To quit or not to quit well-paying nanny job soon?

I have 5 years of childcare experience, which is 2 years nanny, 3 in a daycare as a teacher. I've volunteered and coached for an elementary school, I volunteered in a homeless shelter infant room, I am a Girl Scout assistant leader, and before that I did a year of office work in a law firm. I graduated with my BA in Child Psychology last spring from the University of Minnesota.

Aside from working with children I am hoping to revisit my interests in cooking, baking and website creation.

I currently work as a nanny and Household Manager for a family that has me employed for 45-50 hours per week, $37k per year (accounting for overtime each week). I LOVE this job. I've brought in a curriculum I've made from the classes I've taken and the experiences I have from work, and we do activities indoors and outdoors. I also manage their household minor chores, even having the kids join in and help out. I take the older one to preschool and the younger one goes with me on grocery shopping and errands for the family, or stays home with me and we work on our curriculum.

Before leaving on vacation this last week the mom told me she is thinking of enrolling the youngest (2 year old) in preschool this fall, since he will be a couple months shy of 3 and needs more social engagement from being around other kids his age. Completely understandable, just bums me out because their original plan, which included having a third child, isn't going to happen. I would go down to 20 hours a week. She thought it would be good for me to go to graduate school, and if I needed I would have the morning to work another job or go to school if needed.

Too bad the programs I want to enroll in (speech therapy and marriage and family therapy) are no longer accepting applications...

I found out that many Twin Cities' school districts will be putting up next year's education assistant/paraprofessional positions open up. I thought about mental and behavioral health too, but I went to 3 interviews this past week (mainly to get a feel for the atmosphere, see if it might be a good fit) and not only is it hard to enter without prior ABA experience, but I just didn't feel it was a good fit.

I'm concerned that I will have to leave this job sooner than I'd like. It's the 3rd time in the past 3 years I'd be having to look for a job. I'm concerned about stability at home, paying for loans on my car and school loans. I was easily paying for those and rent and utilities, and I might not be qualified enough to earn as much as I do now.

tl;dr: I found out my nanny job is going to be cut down this fall to under half the hours I originally work. Should I look now while the job market is hot?

Submitted February 28, 2017 at 05:33PM by max01291 http://ift.tt/2mBKdb4