Work less and see your family more

[Tata]

So, dads, ( I am a dad by the way - for those who don't know) if you had the chance to work less so you could see your family more, would you? Do you make adjustments to your work schedual to see your kids more and be home? Do you work just to work even though you don't need to? Do you find yourself working to support things like a cable subscription, car payments, mortgages, credit debt, etc, instead of not working those extra hours and being home? Do you ever try and figure out a way to not have to work as much? Are you happy with what you do? Do you love your work? How does job/work fit into your personal philosophy about life? Thoughts and ideas! Let's talk about these issues. They affect us all in our day to day lives and how much contact we each have with our families. They are certainly not static and set in stone as a way or "the" way. Let's share a discussion about them. Let's see if we can all come up with something better. What do you think?

[Greg B]

I am happy with my job, have a lot of flexibility for taking time off for family stuff. And we are pretty conservative with expenses, so I do not feel a need to work extra. So I have not felt a need to change things.

Cheers!

[joey791]

I like my job but the downside is going out of town sometimes for weeks at a time and overall that sucks.

[alevensalor]

I quit the corporate world three years ago and started my own business working from home so I could be around my wife and son more.

At the time, I thought I was doing something that would make things better at home, and I'd be around enough to help out my wife and see my son as much as possible.

What actually happened was a little different. It made my wife uncomfortable that I was always there but never "there", I worked way too many hours building my business, ended up helping less in the house, worked all night a lot of nights, and generally estranged myself from the people I wanted to be closer to.

I love my work, and I love my family, but I should have stayed in the corporate world. Doesn't do me much good to be working from home when I'm doing it now to support both my apartment and my wife and son, who live in another place now.

I know working from home is a better situation for most, but when someone obsesses about their work and takes on too much in the pursuit of providing for their family instead of loving them like they should, it's a nightmare of the highest order.

~A!

[Shadow Papa]

I work four 10 hour days. DW works roughly three 8 hour days. Grandparents provide supplemental childcare. So far we have been able to keep DS in family care since birth.

That is our primary goal.

[LeosMama]

My husband is a self-employed home repair/renovation craftsman and is able to be flexible in his schedule. He does his best to keep his schedule as light as we can afford and is around for breakfast, often for lunch, and always dinner.

Once the kids are in school, I will start working for him onsite and in the office to supplement our income (allowing him to do more work and take more projects and be more efficient both at work and in management) and allow the flexibility we'll need for short school days, school vacations, sick kids, etc.

He doesn't make a ton of money (about $50k right now), but we only have about $1100/mo mortgage and I do all I can to cut expenses and control my own spending.

On a daily basis you have to stop and look at your partner and talk with her about your life and your joys and remember what's important. Someday we'll all be dead. How many toys we bought or how big our house was just won't be important anymore.

Just this wife's perspective.

[Tata]

Thanks for the posts. Sorry I've been away for a while but stuff is happening. I guess for me, I would love to be generating income from home. I would set the same boundries for that as I do with my current employment away from home. If a family need comes into the picture, I have to set work aside. Recently, I demoted myself from a management position so as to be able to be home more and be more available to my children. Fortunately, my work is very flexible and allowed such a thing. In other words, I still have a job.

For us, the distractions, stuff and civilized money sucking things (car payments, credit debt, eating out a lot, going out a lot, thing buying just 'cause it's cool, etc) have been shedding away for quite some time. We find we can live on less and less if we focuss on what we really need as a family. Part of that has been my time at home. We basically asked ourselves can we do without so we can have each other? My role as bread winner changed to - my role as a very present father. It's a wonderful change. It wasn't a fast process. In retrospect it has taken several years of pairing down, three big yardsales and a major move to get us to where we are now. I'd say that living on less is easier than many people think. Saying no to more hours at work is easier than it feels, and it feels great to have those five or seven hours added to the day at home.

It's all a process and it's in the process that we all learn about what we really need and want as families. But, the journey has to start somewhere.

[Imogen]

I'm a Mum, but I wanted to contribute here, I hope that you don't mind:

I recently reduced my hours @ work because of the impact that it was having upon the time I spent with my son. It was a worrying decision, as I realised that it would impact upon my income. Before I reduced them, I made sure that I paid some outstanding bills off so that they wouldn't be hanging over me financially post-hours reduction.

And of course, I now have to be more prudent with my income, but it was completely worth it. I guess it's about trying to figure out what we NEED in order to live comfortably, rather than what we WANT.

But anyway, reducing my working hours has been so beneficial. Good luck with your decision

Peace

[smeisnotapirate]

This is something DH and I have been talking about now that we're expecting our first. I love hearing these stories of how you did it. Where do you live and about how much do you end up living on?

[mommy68]

Originally Posted by LeosMama

Once the kids are in school, I will start working for him onsite and in the office to supplement our income (allowing him to do more work and take more projects and be more efficient both at work and in management) and allow the flexibility we'll need for short school days, school vacations, sick kids, etc.

This is what my husband and I do. Be careful though. Working together and living together 24/7 is not all it's cracked up to be sometimes. It can be tough some days and okay on others. My husband has a problem with wanting to be the boss on the job as well as off the job though, so that's the main problem for us. We've worked together for 12 years.

My husband is always home. But since we work for ourselves in our own business he has a tendency to still not want to do a lot of things with me and the kids, although he is getting better at it. He's turned in to such a homebody that most of the time he hates going and doing fun stuff with us. So even husbands that ARE at home all the time aren't always doing stuff, besides the normal stuff like watching t.v. together, eating together.

