Reducing hours? What benefit have you seen?

[snazzychair]

For those of you who have reduced working hours, what benefit to your life have you seen?

Whether you are a parent who has reduced hours, or not a parent but have reduced hours for mental health purposes.

Yes i too thought a bit of a daft odd comment from @whattodo1975 !

Surely it's not always about having an other half ego supports you?

I did it off my own bat. No other half supporting me (I mean I have one but separate finances so I still pay sane amount towards bills that I did when I worked full time)

Sexist to assume ALL women are supported by someone else.

@burnoutbabe same here. A bit insulting to assume that us little women can't support ourselves, even if working PT.

Yes it is sexist, but you're the one making this assumption. Lots of single parents of single earner mothers also work part time during the early years, in fact plenty of parents in those circumstances can only afford to work part time due to childcare constraints.

sorry @burnoutbabe for quoting you I meant to concur not to imply you were the one saying that!

I just posted an update on my situation in another thread. I've dropped form F/t to part time. 21 hours a week and I cannot belive how much more related I am!!! Do it!

We both work three days a week, two of those overlap, so it means we both have one day at home on our own and one together in the week. When I was a lone parent I was also part time, but I worked four shorter days.

We both like it as we both get a 1:1 day with our daughter and then after school with our son, we also have the luxury of both being off work together, so sometimes this is a day we spend as a three when our son is at school, sometimes one of us will have the day ‘off’ and do their own thing while the other looks after our daughter. Its also a good day to get boring things done like the dentist etc. Friday is also usually the day our sons school allocates for special assemblies etc, so its nice being able to attend those.

We could earn more, but we’re very lucky that we’re in a well paid industry, so we can live on two part time wages without struggling to pay our bills etc. Its also a huge help with childcare, not only do we only have to pay for two days of nursery per week, it also means we only need two days of childcare a week during school holidays.

@Simonjt forgive me for being nosy but would you be willing to share how much you’re paid for those part time hours and how these relate to your outgoings? We are also lucky in that in theory we could afford to drop to 3 days each but I don’t know if it’s too much of a risk and how much of a buffer we should leave financially.

We’re both higher rate tax payers (not the upper end), before I was a parent I lived in a house shared and saved every penny I could, I also bought a property with a friend, when we then sold my portion had grown in value considerably. Due to those two things when I bought this flat I had a very good deposit, so despite the purchase price being high the mortgage isn’t outrageous. My husband did similar, lived in a house share and then bought a flat as soon as he was able, he then sold it when we moved in together, the proceeds from the sale of his flat were split with a good chunk going paying off our mortgage, so now our mortgage is much smaller. Our mortgage is about 30% of our take home pay, but as we are lucky enough to have a good wage, we still have plenty for utilities etc. We do also own two holiday homes, one in the UK which doesn’t earn us anything and one in Sweden that we do earn quite a good amount from.

Pensions are something to consider, a drop can have a big impact, ours aren’t too bad, but we have the luxury of property to sell or rent out yo fund retirement if need be. We’ll be selling this flat to move abroad in a few years, if prices remain the same it will enable us to be mortgage free when we move, which will make a huge difference.