I’m calling on mumsnet wisdom to help me with my conundrum.
I’ve just interviewed for a new role.
Here are the reasons why the new role is better than my current role:
It’s £15,000 more per year and comes with a local government pension (defined benefit)
It’s a senior role, with about the same seniority and responsibility as I have now. But more money. It’s line managing less people than I do now - but on more money.
Here are the new role cons for me:
They won’t agree to a compressed hours 4 day week. Which I have now. Over the years I’ve often maintained that the very fact I can mentally switch off from Thursday evening until Monday morning is the difference between life being totally manageable or not. We have two children - one in primary, one in secondary. The few hours they are in school on the Friday is the only time I feel able to decompress. I need alone time to recharge.
I’m in my early fifties. My DH and I are from working class families. Our remaining parents are in care homes and the state are currently working through the money from the sale of both properties. There will highly likely be nothing left inheritance wise.
Coming from very humble backgrounds I feel anxious about our small pensions. I also feel anxious about sudden unexpected health issues one day stopping us from being able to earn the salaries we currently do. I’m very concerned for our children who are going to have it very hard as a generation and I want to be able to give them something to make their lives easier. All of this makes me feel pressurised to take a better paid job if I was offered one. But equally I am knackered. I am perimenopausal, I’ve held high stress roles with a lot of accountability my whole life (but not a huge income attached to them), I’ve had to care for my DM for a decade alone.
My current role is high unachievable income targets and I have some people who I line manage who are the biggest headache in my entire career. They bring their ‘whole selves’ to work, they whinge, they are never happy, there are regular histrionics from them, and half the time I feel like I’m their mother, rather than their line manager.
I can’t decide what might be worse. Stay in my current role with the current team, several are which are very hard work to manage, income targets are soul destroying. But my own line manager is amazing.
Or move to the higher paying job, which is also income targets based, but is 5 days a week. However it’s a lot more money and just might mean I could breathe more easily in my early sixties. If I stay in my current role, my pension pot would be much less and I’d be trapped for longer.
Other random reflections = the people who interviewed me were nice enough and no major red flags. But I did think ‘hmm you all seem very corporate and beige personality’ whereas I’m used to working with liberal, eccentric but highly intelligent people with more colourful energy if that makes any sense. I recognise my viewpoints on the interview panel point could be my own bias and not a fair viewpoint to have on them. Likewise they could perfectly easily have thought I was too much for them.
I will be informed shortly of the outcome one but I need to be prepared with what I want to do if offered the new role.
Despite not offering a four day week, they are flexible on start and end times and the role is mainly WFH but will young children still at home, doing slightly shorter hours over five days instead of longer hours over four doesn’t really get me anything. I’d Judy finish slightly earlier to be faced with the graveyard slots of childbearing ie grumpy kids, sorting dinner and shuffling them out the door to school in the morning.
Help! I’m going around in circles.