To ask if anyone has quit their good, highly paid stressful job for a smaller one?

[joanneg36]

I am seriously struggling with the 'having it all' at the moment and interested in others' experiences. Has anyone ever quit their 'brilliant' (on paper) job for work/life balance reasons and how did you manage/what did you do next?

I work four days a week in a senior-ish job. London and well paid but not law/city type money. Husband works too and earns similar. My 'four days', like many people, is in reality 7 days work squeezed into 4 and I am on email all hours. Kids are 5 and 1 and I just feel exhausted and as though I can't go on like this.

We could cope financially with me earning less, we'd have to cut back but it would be sacrifices of the meals out/foreign holidays type rather than not being able to pay bills etc. My bigger fear is about risk to my future earning potential and just general fear of unknown. I don't know how easy it would be to find a 'smaller' more part-time job in my industry but I feel I could at least try....

Interested in all thoughts - feel free to tell me to stop moaning and get on with it!

Dowser you may be right. The women especially who are still doing it are seemingly still childless and now mid to late thirties. That may be their choice of course, but on the other hand it may not be. You never imagine people wistfully looking at your life do you?!

Just thinking budgie girl....no one ever lies on their deathbed wishing they had spent more time in the office

That's very true. I'm not knocking anyone who wants to have a high-flying career - that's great for them. But of course, for many it comes at a cost, which can be stress, worry, or time with the children.

I too hate the comments about missing precious time with your beautiful children. It makes me heave. My child is no less precious to me because I choose to spend time at work

I don't think anyone has suggested that your children are not precious to you if you work long hours. Of course not. But there are only so many hours in the day. My DH was working a 60 hour week. Often on Saturdays and Sundays with a day off in the week. Which meant that once the kids started school, he only saw them a few hours a week.

If you are working long hours, of course you see your children less. For some, that works ok, for others it doesn't. Horses for courses. No criticism of either situation. IME, the teen years are when your children need you more, not less, but still some families make it work even with fulltime working parents. For my DH it wasn't working. Extra time with his kids was more important than money. That's all. Others would have a different priority, it doesn't mean that they love their kids any less than my DH loves his.

BlueBlueBelles- take it from me, as I was one of them- a lot of single women in their mid thirties are climbing the career ladder because they have not managed to find the right person, so may as well make the most of their available time and flexibility (after building in time for editing dating profiles, going on hideous blind dates and joining male- dominated clubs .) Very very few deliberately forego family for the sake of career.

A friend of mine was a hot shot lawyer. He quit to become a music teacher. He loves it.

budgiegirl it's comments like this that make me nauseous:

U will never get this beautiful time in your children's lives back.

And the fact that very, very rarely do men get the same guilt trip thrown at them.

But choughed. it's true and I feel sad For the ladies here who did not have the choice . Financial necessity meanttheyhadto go back to work.

Oh god, I hear you. Work 4 days in a demanding stressy job and also on email all the time - it's not even amazingly paid.

Dowser do you feel equally sad for the men?

And us "ladies" who work don't spend the whole time mooning over the lost hours with our children. We can get quite a lot of satisfaction from it. Similarly, our children don't pine for us every moment we are away.

I didn't reduce my hours to spend 'precious' time with my kids, in all fairness.

I was just knackered - a long commute and having to balance a highly demanding managerial role with small children was breaking me.

In fairness, my DH also changed his working life to accommodate our family. He went self employed so he can work from home a couple of days a week.

I went freelance in my existing area and after a couple of years got a retainer which added in financial stability for a decade.

Doesn't that make it sounds easy! I can assure you there was lots of doubt and plenty of tears at the time.

Fast forward 12 years, that role has just ended but at 45 with kids now a happy 10 and 13 I've been "testing the market" and it turns out that what I've been doing whilst on my own is pretty highly valued. However, I have turned down a second interview at a good law firm because doing the commute 4 days a week felt like an absurd waste of time and marketing the skills of my boss rather than my own felt really strange!

In terms of earning power, it's strange because I dropped out of "the system" so I'm no longer on anyone else's "scale". I could now apply for FT jobs at £50000 or £100000 and it seems from testing the market that I would be taken seriously at either of those two pricing points. It's kind of up to me.

Have you told us how old you are? I had my kids at 32 and 34. If that had been five years later I'd be 50 now and it starts getting harder then I think (ageism).

I think it is great that you gathering lots of stories about what happens down the line if you "downsize" (though truthfully I've often earned as much as in the old job because of being the person who keeps the money...).

I do feel for the men. My son is in a very low paid job . His quality time with his children is reduced because he often works weekends when they are off and off when they are at school. He works 12 hours shifts plus an hours commute. I personally think that's cruel. Whoever thought that was a good way to live wants shooting.

I worked for a firm of solicitors and I wondered when my team leader( one of the partners) got to spend much time at home of an evening because there always seemed like there was as much going on in the evening as during the day. Charity events, evening seminars etc etc
Yes I do feel for both parents. Having been raised in the fifties , i see that many people seem to have more but they don't seem any happier or seem to have a better quality of life.

And us "ladies" who work don't spend the whole time mooning over the lost hours with our children. We can get quite a lot of satisfaction from it

And that's why it works for you. But for some it doesn't, it's the same for both men and women. I do agree that there does seem to be more 'guilt' attached for women, but this can be both self inflicted, and a feeling of being judged by others. But hopefully this is slowly changing. There are more STHDs than ever before, for example.

