live on.

I'm currently taking an online accounting class through a community college. Can't afford a whole certificate right now. It's interesting and things are making sense. I have an unrelated college degree but just want to start over, to make up for the past decade spent in rural town purgatory.

I'd like to become a bookkeeper, preferably in business for myself. I'm going to check around town once I get enough knowledge in my head to see if any Accountants need help with their grunt work, but I'd like to be able move away and work independently, maybe even travel a bit. If someone would let me do their books from Greece I'd be happy lol

I don't have any friends and most of my family is retired and doesn't give me much input. So I'm looking online for people I can ask for advice. And keep up with the industry.

So...hello

 

[DrStrangeLove]

Hi. The only advice I'd offer is to maybe look at learning how to prepare tax returns as well. I've never met anyone who wouldn't want to let someone else prepare their returns for them. And anywhere that does tax returns will always need extra help during the tax season. So an Enrolled Agent credential can be very portable and lucrative. You can even do it as a retiree, if you want.

Working while traveling might be a problem, depending on where you travel. Some countries would consider working remotely for American clients to be all right (Portugal, for example, with a digital nomad visa), and others would see it as violating a visitor visa.

 

[AmyRnc]

Thank you for replying! My notifications were going to spam and the past week or so has been a bit nuts.

I'll see about the tax prep. I don't have to do it forever (it seems hectic and I'm not great when people are breathing down my neck) but in this place it's probably the best time to make money. I passed the first accounting course and I'm waiting for the second one to start in a couple of weeks. I'm trying to get through Intuit's Coursera bookkeeping course in the meantime but it's kind of dull, honestly. I'll keep going with it just to keep things in my memory.

I was only half joking about the travel. From all I've seen it looks like the world is saying "no visitors" again, even for an earnest traveler. I guess that window might be closing anyway . As long as I don't have to stay where I am maybe I can carve something out for myself.

For now I just have to hope the accountants around here will accept me. If not I'm not sure what the next step is. That's what I'm worried about the most.