[Tata]

As to our income, etc. it is around 15,000 a year. We are on assistance. If that were taken away, we could live on about 22 - 25,000 a year. We have two children and no debt. We own our car. We currently rent. We live in a small town and are moving to the country, (not a subdivision or suburb). When we do, our expenses will drop even further.
I think that living in a bigger city is a burden on families in many ways. My brother's family makes around 50 K per year and have a hard time staying afloat. They all have big debt, car payments and mortgages. They insist on full cable, eating out and at one time even bought their coffee out instead of making it. There are definite ways to pear down in their lives, but they have a hard time believing they can. My brother was stunned when I told him on how much we live.
I think that the stresses and hectic tole of living in a city create the need for comfort things like eating out. Also, the time issue. With commuting an hour to a job each way due to heavy traffic, there's no time to cook.
My family has been there and we left. It took a long time to get to where we are. Believe me, you can live on less and not be on assistance. Being on assistance is a hard nut. It is NOT a hand out and definitely NOT free. Our lives are very open and scrutinized and invaded routinely. But, it is out there and it is there if you find you need it. Being home and being in the kid's lives is, to me and my partner, the most important thing.

[pixiesdaddy]

Hey,

I work as a high school English teacher, so - even though there's not a lot of flexibility - I feel like I am home a fair amount. I am usually home by 5 every day, have my summers and lots of vacations off.

If I _could_ work less and keep our standard of living the same, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I love teaching. It's a very rewarding job, but I would always pick family before it if that were a realistic option.

One thing we've struggled with is that we moved into a new house which made my commute much longer. It's a big difference being home at 5 rather than 4... makes the ends of the days much more rushed.

Also makes a difference not living 5 minutes from home - there were times I'd run home on an off-errand during the school day. Can't really do that anymore.

Pixiesdaddy

[Tata]

Howdy,

The time thing is very interesting. A little makes a lot of difference. When I had an hour and a half of travel by bus at another job, it made a huge difference in my day. That was my time I wasn't even paid for and I was not with my family. On the other foot, when I cut my hours back, it made a huge difference in my own state of mind at home. I had five or seven more hours of my own time back that I wasn't paid for, but I was home and that was what my family neede more than the bucks. It's all relative and contextual. Having summers off would be awsome if we could afford it.

[LeosMama]

We also don't have a lot of expenses. We own our cars. We don't have any debt except the house.

But we also have to pay out of pocket for our health insurance ($5k/year!) and that really hurts.

We have the mortgage and insurance and property taxes, and the vehicle insurance, and fuel, and food and household spending. I am in charge of the miscellaneous stuff: food, dining, entertainment, crafts, fuel for my car, household needs (toilet paper, kitchen utensils, gardening supplies, etc), and that is about $550/mo for a family of four.

I spend about $400 just on groceries per month.

Something that helps me with budgeting is using a coupon file:
http://www.taylorgifts.com/prodetail...6&itemno=22967
http://www.betteroffice.com/pages/po...ems/50936.html

I label each tab with my category (dining, groceries, entertainment) and put the monthly amount of cash in it. I had to learn how much money was right by tracking my spending for several months first. Once I saw how much I was spending ($150/week on groceries! Ouch!), I started to see if I could set myself some limits and pare down (I tried $100/week, that was easy, so I tried $80. I couldn't manage $80, it always comes out to $90).
So now I put in $400 for groceries at the beginning of the month and I only use that cash to buy food. If I run out, we just eat what we have on hand. I simply don't let myself use the credit card or bank card to buy things anymore.

That's how we do it.

[jcfelt]

Good topic, we've been thinking about this one a lot lately.

I'd love to work less and spend more time with my family, and I'd definitely *love* to have my wife working less (or not at all) to be able to take care of our baby. Unfortunately, that's not an option right now (without making huge changes in our life, which would have their own downsides), but we're working on it. I recently got a new job with higher pay, and we've been tightening our budget more and more. We've got almost all of our bills paid off (except the mortgage) and are building up a decent savings for emergencies, etc. Hopefully within a year or two she'll at least be able to look into moving down to part-time, but there's not likely to be any reduction in my working hours in the near future.

As for my job, I enjoy work, but I don't live for it. I get there right when I have to, and leave the second my shift is done for the most part. Some days I do stay a bit late just on circumstance (ie I'm right in the middle of something, or chatting with someone, etc), but it's not expected or demanded of me, and it's up to me to regulate. I also work a 9/40 shift, meaning I work 9 hours a day M-Th and I get every other Friday off, and work only 8 hours the other Fridays. I also take 30 min lunches instead of the full hour with this, so it's really only a half hour extra per day, and that day off every other week is really nice.

Ideally, I think I'd like to have my wife and I both working part time. She especially, and me somewhat, are the type of people that would need to get out of the house a few hours a day and engage ourselves in something else. I love my wife and daughter to the edge of impossibility, and I know my wife feels the same, but being around someone non-stop for days on end can get people on edge, and having a break from things to engage your mind in something else can be a great relief and really help the health and sanity of everyone involved. If I could work a few hours a day knowing my daughter was with my wife, and my wife work a few days knowing my daughter was with me, and somehow be able to make ends meet, that would be fantastic.

[momsgotmilk4two]

I'm a mom so I hope you don't mind me chiming in My dh has moved his career in a direction that gives him more time at home with us. He works for a computer software company and if he were to go into the development side of things, he would be able to make more money. Instead, he's chosen a career path that isn't quite as lucritive, but has him working regular hours and he's home by 5:30 every evening and also every weekend. His work is also flexible and 5 min. from home so he is there for school performances, conferences and other kid stuff that happens from time to time. His work also has a playroom and he can bring the kids to work with him sometimes on school vacations. I think he's done an awesome job in finding balance between work and home. When we had our first child, he was working in a job that had him traveling a lot and he just missed us too much and wanted to really be there for our kids.