I hit on an idea the other day I'm pretty excited about. Because I haven't actually worked out the cash flow logistics of it, I cannot say if it is viable.
The idea is staying with working 3 days a week once the mortgages are done but take 1 week off each month. This is in contrast with what I was thinking of doing, which is work 2 days a week the entire month.
Preliminary thoughts show a potential of enough income to fund the week off which would likely end up being a travel week somewhere. Whereas, if I were to take a week off while working 2 days a week, the budgeting gets tighter (6 working day month vs. 9).
I'm intrigued enough with the idea to think it through further. It looks like it will fall somewhere in between where I am currently and where I am planning to go.
Interestingly enough, this was my original idea more than 10 years ago to avoid the rat race. Since we live on 1/2 of our income, why not just work 6 months of the year? I'm sure I could handle that sort of schedule indefinitely. I'd probably even be more motivated the half of the year I'm working.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, my experience is that employers hate that sort of attitude. Even if you are a contractor/consultant, the clients all hate that sort of thing. I couldn't find anyone interested. Several companies, however, were quite interested in me working half-time (i.e. 20 hours a week). However, as you can imagine, 20 hours a week for 12 months is not nearly as attractive as 40 hours a week for 6 months. Additionally, the one time in my life that I worked half-time for a couple of months (to study for my comps) was not a great experience. Managers don't seem to know how to task part-time people, and so they just create situations where you basically can't fit in working 2 or 3 days a week.
But maybe your experience will work out a lot better than mine. I hope so. Maybe different fields or different employers work out better for this sort of thing.
It always seems so ironic that I find myself in this situation. I don't really have a burning desire for no work at all. I would be totally satisfied if I could just have about 4 months off per year or something like that. In terms of income, if I had to accept 2/3 of pay for working 8 months, that would be totally fine. But alas, there seems to be no takers for this idea in my line of work...
Hi S.B.;
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if my idea will work in "real life" either. The world may not be ready for such flexibility and vision!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I really enjoyed reading about them. Gives me lots of areas to consider.