Should we leave London after burnout, or stay for my husband's career?

[ChickenChitty]

Help me with my life dilemma.

DH and I have been together for 15 years, we are late 30s with 2 kids at primary school. I work in a stressful job in the City, requiring extremely long hours (60-70hr weeks, weekend work most weekends and most holidays too). DH is in a creative career - his passion. I earn c.6x what he does. He is self-employed so does more with the kids and more around the house (I’d say he does 60% of the childcare and maybe 70% of household tasks).

I nearly died earlier this year with a ruptured appendix that was missed and negligent medical care. It came off the back of a period of very intense work - about 9 months of hell. I’m mentally traumatised from that experience and burnt out generally, and the whole thing has made me reassess my life.

Ive suddenly got clarity that I don’t want to continue doing my job anymore and I don’t even know what I’m doing it for as London is so expensive our quality of life is not great. We have enough equity in our small London terraced house that we could move back to my home town (up north) and buy somewhere large and detached and lovely mortgage free, near much better schools for the kids and near my family. DH really doesn’t want to leave London as he loves it, and his work is here (his family is up north too but nowhere near mine). He would want to continue commuting to London if we moved, which would probably involve overnight stays and impact family life.

Im starting to feel a bit of resentment as I increasingly feel like I’m killing myself and sacrificing my quality of life so that DH can live his dreams. But I love him, am proud of what he does, and would feel awful to effectively force him to move (which we would need to do if I quit my job, as he could never pay the mortgage alone). I knew when we got married that this would be his career. I’ve thought of middle grounds like downsizing in London or moving to a commuter area if I took a pay cut, but that would feel like a much worse outcome for the kids, to leave everything they know for something materially worse, and/or both parents travelling more than we do now . I don’t know whether I’m being unfair in wanting to do this or not, or what the right balance is, so thoughts from other people would be welcome!

@HotCrossBunplease We could move to a flat or a similar size house in a cheaper area of London. I think that it would be near impossible to find somewhere in an area with a great secondary school though that didn’t represent a massive compromise for the kids’ quality of life.

If we moved up north where I grew up we could buy a 5 bed detached house mortgage free. I would however still intend to get an (easier!) job.

@Ineffable23 I know it’s just an example but think the commute from eg Ipswich to the part of London where DH works would be closer to 2 hours, so if we’re into that level of commute may as well go to where we’ve got friends or family as opposed to starting from scratch in a random location with a still tricky commute.

Yes exactly.

I think it's very legitimate indeed to want to take the pressure off, but the rather specific and grand expectations are a whole new set of pressure.

If you have £600k in equity you should prioritise being mortgage free and still commutable to London by InterCity. That's a compromise.

I think the massive house and one parent's hometown requirements are complete red herrings.

You can't have everything but you can have a slower pace of life if you are more modest in your requirements.

Most people would kill to live in their own mortgage free £600k house...

My situation is not like yours but there are similarities in the London / sacrifice sense. I’d love to be in London - I miss it so much. I earn about 150k and my OH earned a bit more when we lived in London. So decent salaries but as you know, not exceptional and easily eaten up by housing / childcare / school fees. We left and live in Sheffield. I’m lucky that I can do my job mainly WFH - I go down once a week and sometimes do an overnight. My OH doesn’t work (we have young kids are we are renovating a house so he has a lot on).

If I insisted we’d all move back but my OH would need to work and his job was much more stressful than mine, we’d be paying thousands in childcare and we’d have no space. Life would be better for me in many ways but worse for everyone else, so here we are, in Sheffield.

IMO your OH needs to have a long hard think about the sacrifices you are making to let him have the life he wants. You deserve to be happy too.

How far North? I’m in Manchester and know several people in creative industries ( including a dc) that make London connections work by commuting a couple of days by train (I know the west coast line is crap but they just suck it up) or getting an air bnb room one night combined with making in roads in the thriving cultural scene/ media city stuff we have here. They do it for better (cheaper) quality of life and to be closer to family support, similar to your reasons.

Honestly I think move, cooler summers are worth it alone! Your DH can have 2/3 full on days in London working and catching up with friends.

Don’t go for a huge house, look at accessibility to the local train station and London commute. I live in a town with good schools and 2 hours 25 to St Pancras. It’s heavenly after Lea in the south east commuter belt.

But aren't you saying that your DH will then have to completely give up his very niche London only dream job?

Why are you so determined he has to do that?

What is your actual priority? A slower pace and no mortgage?

Or a five bedroom detached house for no obvious reason (do you have four children? Why do you need five bedrooms?).

Is living near family the priority? Is it worth the ultimatum that dh ends his career?

If dh had asked you to end your career to move to his hometown at a point in the past when you were loving it, would you have done so happily?

It just sounds as though you're self sabotaging by trying to insist you move somewhere which will require DH to leave his job, when you've told us he won't be able to work in the same way outside London.

Compromise on the house size and the town and choose somewhere you can be mortgage free without DH giving his career up.

When I met my DH he had a job similar to yours, think musician or actor. After several years he retrained and now has a successful professional career in something else. Ultimately he recognised that I couldn’t carry us financially for decades (including pensions!) and that it wasn’t fair to leave all of the material stresses of life on my shoulders. At times I felt bad because he was clearly passionate about his previous career but I’m also glad that I don’t find myself in a similar position to you, which ultimately I would have.