Similarly, our children don't pine for us every moment we are away I know they are unlikely to 'pine' for you, but I do know from experience that teenagers are very time consuming creatures. I also know that mine would definitely prefer to have at least one of us around after school. But that's our family. It may be different in yours.

I spent most of my early career running away from good jobs

Started as a teenager with a temporary job in the City in the late 80s loadsamoney era - bit different in that I'd always planned to go to uni and had the place, but a lot of people tried to persuade me that I'd regret not staying and making a pile.

Then did the Civil Service fast stream exams after uni and got in - lasted 3 months before walking out because I could see myself spending the next 40 years in meetings.

Then circuitously ended up part owning a small consultancy firm and quit that to go abroad with no employment prospects whatsoever (though did have a house to rent out which gave a basic income).

I've never, ever regretted walking away when I did. I now run a small business with DH, have pretty much total control of my working hours, and can always make the call that the sun is shining, work can wait, and go to the beach with DD instead. We don't earn city money, but we have a very good income for where we live.

I'd say the trick is to go for it entirely - not try to maintain your previous life on a lower salary, but recognise that you're making the choice to give up private school for your kids / foreign holidays / big house, or whatever, and that your new circumstances offer enough advantages to balance that out.

"I too hate the comments about missing precious time with your beautiful children. It makes me heave. My child is no less precious to me because I choose to spend time at work"

To be honest, children weren't any part of the issue for me. You can hate your life being taken over by work even if you have no dc at all!

Do these jobs really exist though? I feel in a similar situation to you but if I went down a grade I'd lose my car allowance and 25% of my salary, half the bonus etc... But I truly think the volume and therefore stress would be the same, there would be just one more person above me shovelling the shit down to me!

I did it three years ago. I had been driving 80 mile round trip to work ten hour days in management. Serious responsibility, people management, etc etc. I'd been with the company over ten years having started at the bottom and was bringing home close to £35k a year. I was broken and utterly exhausted with no energy to do anything at the weekend. In the evenings I feel asleep on the sofa and ended up in bed at nine to try and get enough sleep to get up before five and do it all again. It wasn't worth it.

I did the maths and worked that factoring in fuel/wear and tear on the car, I could comfortably take a £10k p.a.pay cut. I was actually braver and possibly riskier than that and cut by over £15k but now I work less than ten minutes from home, 8-5, no weekends or bank holidays. The buck stops with someone else and although financially I'm a little more careful, I can breathe!

Dowser how much of your son's predicament is his own making? Why does he live over an hour away from work? Why does he work shifts which contravene EU Working Time Regulations, particularly if the pay is low? Does his wife work? Have they overstretched themselves financially? Very few people HAVE to live like that and it's a cop out to blame it all on society/ employers.

Just don't read emails when you're not working.
Take one task home to do offline (eg read something for a meeting in the morning) and schedule time to catch up on emails first thing in the morning (on the commute) - just read through don't respond.
Tell people you have seen their request and you will deal with it.
Instant response is just habit and if you step back a touch you'll see a lot of "crises" actually resolve themselves before the day is through.
Particularly if you're senior, avoiding instant response and giving yourself some space and distance to look objectively can help you cut through the crap and work far more effectively.

Interesting how many have quit their stressful careers and have gone self employed.

Agree 100% with what Museumum says.

Out of interest, if you contact a colleague overseas out of their office hours do you get annoyed if they don't respond immediately?

You need to break the habit of responding instantly to anything out of hours unless there is a solid business reason for doing so. Out of office auto reply is your friend.

Have you considered going full time, but maintaining your current hours, and 'working from home' 1 day a week?

You virtually do that anyway, right?

Then use a chunk of the extra income (or, all of it) to outsource more grunt work. Cleaning, washing, ironing, etc.

He lives half an hour from work, so it's an hours commute onto a twelve hour day.

No they have not over stretched themselves.

Everyone works those shifts where he works. There's only two shift patterns 7 am till 7 pm and 7 pm till 7 am and then time off. I didn't know that 12 hour shifts were against eu regs. I don't suppose he knows either.

Thankfully he's moving to another job shortly in our home town with shorter shifts...yeeeha!

His wife has just found a part time cleaning job in a care home. So I'm hoping things will be a lot easier for them.

We live in an area of high unemployment so getting a job isn't easy.

The fact is that if your job is affecting your health it will eventually catch up with you either physically or mentally unless you take action now. You are being very sensible to realise that you need to speak to your employers and possibly look for a less demanding job before you are signed off with stress caused by being exhausted.

I have seen many people having to give up work completely because they burned themselves out by the time they reached middle age. It's better to have a lower regular income than rely on sickness benefits for many years because you felt you had to keep going.

Glad to hear they're taking steps to make life easier Dowser. The EU Regs are a bit more complex than a max number of hours per day so if it's shift work the employer might be complying depending how the hours add up over each month. I suspect it's close to the bone though.

I think working 4 days is the worst of all worlds - you take a 20% pay-cut, but are still expected to carry a 100% workload.

I only work 60% over 3 days and this makes all the difference in terms of workload expectations. I don't do out of hours either. No kids, just a very clear definition of how much of a role I will allow work to play in my life.