The end of the school year is coming and for many parents this means your child is about to graduate from high school. The question is what is next on their horizon. With the rising cost of everything you may be thinking about student loans, and loan forgiveness and wondering if the traditional route for the past 40 years is worth all the trouble.
Recent reports indicate that Artificial Intelligence and automation are going to remove technical positions from the workplace meaning your son or daughter may be facing an even greater uphill battle. You may be questioning if the diminishing returns of higher education may not be worth the dollars they are sacrificing. But what are the alternatives?
Thankfully your child is still young. The world is ahead of them and if you set them up for success there are quite a few great options for your son or daughter.
To begin with if your child doesn’t know what they want to do yet don’t send them to college. Doing so may set them down a path they are not ready for and pack them into a debt trap they will not be thankful for. Instead work with your child and help them develop a plan.
Upon graduating from high school they will have to at least start doing something. Doing nothing is not going to help them in the long run either. History has made it clear that unemployed young adults who are not positively engaged find ways to engage negatively.
This leads into our first option for your young adult, join the workforce. There are jobs all over just begging for somebody to start work. No, they will not be making an enormous amount of money, but what they will be doing is learning the job skills employers are looking for. Even jobs traditionally thought of as low-level jobs teach value if you instruct your child to look for it.
Many places even offer benefits if you are willing to put in a full-time or part-time salary. Target, Walmart, McDonalds all offer fair wages and provide a 401K for full time employees. Your child could be putting money away for retirement at 18 while his or her peers are building up a debt portfolio that won’t be paid off into their forties or later.
Another option for your child is to travel. If your child has saved up income over the past few years and has enough saved to travel let your child explore the world. Nothing helps create perspective quite like spending their own money, watching their accounts deplete while exploring the world. Be prepared that you might have to bail your child out of a pinch if you haven’t fully tought them the power and value of money, but this is a great option to provide an awakening for your child.
You could encourage your child to go to a trade school. Recent reports have shown that not only are trades on decline but key trades such as electricians are in huge demand (https://solutions.borderstates.com/the-electrician-shortage/). Simple economics should tell you that jobs with a high demand are going to pay more than jobs with low demand. If your child has an aptitude for trade skills you should encourage him/her to look into trades that are in high demand https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/highest-paying-trade-jobs.
If your child has a strong work ethic and the right attitude you may even encourage starting a business. There are plenty of opportunities out there for somebody with the right attitude. I recently saw a sign posted for someone who picks up pet waste from backyards. The person charges an average of $31 per month per yard and cleans up weekly. Think about that, it probably takes the person 10 minutes to effectively clean a yard so for 40-50 minutes worth of work in a month they are earning $35-46 an hour. On their own time. At 40 hours a week they are earning more than the median income and are getting some good exercise while doing it.
The final option I’ll list is not the final option all together, but it is a great one. They could join the military. What’s that you don’t want your child to go to war? That is understandable, nobody wants their child in harm’s way. The fact of the matter is though that regardless of if your child join’s the military wars are indiscriminate. If war is declared on your country, then there isn’t much better place to be than in the military. At least then your child will be trained on the skills to defend him/herself. Additioanlly the military made some changes in the past few years. Unlike the military of just a decade ago current Soldiers/Airmen/Marines/ and yes even Coasties leave the military with some money saved for retirement. The updated pension program for the military doesn’t offer pension until 20 years, but your son or daughter will automatically be contributing 3% of their salary into their Thrift Savings Plan which is an account like a 401K. I will write a separate post about the benefits of this program and how your son or daughter can use it as a secret weapon for retiring early.
Bottom line, there are several options your child can look into that will help set them up for success later in life. And heck if your child changes his/her mind well college is still always an option, but at least they didn’t end up costing themselves more money when they couldn’t make up their mind first.
