Give my head a wobble - leaving job

[FrustratedGnat]

I earn around 40k, so does my husband. This is a take home of about £2,500 each. I’ve only just gone back full time so I haven’t earnt this for a while.

I want to leave my job to become self employed. It would be difficult to soft launch whilst still working as I would need permission from my employer. I can’t just do it anyway because if they found out I could surprise loose my job and I could be disciplined by my professional regulator for being dishonest.

Before Christmas I worked 4 days but my work only agreed to that because it was temporary. I really want to be able to spend more time with my 1 and 4 year old especially because the eldest starts school in September and I’ll never get this time back. I never really got over going back to work after maternity leave, my heads not really in my work. I had 9 months off because I only had SMP but it was too soon. Settling baby in nursery was a bit of a shit show. They are settled now and doing well in nursery.

The thing is we haven’t really recovered financially from my maternity leave yet. We got through about 5k of savings which we’ve been trying to build back up but with nursery fees for 2 kids and needing to do some renovations on the house when I first started earning again saving money has been very slow. We have finished the immediate jobs that needed doing on the house.

Our mortgage is £1,100, we spend around another £1,000 on bills, insurance and food combined and then another £1,800 on childcare (that’s with free hours and tax free childcare). We put away £100 a month for car maintenance and whatever’s left pays for anything else, holidays etc.

The most sensible thing would be wait until my eldest is in school and really save some money from the reduced nursery fees before taking the plunge. Then put the youngest in a term time only nursery when they’re 2 and that would be much cheaper.

But I don’t want to do that. I want to leave my job after Easter. Put the children down to 1 or 2 days in the nursery and spend the summer term playing with them and working for myself for around 20 hours a week. Hopefully I could cover the nursery fees with my income. We just won’t have much of a financial cushion for if things go pear shaped or I don’t get any clients.

AIBU to walk away from my 40k job? Or do I just need to put my grown up pants on and suck it up and accept that adults can’t just quit. I just really miss spending time with my kids.

I think for the moment, you need to suck it. Maybe put a time limit on when you're going to leave, for the sake of your sanity. Say 12 months, and then you have time to prepare financially and you're also on 'countdown' which should make you feel better about being there for the time being?

When you imagine that summer with your kids, take a moment to think about what it'll be like if you are stressing about money and worrying about paying your mortgage. Without a buffer that is quite a likely outcome...

As pp says, giving yourself a year to build up some savings first might give you a plan that motivates you but won't put you up shit creek

Do it op. You never get the time back. You will cope.

lol 100% IABU so far. @ZippyPeer I think the hard thing is that the sums are so close. It could be tight but turn out fine or like you say it could be very stressful.

It’s hard now that I’ve decided that working for myself would be the best way forward to not just go and do it. I had such a wonderful summer on maternity leave.

This.

Be sensible. It's not really practical at the moment, but it will be. Just hang fire for now

How quickly is the new job going to make money or could it be a job that takes time as you need to build clients. My DH has been self employed for fourteen years and id say it's only been the last 6 years where we have never had any sketchy moments of worrying there was no work booked the next month but thankfully it did always end up coming in. In the first few years though the profit was fairly low, some years only around 12k.

I think it also depends how DH feels but you don't get the time back. I'd investigate part time options, career break, interest only mortgage for a few months, what other savings are possible, can you do stuff for your business in an evening once kids in bed etc. You are in a very expensive chapter and once childcare fees are reduced things will be easier.

What do you do now that you can’t have a side hustle that you start to build now and expand later?

Do you not get any of the funding for childcare? You should on your income, it would be surprising if your nursery bills are £1800 after that. That would be around £40 a day per child in top ups

You could apply for a few weeks unpaid parental leave nearer the summer - you are entitled to I think 16 weeks in total up to the DCs age of 16, might be per DC as well.

Unfortunately if your Dcs are settled in nursery and you need a guaranteed income, I think leaving for self employment would be a bit risky at this point.

