This may not be the appropriate place for a post such as this, but hopefully someone wiser than me can lend some sage advice. I am looking for a new direction in my life after leaving my engineering job of 20+ years. Having had a long term interest in accounting and bookkeeping, I started courses on AccountingCoach.com and began courses for Quickbooks Online certification. Ideally, I would like to work with a few smaller businesses to get them set up with using QBO and be responsible for monthly bookkeeping tasks. I do not have any job experience in this field, so I am a little stuck with how to proceed to make myself more hireable. I have looked into a couple community college courses for bookkeeping certificates as well as a few masters of accounting for non-accounting majors programs, but given the cost of these options, I really need to make sure I am going down the right path. I don't think at this point in my life that I really want to go the CPA route, but I suppose it could be a possibility if I want more from this. I also had the idea of approaching a few local CPAs to see if they would take me on to perform menial data entry in exchange for further training, but don't really have the confidence to approach anyone given my lack of experience.
Any advice on how to proceed in my situation would be appreciated.
Any advice on how to proceed in my situation would be appreciated.