How to manage work and home?

[Maaofatoddler]

Hi! My DS goes to a nursery 5 days a week. I work full time 5 days a week. I’ve been doing this since my DS was 8 months old. Hes 27 months old now.
But I know a lot of women at work and outside who only work 3-4 days a week. Most common I’ve heard is 4 days a week with their children going to school.

may I know how does a 4 day week be better for mental and physical health? I’ve always wanted to reduce my hours but my DH has always pushed me to do 5 day week so as to not take a salary hit.

What do you want to do? Could you afford to drop a day or two? Would you actually want to? For some people working is the break they need from their child and a chance to be a grown up with a brain rather than just mum.

I work 3 days, husband works 5. It's nice to have the days off with the kids (age 2 and 3) and working 4 or 5 days wouldn't bring home much more money once the extra nursery was paid for so 3 works out the best balance for us. We do occasionally have money related arguments as he feels he's having to pay more towards bills, which is true, but if I was full time we'd be paying equal bills but a greater amount in total.

Maybe worth checking the figures for working 3 or 4 days. You can use The Salary Calculator time work out your income. 3 days is 60% of the hours but you'll get a little more than 60% of your current income due to tax etc.

Your wee one will be eligible for some funded hours when they turn 3 so that will bring your nursery bill a little too.

Thanks @boobyandacuddle what days do you work?

the thing is I earn a wee bit more than husband. He spends on bills and nursery and I take up the mortgage, grocery , and everything else and tiny bit savings.
shaving off 1 day would not hurt me / us financially. I’d really like to spend that extra day home. But for DH it’s almost like why would you let that go!??

I work an odd set up of days, but it was just what ended up working with childcare. I do Tue, Wed, Fri.

You maybe need to reconsider how your family money works. Can't give massive advice on that tbh as I'm not sure we're getting it right either just now. Money is all pooled and we get equal money back out to spend on whatever. Except what seems plenty to me doesn't seem to be plenty for him. Hence the arguments about him paying more.

If your husband pays nursery currently then sounds like he'd benefit from you taking a day off as his nursery bill would reduce. My days off with the kids are the best but hardest days of the week. It's nonstop from 5am (thanks DS) til 7pm but I love spending time with them. Sometimes I feel sad that my husband doesn't get that time with them too, but he has never expressed a desire to drop a day even when we discussed each doing 4 days when I first got pregnant.

Would your work be flexible with you dropping days? Maybe you could use annual leave to work one day less a week for a month and see how you feel. Although appreciate that doesn't actually reduce your workload any. I think that might be something to watch out for, that if you do 4 days you end up squeezing the same amount of work in but you are paid less.

My daughter dose 4 days compressed from 5 . She is quite senior though , so can do her hours split , so will do bath and bed then do another hour after they’re asleep .

With the way tax works, remember you don't lose 1/5 of your income by dropping one day.
However with the way many employers work, you often don't lose 1/5 of your workload by dropping one day either, so give that some consideration.

You will usually pay more per day in Nursery fees if you use them PT from if you use them FT, so factor that in too.

Also so many other things to factor in.

What is 'full time'? There is a difference between a 37.5 hour week and a 60 our week.
What is your commute like ? wfh = 0 up to traveling 1.5 hours each way = 3 hours a day or 15 hours a week.

Could you do it for a fixed period of time or even a trial period to see how it goes? Not sure if your work allows this.

I work full time 5 days a week and recently requested to go down to 4 days but purely because we have no full time childcare on a Thursday my DD is 17 months. I would ideally like to do 3 days and have a day to myself/clean home etc but right now I will see how it goes.

I'd 100% say if financially it isn't going to impact any of you and you will benefit from it personally then do it. I used the same recommended site above to work out what my take home pay would be before deciding. Also I suppose take into account anything that may continue to increase electricity, mortgages etc.