Retraining in Tech/Actuarial?

[Gatsby88]

In my mid 30's and currently work as a Math's teacher in SEA. I 'only' earn £45k, but my school pay my rent/utilities and I work in a low COL country, so I can easily save £30k per year. That's obviously a comfortable situation to be in and comparable to a much higher UK salary, but despite loving my job (and yes, the 13 weeks off a year!) I want to train/develop something alongside this over the next few years for additional income - I'm just not sure where to focus my efforts! I'm not looking to quit teaching, certainly not in the near term, but its a job I can do on auto pilot mostly so I'm thinking perhaps do an MSc/other course and then get a PT remote entry level job to build up some experience before perhaps switching in 3 - 5 years. I'm not against then temporarily quitting teaching to work in one of these areas/roles for 2 - 3 years at that point and then attempting to go remote, as I do realise I would be unlikely to secure a remote job without previous experience. I'm on course to retire early and I want something that's going to interest me intellectually as well as provide a good source of income in the lead up to or after retirement - doing one or two days a week in my 50's or 60s in some sort of highly skilled / knowledge based WFH (or digital nomad) role would be preferable to continuing to teach until 67!

I have a first class BSc Mathematics and I currently teach A level Further Maths - so I'm very technical/quantitative and would be confident I could pick up any skills in this area. In a purely mercenary way, what skills would you focus on to ensure you are in high demand in 5 - 15 years time? I've always preferred Statistics/Probability, so I'm leaning towards Data Science or Actuarial work. Both of those should be relatively easy to pick up with my existing skill set and highly paid, although I imagine Data Science offers more remote work possibilities and would be easier to get started in than Actuarial? I've never programmed beyond really basic stuff, but I have no doubt I could pick it up quickly and it seems that Programming / Software Development is more of a gig/contract field which might be easier to break in to around my existing job? I realise everyone is going nuts over Machine Learning / AI at the moment, but from some cursory job searches it doesn't seem that lucrative at the moment (apart from for the true geniuses). That could change in the timeline I'm looking at of course...

I realise this gets asked a lot. I've read a few threads on this in the forum although those were mostly looking for people to fully change careers and I think I'm looking for more of a split career. The flipside to that is that I have a longer time period to retrain/upskill/gain experience as I'm quite comfortable in my current job.

[161BMW]

Actuarial is boring as fk
Exams are not easy and you will have to give up a lot of your free time to psss them
After you are trapped and can’t leave
Much like car mechanics who love cars who hate them trade while you get paid way more as an actuary it not that rosy
Do what you enjoy

[Scabutz]

Isnt the old joke that actuaries were people who found accountancy too exciting.

Learn to code, even though ChatGPT can churn out some scripts its a fairly safe future job and coding skills are required in all parts of IT these days. Plus there is a massive skills shortage so finding work wont be hard. Plenty of contract and permanent roles.

If your mind works in a way that code makes sense then learning it is easy. I taught myself 20 odd years ago and worked in IT ever since

[jm8403]

Your net 45k PA as a teacher? so gross is 65k+?

[161BMW]

Scabutz said:

Isnt the old joke that actuaries were people who found accountancy too exciting.

Learn to code, even though ChatGPT can churn out some scripts its a fairly safe future job and coding skills are required in all parts of IT these days. Plus there is a massive skills shortage so finding work wont be hard. Plenty of contract and permanent roles.

If your mind works in a way that code makes sense then learning it is easy. I taught myself 20 odd years ago and worked in IT ever since

That usually what accountants say because they were jealous their job was not as interesting as actuarial, they were not paid as much and didn’t have the brain to be actuarial.

[Gatsby88]

Scabutz said:

Learn to code, even though ChatGPT can churn out some scripts its a fairly safe future job and coding skills are required in all parts of IT these days. Plus there is a massive skills shortage so finding work wont be hard. Plenty of contract and permanent roles.

If your mind works in a way that code makes sense then learning it is easy. I taught myself 20 odd years ago and worked in IT ever since

The question then becomes which language / area to focus in? I'm leaning towards Python / R because I assume that leveraging the additional mathematical knowledge would result in higher wages, but I could be wrong there. I'm confident I can learn to code given my background and I'm being very mercenary about this; I just want to go where the money and security is.

jm8403 said:

Your net 45k PA as a teacher? so gross is 65k+?

A lot closer than that. Gross 52k, net 45k. Tax is low here and that doesn't include bonuses or my rent/utilities being paid, which are tax free benefits. I eat out every night, have a maid and only commute/travel by taxi and can easily save £35k+ in cash per year due to low COL. So I don't want to quit, plus the skills I'm talking about should lead to a remote job hopefully.

161BMW said:

That usually what accountants say because they were jealous their job was not as interesting as actuarial, they were not paid as much and didn’t have the brain to be actuarial.

Agree with this. The handful of actuaries I know are legit very sharp people, the accountants I know not so much.