Would you be refused if you applied for part time, even keeping the 4 days a week could make a difference. Could your DH apply for reduced or compressed as well ?

Can we ask what your current job is and what your self employed job would be?
40k isn’t a huge salary so I assume wouldn’t be that hard to find that again, should your self employed endeavours not work out. You’d likely be able to earn much more if working for yourself but not if you’re expecting to do it only around majority of the time with the kids. Self employment is much much harder than being employed, it’s definitely not the easy option unless you’re doing it as extra pocket money.
only you and your husband know if the finances can work - personally I’d feel extremely nervous without any buffer at all. Even 5k isn’t really enough, what if your boiler goes or your husband gets sick / loses his job?
if it were me I wouldn’t be able to do it and not stress but I may feel more willing to take the risk if I was leaving a job that I knew I could get back easily.

they might be in Wales - no funding (bar tax free childcare) until after the child turns 3

Oh other thing to think about is your pension if you stop working and also no one ever thinks they’ll get divorced but statistically you have to factor in whether you’d be ok if you had to suddenly go it alone, that may mean keeping your hand in your career, unless your self employed work could be a career in its own right… (and if that’s the case I imagine your earning potential could be even greater than 40k…?)

I agree with all your reasoning, but what does your partner think? You need 1000% buy-in from them or it'll be hell.

How about option 3: look for a different job on a similar salary where they will let you be part-time? I don’t think it has to be your current job or quit - look for a more flexible employer and you could have the best of both worlds.

This is very outing. If you know me please not mention this to me 🫣 I’m an Architect, almost 5 years post qualification experience. I live in a big conservation area so everyone round here needs permission to anything so I think I could tap into helping people with that.

Part time work in practice is hard to come by, even when I was part time I worked a lot of overtime.

DH is generally on board. He wants me to be happy. He’s very supportive. He does think it would be best if we waited a year.

You can have wonderful summers in the 6 weeks holiday once your child(ren) are in school if you wait to launch your own business until you've financially recovered from mat leave and won't have the double whammy childcare bills to meet.

Your youngest has settled at nursery so removing/reducing those hours now could unsettle them and it does sound as though your plans are rushed rather than thought through fully. Give it a bit more time.

I would wait and look at taking unpaid parental leave for a month in the summer. I am in a similar position and would love to jump now but we will have so much more in the bank by waiting

I am doing a full time job and being self-employed on a side with the goal to be able to drop a day at my main job as the initial small goal. Well, I can tell you that I technically work two full time jobs but only one of them pays. It took me three years to build enough consistent self-employed income to afford to drop one day. And this is working 40+h on my side gig. I was about to go down to 4 days at work from April but, alas, my partner and I are suddenly separating... so this will no longer be possible as I need to pay a mortgage on a single salary. And this is without a complication of small children.
I am not trying to discourage you but shit happens and being self-employed is not quite what you imagine it to be. 80% of your time is spent on looking for leads, quoting, marketing, accounting... And nobody is paying you for this time.

Thank you for sharing. When tou say helping with applications, what do you mean?

It is usually quite straight forward and if people need help, wouldn't they go to a surveyor or solicitor?

How often are applications turned down?

Also don't forget the importance of pensions.

You'll wait a year then find something else happening and its not a great time to leave your job. So you'll keep working then you'll realise the kids are getting older and need you less so you keep working...
I know its a hard decision. But time is the only thing thats non negotiable. They need you less as they get older. You never get the younger years back.

A HANDFUL OF YEARS

There will come a day
when you will glance
at your child
and be met by an adult.

And it will wipe the very floor
from under your feet
when you realise
in that moment
that you were only ever minding them
until they fly away.

Because back then
when you were so consumed
with the daily grind of parenting

you felt like this was forever.

Yet we know
nothing truly is forever.

Just a handful of years
you will know them as a child
and if you are blessed
many many more
you will know them as an adult.

Drink it in
if you can

drink them in.