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?!

After juggling a 5 day role in 4, You are screwing yourself - squeezing a 5 day role into 4.

I would work on establishing a flexible work at home day Friday .. or choose a mid week Wednesday .. most bank holidays are Mondays or Fridays. Why rob yourself of a free day ?

At only 37, your holiday leave, pension will take a bigger hit than you think and £300 savings is really not a huge buffer in the long run.

Don't forget to factor in tax etc

Your take home will probably not be 20% lower

Sounds like a great idea. The only suggestion I have is to Wednesday off instead of Friday. I have Wednesday off and it's a great day to have free it's like having 2 weekends per week.

I’m split on this actually, I’m very much a go for it life is too short type of person, however, I think I would be a bit more cautious of doing anything at the moment given that fuel and food costs are on the up, rise in NI, Council Tax and the uncertainty of mortgage interest rate rises. I’m sounding like a complete fun sponge I know.

@wonderstuff

Sounds great, I would think about whether you’d be better putting the money you overpay on your mortgage into your pension, with interest rates so low your mortgage debt isn’t likely to be costing you too much whereas pension contributions are pre tax so you’re getting 20% more value and the investment pot is likely to rise in value above the cost of your mortgage because the interest rates are so low. If/when the cost of your mortgage increases you can divert the £100 back to your mortgage.

I agree with this, but I would Put the money in an ISA where you can access it. Then if interest rates do rocket you can pay it towards the mortgage. You won't get tax relief on the contributions but the investment returns are still likely to be above the mortgage interest rate. If your 26k invested? Are you getting any returns on it? If not, I'd keep 3-6 months salary in cash and get the rest in an iSA.

I’m a bit risk averse and wouldn’t want to lose the extra cash due to likely cost of living increases. I do compressed hours instead - best of both worlds. Well slightly longer hours but I wfh now so no commute so time saved that way.

@OnlyFoolsnMothers whatever she wants. If she wants to spend the day on the sofa with her pants on her head singing carols that's up to her. I only work 3 days. What I do with my other days is my business. I actually run a food bank and visit my 88 year old mum. Is that worthy enough for you? But then that's only so I can spend the weekend having sex drinking and telling twats like you to piss off. OP go for it.

[quote Startagaintoday]@OnlyFoolsnMothers whatever she wants. If she wants to spend the day on the sofa with her pants on her head singing carols that's up to her. I only work 3 days. What I do with my other days is my business. I actually run a food bank and visit my 88 year old mum. Is that worthy enough for you? But then that's only so I can spend the weekend having sex drinking and telling twats like you to piss off. OP go for it.[/quote]
Again why the hostility, are people not allowed to give a point of view and their opinion. Perhaps you aren’t made for a forum such as MN

@OnlyFoolsnMothers

Again why the hostility, are people not allowed to give a point of view and their opinion. Perhaps you aren’t made for a forum such as MN

Because instead of giving constructive advice you've judged her life to be "utterly dull and minimal" and citing not having children as one of the reasons. I actually echo the OP. Fuck off.

@MrsHGWells

After juggling a 5 day role in 4, You are screwing yourself - squeezing a 5 day role into 4.

I would work on establishing a flexible work at home day Friday .. or choose a mid week Wednesday .. most bank holidays are Mondays or Fridays. Why rob yourself of a free day ?

At only 37, your holiday leave, pension will take a bigger hit than you think and £300 savings is really not a huge buffer in the long run.

You don’t rob yourself if you take a Friday or Monday. Bank holidays are pro rata so you gain time if they are on your day off, but lose time if they’re not.

@OnlyFoolsnMothers

Sorry but I don’t get why you would- you don’t have a huge amount of excess money to spend lavish days off on, no kids- honestly you need to find a job you enjoy- the way you’ve described life is utterly dull and minimal

Better ‘full and minimal’ than unnecessarily rude to people

I cut down to 4 days after I qualified in my profession and it was amazing. Long weekend every week. Definitely do it if all the finances work for you. 3 day weekends should be the norm!