@ActuallyComfortable I’m not insistent on a 5 bed detached house, I’m just explaining that that is what we could afford if we moved where my family or DH’s family live vs our cramped terrace.

I’ve looked exhaustively at the areas where people typically commute to London from, and the problem is that they are still relatively expensive/don’t have much of their own job market, so the likelihood is that both DH and I would need to commute into London, and then I’d have even less time with the kids than I do now, plus we’d be starting all over again with no community/support network. Yes I’d have less job stress, but everything else would be worse than it is now.

If you know of an area with a sub 2 hour commute to London with excellent state schools and a local professional services job market where the houses are significantly cheaper than London then please tell me where.

I’m not following. You say you can’t move to a cheaper area of London, same size house, because schools would be bad. OK, fine. I live in North London myself and understand the schools situation.

Your husband could commute up to an hour on the train before we are into “needs to stay away from home during the week” territory.

You have 600k plus whatever mortgage you can get on his salary. (Let’s not factor in you working at all as you need a rest). Are you absolutely sure there is nowhere within an hour’s journey from a mainline London station where you can buy a house for 800k within catchment for an acceptable school?

I have to say, OP, that what you are doing is falling into the trap of the familiar. You know the schools near your parents, you can picture yourself in a detached house because you know the property market, you can even picture yourself sitting behind a desk in the local [solicitors] practice.

Right now you’re not being open enough to the unknown quantity that is a medium sized house in an area that would let your husband do his job and still see the kids at night, and your kids go to a decent school. Because your head is turned by the 5 bed house in a familiar area.

Cross posted with others!

My advice as a family who missed the boat when our older children were younger is to do it now while you still can. Older kids/ teens are much harder to uproot so we’ve stayed. While we are peace right now and there are benefits to be in in London, we’ll never be completely financially comfortable because of how expensive everything is and the lack of family support over the years has left me broken.

I work in academia and in science field to that of your husband that we have plenty of staff who commute from all over the UK.

@HotCrossBunplease you speak a lot of sense re familiarity, but also the benefit of the kids growing up near extended family is big for me. Plus I really can’t find an area that ticks the boxes in your post - but please let me know if you can think of any.

You don’t need a “local professional services market” in somewhere commutable from London. You could easily get a hybrid job in the City and only have to go in a couple of days a week.

Without wanting to inflict mum guilt, I think you're putting way too much weight on house size when it comes to your kids' "quality of life".

I grew up with two parents who worked crazy hours and were always exhausted and stressed. I barely saw them.

They would always say that the reason they worked so hard was to give us nice things and yet I would have traded all of it for a happy, relaxed home and a mum/dad who could have picked me up from school once in a while.

I bet your workplace in London is full of back office staff who live in such areas.

You need to own the fact that you just want to go home.

Your husband has a hobby job.

Breadwinner takes priority for location choice.

Kids will love it and you will all live in a fantastic house.

OP, we left London for Sheffield just as my eldest was starting primary school. No regrets. We don’t have links here but we wanted the bigger house, better schools, better quality and a calmer life. For the first few years we were both travelling down to London each week, now I have got a job locally but he still goes every week and stays over. It works for us. When you get to the point that you don’t know who or what you’re doing if for you have to make a change and ideally you can come to an agreement and/or meet in the middle. Wishing you the very best of luck.

Are you sure you can’t find another job in london slightly less prestigious but still paying well? I.e. paycut won’t be that massive?

eg if we take your investment bank as an example you could go into in-house corporate finance or in-house m&a in a big corporate. For example big tech pays well and hours aren’t as bad as investment banking

same with law, or consulting- all of them have well paid in-house avenues in tech industry

then you could stay in London
moving up north with no job sounds like a recipe for disaster to be honest
you are likely to end up miserable because making such a big decision in a burnout is unlikely to end well

Personally I would never contemplate a move where my DH would have to stay overnight regularly due to commute. It would wreck our sex life, and being realistic, most men will get lonely and find company for themselves. Long term not great for the dc's stability. It would be better to move but not so far that an overnight is necessary.

Have you considered Ealing/Acton? Lots of great state schools, great commute to the City.

It’s 3-4 days a week in office in my industry. I’m really not willing to do that with a commute on top because I would definitely see the kids less than I see them now. Atm at least I can log off at 6.30 be home by 7, and they’re not impacted by the 3-5 more hours I do when they’ve gone to bed.

We wouldn’t leave London if it meant us both commuting back to London - I’d rather carry on as I am than do that.

Yes they’re on my list if we stay in London, but I couldn’t change my job if we moved there.

I think he's being stubborn. There are very few creative roles that can't flourish in a big Northern city. I know an internationally famous classical musician who lives and works up North. There are loads of key orchestras and opera companies up North, great local reps and theatre companies, unis with good creative writing, game design and fine art courses, dance and drama schools.

You nearly died. Does he not care? You actually have to stop this way of life. It might kill you. Then he'd have to forfeit his creative career to raise DC somewhere more affordable.

Why not spend a week up North this summer, looking at houses and also at creative opportunities for him.

But you don’t need to - you can commute to the city or even Canary Wharf on the Lizzie line.

I’ve started this thread because I don’t want to do my job anymore, that’s the heart of it really. I do not want to carry on working in the city.