To ask how part time you’d go if…

[workidoos]

Your DH’s wage covers all the essential outgoings (mortgage, bills, food, cars, childcare). After that you still need to save and have some disposable income enough for clothes, trips/holidays, meals out, birthday gifts, little treats & generally a nice quality of life.

How much would cover the above for you as a family of 3, per month?

I need to work out how realistic our plans are for my return to work. Keen to keep my foot in the door career wise but know how quickly the early years go and want to spend as much time as I can with DD.

I do 2 days but teacher so easy to jobshare. About 1200 a month which goes on my own expenses like phone, meals out etc and some in the general household pot.

We don't go on big expensive holidays and we mainly buy second hand stuff and I hardly spend anything on clothes or makeup!

For me it's worth it for work life balance and time with DC. We are super lucky as had family help with childcare and now have free hours. I'd still work even if most of it went on childcare though.

I would go up to 3 days but no more! 4 is basically full time.

Agree with this. At one point I was 3 days doing tues/wed/thurs and missing money was a bad decision.

@Beansandneedles I ended up doing full time work on 3 days pay. It was awful. I'm self employed now.
If I had that time again I'd do FT compressed into 4

Following. We’re in the same situation which is lovely. I currently work 3 days and bring in £1300

but I’d prefer to work 4 days and have less work stress and possibly lower pay! I think! But I love saving a nice chunk every month as we’ve never been able to save before.

(Aside from the fact that the job market is absolutely pants at the moment and part time jobs are rare!)

The issue is pension - what are you doing about that?

I think it depends on your job/ career, to quite a big extent.

In many jobs, 4 days is a bad idea, as they don't replace you on that 5th day, and you end up trying to get 5 days work done every week for 4 days pay.
Going down to 3 days means it is more likely they will find someone for the other two days, or at least it makes it easier for you to draw up the boundaries.
2 days can be nice, but in many jobs it can be difficult to get your work done - remember generic e-mails every employer gets / Team meetings / training courses / PDRs / e-learning / etc etc take the same number of hours whether you are FT or PT. When you take all that stuff out of your 2 days, if starts really reducing the time to do your actual job.

In terms of money, that is so individual to each couple. What some people consider a luxury or a treat, others expect to have as 'usual'. Look at some of the 'how much do you spend on your weekly shop?' threads (or, quite frankly even the 'how much pocket money do you give your dc?' or 'How much does your student need for spending every week?' threads) to see the vast differences, and that some people can't understand how you spend £200 in a supermarket, whilst others can't see how you can do it for less.

I was coming on to say the same!

My DH pays all the bills and our joint expenses, our mortgage is paid off now and he pays for our holidays, our expensive hobbies, our cars and our joint socialising. He also pays the uni expenses for our children and for their cars.

I didn't work until all the children were at school and since then I've worked 20 hours a week term time only. I earn £2000 a month which goes towards my pension, savings, clothes, gifts, coffee & lunches with friends, cosmetics, gym membership, weight loss jabs and any other extras I need.

I did 3 for many years for a similar wage and it worked very well (freelance now in the same job so kind of full time now but flexible). For me 2 was too few and 4 too many 3 fitted in very well.

don’t work a Monday I did both Tuesday-Thurs and Weds-Fri and both have advantages and disadvantages

I probably would be careful if I had my time again. Part time really impacts the pension and while it seems a long way off I'd make sure I got the balance right. I'm no longer with my ex and I realise those part time years impacted my future. I should have considered it more carefully.

Thank you, this is valid too!