To leave a promoted position for a less well paid role

[mermaid101]

I’m looking for experiences (good and bad!) of people who have done this.

My situation is that I have been in various middle management roles in the civil service for about the last 10 years. I am now earning about 60 000.

I have two children one 8 and one 12. My DH is self employed and works part time and mainly looks after the children. I am 48 and hoping to retire at 60. My mortgage is currently 800 per month with 100,000left to pay. I don’t have much spare money but have a biggish savings account (50 000) which I intend to invest for the children for higher education or similar.

I am horribly burnt out by work. I have very little spare time and feel very unwell with stress. I have a GP appointment to discuss this next week. I am particularly stressed by a project I am working on just now, but generally feel very overwhelmed at work although my manager is very supportive.

Due to working for local government, I can request to return to a role which is not managerial and would pay around 50,000 per year. The salary difference would be about 300 per month. My DH will look for different work to make up the difference, but this may not be as easy as it sounds.

if you have got this far, I’d be very grateful for any thoughts on my situation. I feel very anxious and unhappy just now and don’t want to make a decision I will regret, but equally feel that life is short- sometimes a lot shorter than we think and I feel like I am missing out on the important things. I would say at the moment I have very little enjoyment in my life.

what should I do?

Thinwoman - I wish😀

It's very new, but no regrets
I made the move because I'd had a couple of jobs where a 35/37 hour week actually required 50-60 hours, with the stress of always playing catch up & never feeling on top of things, or that I'd delivered work I felt proud of the quality of.

I am in the fortunate position of being free of both mortgage and dependents, but now I have more time to shop, go out and go away, hence contemplating doing a day of freelance work if I come across something suitable. In addition to the tax benefits of self employed income, I'd earn as much from the one day as I do for three days in my regular job.

I burnt out as a teacher. Life is so much better without that stress. I have different stresses now of course, but I lost myself before that breakdown and could not cope with life. Having my resilience back is worth so much salary. You’re in a great position to step back. Have you looked at dropping a day a week? If you come down below the tax threshold the hit to income might be less than you expect.

It makes a huge difference!!!

Everyone on here moans about teaching and how awful it is so I'd definitely take the less stressful route.

Also- chronic stress can be so toxic. I see you feeling guilty about considering this because you only see benefit for you, and sacrifice for the others in your family, but actually I bet they feel your stress too. It’s also worth considering what might happen if (god forbid) you became ill as a result of your work. Stress is linked to a host of conditions, and by doing less work and more things for you, you could protect yourself in the same way as you might stop smoking or cut out alcohol.