How much £ is WFH worth to you?

[Howmuchwfh]

How much money would you sacrifice to never have to travel to an office for work?

Currently considering a 20% pay cut to be fully remote. I am a high earner for what it's worth and currently travel a far amount plus regular office days.

For me at least £20k. I was offered a rise of that before Christmas for a role that was 3 days office based and turned it down. I'm home based with travel now and only applied for the other role because they initially said 1 day per week in the office.

Is there an opportunity for the job to be hybrid so you can keep the adult conversation when you want / need it!.

I think the previous comments about career progession are valid, I know that WFH has stopped any promotion. I would need to work 3 days in the office and I live 3 hours away so just not possible.

What do you do please

About 20%

I’m fully remote on 3 days a week and accepted 40% less for the privilege of being available for my child and to fight for his needs as a SEND child. It’s not a role I should have to do but the arguments with the broken Send system are well rehearsed. This gives me some income to fund privately everything that the NHS and LA do not and cannot provide.

I miss the interaction in a big big way - would prefer 50%, eg Monday Friday at home

I gave up homeworking and went full time back to the office. I hate working alone, popping in a laundry, making a casserole in the slow cooker, and all the domestic chores that seem to come from being at home. It just sounds like double the work (even if it’s not, it feels like it). I’d be interested to see the figures re. the percentage of men WFH versus the number of women. I’d put money on more men being visible, having face to face meetings, going for coffee with the boss, being seen at the departmental seminars, etc. etc.

Be careful what you wish for - in this scenario women will be more likely to end up isolated, with more limited opportunities for progression, working for 20% less than their male counterparts, and still having to do all the chores.

If you’re a high earner it would make much less than a 20% difference to your take him pay. Have you checked those figures out?

To be fully in the office every day again I would want double my current salary

Yes, it is less of a hit than that so my concern is primarily future pay expectations (next role after this I would be pitching from a lower base) and the pension is also not as generous. And as a PP said, I guess I'm just removing myself/becoming invisible, which men don't tend to do. But never to have to stay in a hotel or get a 6am train.....

I can talk myself in and out of it either way!

I've left a full time in office job because of this and will never go back to it. Currently I'm fully remote. Going hybrid would be an option but I think it'd have to be for at least another £15-20k more min. And I won't go back full time unless it's for huge money. Just not worth the cost to my peace of mind and quality of life

Whether to take a side step is an altogether different question.

I came on MN almost 15 years ago with a similar quandary. Already in a senior role, young DC and had been offered two roles with very different organisations, one of which was a real stretch.

I came on MN asking for advice and was told by almost every poster I was crazy to consider the stretch role with young DC, that I’d never get that time back and it would be a source of regret.

I went for it and it transformed my career, my life and that of my family. I have been afforded opportunities that I could not imagine. It gave me the chance & confidence to set up and sell my own business, to retire, to go back to work doing something I love, to give back to my community in ways I find rewarding and are impactful.

it was life changing so i wanted to take a moment to cheerlead for the you don’t have to step back/sideways side.

I compared a fully remote job at £40k with an in-person job. Worked out that commuting half an hour each way would cost me an about £9k in fuel and additional wear on the car. That's before factoring in the benefits of flexibility for the school run or being home for a contractor or anything else you might think of. WFH is so valuable.

Thank you. Really good to hear a different narrative when the need to work less after you have kids is constantly pushed at us.

We'd save a fortune if DH stopped wfh.
He has a habbit of walking to tesco for a break. And spending the odd £5 here, £10 there.....

Whatever I could spare before it would put me into hardship or necessitate a big change in lifestyle, especially whilst my children were young.

You can always earn money, but you can never get back time.

I'd get a cast iron guarantee that the WFH is permanent before you leap

Last thing you need is to take the pay hit and in 6mo there's a new CEO who wants "boots on the ground" etc

I've been full time wfh since 2019, just before Covid. I will never go back to a full time office job, and I don't think I would even go hybrid unless the office was within a 15-20 min drive max. I adore wfh. I do not miss the interactions, I love that I can crack on with what I need to at the pace I want to, I'm not distracted by whatever else is going on in the office. I have no commuting costs, I don't have to wear smart clothes, I can get shit done around the house as and when, and I can get my kids when they are sent home sick without anyone even knowing, unless they are really unwell and I need to take the day off.

If I am ever at a point of actually missing interaction I have linked up with local friends who are also wfh that day. Maybe we go to a coffee shop and work there, or I have gone to their house or vice versa, for a bit of chit chat alongside working. DH is hybrid so is also home 2 days and around for a lunchtime natter or whatever.

Money-wise 20% is a big drop but no one knows if it makes sense for you unless you can still cover all your outgoings and have some money to play with? If it doesn't come with significant financial hardship, then the flexibility of wfh is 100% worth it for me every single time.

It’s the time drain of a one hour each way commute that I can’t bear.

Am hybrid but would take a 50% pay cut to be fully remote once dd finishes school as I could move to a cheaper area and be quids in.

I wouldn’t do more days in the office unless the salary increase meant being able to live within 15 mins door to door of the office. Which given I’m in London would mean a 300% salary increase and a 500% lump sum bonus LOL.

Lots of people like being in the office and seeing their teams (I do) but the time drain of hours spent commuting adds too much stress.

If I went in every day it would cost £6,524 for an annual season ticket, plus £2,100 for annual Tube pass, so £8624.
It takes two hours door to door (bit longer coming back) so lets say four hours a day commuting. If I count that as working time that's about £27,360 on my salary, with four weeks holiday.
So I would say WFH is worth £35 984 to me

WFH for me saves around £46 per day:
£10 station car park
£28.40 return rail ticket
£8 lunch (unless I get organized and pack it in advance)
Bit of money on petrol to drive from home to station and back, plus more if I have a coffee from Pret or similar.

Add up your commute and lunch costs and see where it leaves you.

While my kids are so small it’s priceless. I miss being in the office for some of my time (couldn’t cope with it full time as I don’t get as much done), but you honestly couldn’t pay me enough to make me go to the office every day at the moment. However that is from a place of privilege in that we are reasonably well off.

I talk about this all the time

I'd say about £15 k

It's absolutely life-changing

I took a pay cut to go from FT office to FT remote. This was before Covid.
I "lost" around £500 p/m. But I no longer had £200 p/m commuting costs. I used to spend around £10 a day on coffee on the way in and lunch combined, and no I was never going to sacrifice those things to save money. Some days it was all that kept me going! So that's another £200 a month. I probably do save the other £100 on getting less take aways/ready meals etc. No more impromptu pub trips after work, that's saved some money. I know I used to spend a lot more on clothes and stuff too. So ultimately it's all balanced out, I'm probably better off tbh.

Even if I had lost money overall, I'd still have done it. You really need to think about the pros and cons for you personally. We're all different. I don't miss the interaction but if you think you would, then it's something to consider. For me it's the benefit of feeling I actually have a life outside work now, which I didn't feel I did before, that makes it worth it for me.

Bear in mind that the job I do can be completed on a laptop

It doesn't actually require social interaction