I work full time over 4 days 37 hours, mainly because I have a 3 year old and DH does the same on a different day so we can reduce the cost of childcare. However I don't see me ever going back to five days, even once DS is at school. That week day off allows me to do more fun things at the weekend. Before DS I worked in a role where unsocial working was expected I used to do two evenings a week and rather than work the Friday I'd work long days on those days and have the Friday off, by early afternoon Friday I was caught up with housework, laundry, errands and had what felt like a long weekend to play with every week. However I've always earned a full time salary. You don't earn much, the cost of living is increasing and I wouldn't be dropping salary for it at this time. Especially as you're not sure which direction your personal life will take in the future. Negotiate full time over 4 days. Best of both worlds

The other benefit of full time over 4 days is you get your full bank holiday credit and don't have to work slightly longer days on your 4 working days that week. Lots of people advised me when I was going back after mat leave not to work 4 days/0.8 because they just give you a full time workload to do anyway, different if you're half time, but it's just viewed as oh she's pretty much full time. So you just screw yourself by getting paid less

I work 4 days a week and it's great. Go for it.

100% do it

I did about 10 years ago and it made a huge difference

That job was made redundant but I now work on consultancy basis so even more flexible

You sound like you know what's important to you and that extra time with friends &/or just for you will be life-improving

Agree with pp to put extra money into your pension rather that mortgage and you should be more covered for future

Enjoy!!

Pension, pension, pension.

I work 30 hours over 5 days with late start and early finish but I do have 3 kids and love drop off and picks up at school so my situation is different. I did initially think to do 4 days instead but I didn’t as that would mean squeezing 5 days’ work into 4. I also WFH twice a week so does feel like am home a lot to my kids. My salary is 40k.

Two things to consider:

1. Friday is a very popular day to request off – you may not find an employer willing/able to give Fridays off. Consider whether a different day could work – what about Mondays?
2. Look at the impact on your pension – I am on a final salary pension scheme and would lose a significant amount if I was to drop to a four day week. You may be different.

Perfectly reasonable

My only question is can you cram your work into 4 days anyway, do a day or two from home, and take a day off anyway?

I ask because you aren’t being paid an awful lot, so I would hope you aren’t doing excessive hours anyway.

I’ve been looking at this too, once I’ve bought a house, although I’m considering a nine day fortnight rather than 0.8. In my role (civil service)I can build up flexitime rather than dropping hours and a colleague said why not do overtime instead and use it to take the Friday off (with manager’s permission) as then my pension, holiday entitlement etc isn’t affected. I haven’t done my pension calculations for a while but need to sit down and look at all that to work out what to do.

I’m single, no kids too.

My mum died just a couple of years into retirement so I’m keen to enjoy life now in case I’m not around for retirement! But also want to be in a good position if I do make it that far.

Loved the retort about sitting with one’s pants on one’s head singing carols. Absolutely. It seems that some can’t understand that it’s possible to have a fulfilling life without children/a partner, and that my definition of fulfilling might be quite different to another’s, and who am I to judge?

@JustLyra Working 0.8 F/t salary and purposely not working on guaranteed bank holidays, you are still missing out on a paid “holiday” vs not being paid ~ scheduled day off.

Do it OP

What do you plan on doing though on four Fridays?

It might be worth thinking about giving full time work over 9 day fortnights a try. This was my favourite pattern pre kids. 5 days work into 4 feels really intense but 10 days into 9 is hardly noticeable and the fortnightly whole day off was amazing, and was enough extra for me.

OP - I work 4 days (started when my first child was born) and never want to go back to 5. It gives a day at the end of the week to decompress from work (even though I'm still busy doing children stuff).

Things I'd try to put in place in your shoes:

• work out the impact it might have on pension
• carefully consider your next job/employer, I've recently moved to a company that has a very good pension (they pay 15% contributions) and have cost of living pay rises every year, so I'm confident that my pension will be ok & I won't be left behind in terms of wage increases (I was frequently overlooked because I was part time at a previous job)
• do you plan to remortgage/change your mortgage deal soon? If so, I'd do this before going part time if possible, in case they decide you can't afford payments on your part time pay

Apart from that, just enjoy the extra time!