Set my first career reduction goal on my way to RE: Dropping down to 3.5 days/week (okay, 7 days biweekly) as soon as we have our renovations paid off.
Should be doable before the end of 2024!
Sounds nice, fewer hours isn’t a realistic possibility for my industry so I’m just grinding it out.
Do you know what’ll happen compensation wise when you drop down?
Yep! Everything is proportional based on the FTE.
I technically have an underlying hourly rate, but am salaried in the sense that I am guaranteed a certain number of shifts equivalent to my FTE if that makes sense. Currently my FTE is 1.0 and I work 10 shifts biweekly. 0.7 would be seven shifts biweekly and so it would be 56 hours times my hourly rate. 401k match is 6% of whatever I get paid regardless of FTE. This kinda setup is common in healthcare.
Insurance cost would rise a few bucks a month. Nothing crazy.
Nice! My company went to 3 day weeks for a few months of 2020 and it was the perfect amount of work IMO. Enough to keep a decent schedule, but plenty of time off. If I’d been closer to leanFIRE, I never would have wanted to go back to full time.
That would be perfect. Fortunately we’re in healthcare and our jobs are pretty accommodating to adjustments in our FTE. My wife already dropped down to 8 shifts biweekly. As the money tracker of the couple, I’m not quite ready to let of the accelerator to FIRE… (one more year 🤣)
Question of the week: Would you take a 25% pay cut for a dream job?
Well… I’d rather stay and keep the 25% for an “ok” job 😄. A dream job is so fagile, especially when an important team member leaves / management changes for the worse and changes the entire work dynamic.
I’m honestly not sure what a dream job is for me, so probably not. Our number is in sight and we’re coping through the difficult young child years so I’m not inclined to take my foot off the gas.
Dream jobs never last forever. I had one that was basically a dream job in retrospect, and I stayed there for five years. I probably was paid 25% below market there, but I didn’t care, because I liked everyone I worked with, I had friends there, the company culture was so easygoing, and the work was interesting but not stressful or high pressure. Things eventually changed, though.
My current job is basically the opposite, except I still like many of my peers and at least some of the work is interesting. High stress, terrible company culture, burnout. But I’m paid about 3.5x what I earned at the “dream job,” which will let me pay off my house very soon and retire in a reasonable time frame.
I also have no idea what a dream job would be for me. If I have to do it and I wouldn’t ordinarily do it with my free time, then it’s still just a job to pay the bills and get me to retirement.
There aren’t many situations I would take a pay cut for, aside from protecting my mental or physical health.
Just got back from a week at an all-inclusive resort in Cancun. Frankly, not my jam, so I just went and did a quick calculation of what it would have cost if I had planned it like my normal vacations (the resort was chosen by the inlaws). We could have had a way more interesting week, IMO, and still have $2000 to spend on food/drink to have the same cost of vacation as what we paid the resort.
Honestly, I don’t get the appeal. If we had just hung out at the pool and beach, like everyone else we went with did, it would have given an even more luxurious food budget. There’s no way we ate enough food and drank enough in a week to make up for the cost difference.
And that is based on the Black Friday deal we got when booking the resort, which was 40% cheaper than what the rates would be if we booked today.
Hanging out by a beach and doing nothing for a week is definitely my jam. Some of my favorite vacations in Hawaii have been like that. I’d probably feel differently if I had more time and wasn’t using it as decompression from work.
Can’t speak to the all inclusive aspect, but I always imagined it was kind of like the no haggle car dealerships. You avoid surprises and variability in outcome but it’ll never be the best deal.
If I want to do nothing on a vacation, I prefer to do it at home as a staycation. When I travel somewhere, I prefer to pack my trip with new experiences and sites to really explore the area.
Granted, I am also the sort of person who probably needs a vacation to recover from my usual vacations.
Non-FIRE-related question of the week:
What’s the best Halloween
questioncostume you have ever worn (or seen)?Halloween question
What do you call an empty hotdog?
Answer
A hollow-weenie
I’m guessing you meant costume though :) I liked my neighbor who wrote “book” on his face in blue, I thought it was pretty Meta.
