Here's my situation - am I mad to drop Fridays?

[AndItDoesntSeemToMatter]

I'm 37. Not particularly ambitious I want to be happy in my work but I mainly work to live. Senior admin role. No children or wish to have any, no partner but let's not pull at that thread! Small mortgage and (touch wood I don't get neighbours from hell) happy in my home for the foreseeable.

Income is £31k, taking off pension contributions and "bought" extra days which I won't be buying next year, I take home just under £1900 per month.

All bills, insurance, mortgage and a mortgage overpayment of £100 plus food and petrol comes to around £1,100. The overpayment doesn't hit my mortgage straightaway I put it into a retainer and once it builds up to £1k I'll throw the whole chunk at it if no other emergency has arisen in the meantime.

I also transfer £500 per month into my normal savings account when I can, unless it's MOT month etc. Car is bought outright and only 3 years old. My savings account has £16k in it, my nest egg. Maybe a bigger house way in the future maybe a wedding who knows.

Leaves me with £300 just to play with. I don't live an extravagant lifestyle, rarely go out other than a very occasional beer garden or treating Mum to lunch; my only indulgence is the odd leather jacket or pair of shoes and frankly I have enough of both! My UK holidays are with family a couple of times per year and not hugely expensive.

I want to move to a new role and drop to a 4 day week because to put it bluntly - I can't be fucked. I'd rather spend my Fridays cycling or hiking. I'll save less of course and my pension will no doubt be affected but I'm thinking it will be worth it for the work life balance. I'll try to arrange a 10% cut rather than straight 20% and work 32 hours over Monday to Thursday. Or maybe even just be lazy and cut the full 20% I'm not sure.

Am I missing something? Do you think I'm in a fairly reasonable position to do this at my youngish age?!

I would first of all put away 6 months of pay as savings. I’d also calculate when your mortgage will be paid off and how much your pension would be.

And I’d have a back up plan eg get a lodger in (even Monday to Friday) if something happened to my job
And I’d start with a 9 day fortnight to see how it went.

I choose to work a 4 day week right now. Honestly, my mental health is way more important than a few extra coins in the bank!
But I take Wednesdays off so I only ever work two days in a row!

We both work four days, its brilliant.

One rule we do have is that our day off (both Friday at the moment) should be thought of as holiday, so it isn’t a day for cleaning etc, but doing something fun, relaxing, lazy etc.

I think it’s a really bad time to be reducing your income unless you have a lot of spare money to play with. Bills and cost of living are only going to go up, and probably very steeply. With no kids or plans to have any it seems a no brainer to look to achieve the same thing through a nine day fortnight.

Sounds good to me. I’m a nurse who does 5 days a week, in a few years once I go up a few increments I’m going to drop to 4 days. It’ll be a pay cut and a bit tight but I just think it’ll make the biggest difference to my life. Life’s way too short

Go for it OP. You've got more savings than I've ever had. You've got no kids to bring extra expenses (I've got Uni costs to look forward to soon). Stop adding so much to the savings and enjoy the joy of Friday's free to do what you like.

Do it !

I've done this and it's made such a difference to my work life balance. My mental health has also improved.

I have a pension, I save. I can make cut backs if needed.

Enjoy x

I have Fridays off - never went back to ft when DS got older - and honestly it's brilliant. We are lucky because we can afford it, but just keep an eye on your pension, I increased from 28 to 30 hrs per week last year to bump it up a bit and make AVC contributions.

Think the pension impact will be more than you think.

Me and my husband are both very lucky to work part time. We both exercise on our days off, the physical and mental benefits of that extra exercise, fresh air and vitamin D during your day off really shouldn’t be underestimated. May even help you live longer and be more physically fit to be able to enjoy your retirement years!

Go for it. I used to be part time and worked Tuesday - Thursday. If I ever went part time again I wouldn’t drop Friday as it’s a more relaxed day and gives me change to catch up on things with less meetings and emails coming in

I have toyed with part time versus full for a while as we could easily afford it.

However what swayed me to stick to FT was that I could retire earlier by using that money to throw into pensions and investments rather than work longer but PT.

Do it! I work PT and never want to go back FT as long as we can afford it. My DH works PT too (we have two disabled children) and it's given us a better work/life balance.

I’ve done both, going from FT to PT, now back to FT, will the work load in your new role be adjusted to your new PT hours or will you be fitting a FT role into PT hours? My work load didn’t change, the work that built up on my day off was there waiting for me to catch up on, on average it took me a day to catch up every week. I decided to go back FT, to claim the extra £££, and not feel so rushed in my job, I needed a day to get over the 4 very busy days, but then I’m a little older than you, also there’s every chance my job will be off shored and I wanted to maximise any redundancy payoff / pension so I can have a proper P/T job when mine comes to an end. I personally would only go part time if that is what the job is advertised at, negotiating a FT position into PT doesn’t necessarily mean a reduced workload.

I've gone to a four day week (am much older and now have no mortgage). Best thing I ever did, though I chose Mondays as the extra non-work day, because it suited better for the support I give to my mum and aunt.

Check pension provision carefully I suggest.

depends how old you are
if you work would allow it
would you still get job satisfaction

oh, you are 37 sorry, i mised that
agree with above - how could you condense your work? would it be very stressful, would you lose credibility?

@Rainbowqueeen

I would first of all put away 6 months of pay as savings. I’d also calculate when your mortgage will be paid off and how much your pension would be. And I’d have a back up plan eg get a lodger in (even Monday to Friday) if something happened to my job And I’d start with a 9 day fortnight to see how it went.

She has £16k of savings which is 6 months pay for her

Go for it. I work 4 days and you can still get the job done in that time. I don't reduce my workload. Having the extra day I run swim and cook or get jobs done so my weekend is free. I have the dc to look after too but they are at school a lot.

It's cutting into my pension savings and would be worth at least 12k a year post tax but I figure that I'm less stressed this way and that I may as well enjoy life when I'm younger rather than working all the time.

Yes you won't be able to retire as early but there's no point just living for retirement. You could die young and never see the benefit! Think of this as taking a bi of your retirement early.

A day off to go hiking sounds amazing.

The only thing I’d watch for is whether you’d still be expected to do 5 days worth of work. Depends on your role, I’m quite senior and do 4 days but wondering whether it’s worth it as I end up doing work on the 5th anyway and trying to cram a lot in to the other 4.

Do it, just make sure you have income insurance in case you can't work for some reason in the future xx

I doubt my current employer would allow it but I'm looking for a new job anyway - why would I lose credibility? You mean I'd look lazy etc??

I work 30 hours flexibly and often have a day off and I love it. I wouldn’t worry about what others think but be wary of being given a FT job to do over 4 days.
Life can change and it’s hard to plan for that - I got divorced and needed to get a mortgage on my own that I’ll have until I’m 70 unless I can pay it off sooner.
So seeing as you’re on your own and already have a pension fund I’d use extra cash now on the mortgage so you own your house.

I am a similar age also no cchildren and dropped my fridays for the same reason. I spend my Fridays cycling and running and love it.

I earn less than you (25k if I were full time) and have to be careful with money but I would rather have the time than the cash.

I figured most women go part time when they have kids. Why not go part time without them?