What is your (extra) day off worth?

[Bran]

I've been mentally juggling the following for a few months.

I've worked essentially 7 days and nights a week for the previous decade, but now find myself working 4 days a week - and frankly, loving it in comparison. (My son was over 18 months old before I spent greater than a continuous 30 minutes with him).

Ongoing time catching up with family and self is important, but at a cost of working the 5th day with at least a possible 1/3-1/2 supplement in income.

Is it worth it? For what proportionate increase would you work this 5th day? Or a 6th? A 7th?

If you earnt 50, 100, 200, 300kpa? Does it change?

Or is our free time priceless?

 

[WattleIdo]

It's priceless.
I'm at the point where I want to ease back again for a while. But money is addictive and I'm a workaholic.
Totally agree with you that stretches of time are very valuable.

 

[HomePage]

I choose to take every day off. I don't think of it as costing me, I think of it as saving me

 

[Blacky]

Its priceless but it does depend a bit.

If you are talking about non-stop 7days a week for a year in order to allow you to stop working for 10+years, compared to 10+years of 5days/week.... I know what I would pick.

A bit of sacrifice now - to buy you time in the future... it often worth while. I guess you need to balance how much now for how much in the future.

For me, I work 100% for 6months a year. Its a sacrifice as I am away from the family. However, if it results in me being able to spend 100% of my time with the family after a few years... I would say yes. Its worth while.

To get me to put an additional day in though would have to mean at least 2days less work in the future. Given I know the exact number at which I can pack up and leave... its pretty easy to decide.

Blacky

 

[Brady]

Have the opportunity to work Saturdays for a flat amount that works out to be 1.5x normal rate. I prefer to play golf on Saturdays

 

[MIW]

I've been mentally juggling the following for a few months.

I've worked essentially 7 days and nights a week for the previous decade, but now find myself working 4 days a week - and frankly, loving it in comparison. (My son was over 18 months old before I spent greater than a continuous 30 minutes with him).

Ongoing time catching up with family and self is important, but at a cost of working the 5th day with at least a possible 1/3-1/2 supplement in income.

Is it worth it? For what proportionate increase would you work this 5th day? Or a 6th? A 7th?

If you earnt 50, 100, 200, 300kpa? Does it change?

Or is our free time priceless?

It is priceless, remember time in not still and before you know your son will grow up. Whether we will be there, no one knows, but living every day as if it was your last has some merit to it, wouldn't you agree?
We cannot take possessions with us but those memories we can cherish forever, so how can we place monetary value on that!
I like to live by the motto of, "People first, then money, then things!".

 

[nhg]

Between fiance and I. Combined our incomes have dropped 60% when we chose to be closer to home and she went to part time 3 days a week.

Money is great. Quality of life watching family grow up and grow old is better. Though there is a minimum one needs to cover their basics so not everyone can make the choice that easy.

As a wise little mexican girl once said 'y porque no los dos'. Well we are working on that.

 

[joeExpat]

I choose to take every day off. I don't think of it as costing me, I think of it as saving me

Me too, I chucked in a 200K job in Switzerland (A country I love and lived in for 10 years) to be unemployed in Spain (where my kids live). Dont regret it a bit, although when possible I still go back to CH sometimes.

 

[spludgey]

I get a fortnightly RDO which worth 12.5% in hourly terms. But you'd have to offer me a 50% raise for me to consider giving them up.

 

[RPI]

I always used to go through stages, when I was building a business I would work all the time and then when they got to the stage of being managed I would wind back and not work much at all.

As I have gotten older work no longer feels like work 90% of the time. I love what I do so it is not an effort for me to work all the time. If I don't enjoy what I am doing then free time is worth everything, when I love what I do then it is nothing to do some work late on a Saturday night after the kids are in bed.

 

[BayView]

Mine is a bit in reverse; similar to Brady - I'm not taking an extra day off; I'm sacrificing an opportunity to work an extra day.

I currently work 5 days per week, 50+ hours in our business, which is not going all that well. We have trimmed staff and as many running costs as poss (hence my extra hours), so it's still paying me an average wage and we can just manage to pay the bills...

I have the opportunity to work it on Saturday mornings as well - and we used to do it every Sat for about a year.

I reviewed the figures for that year of trading, and basically I estimated was making maybe about $200 nett profit for that day.

Not bad for a half day's work, and the extra dollars would help pay some bills, many would say?

The problem is customer no-shows, turning up late and leaving us no time to do what they want to their cars, staff no-shows and/or reluctance to want to do it, wrong parts delivered for services which leave cars stranded, and so forth and so on...lots of headaches and more hours into the bargain.

But the biggest problem is the mental effect on me. The state of the business often leaves me in a depressed state, so the last thing I want to be doing is spending another half a day at it with its above-mentioned problems.

So; my view is it is worth the loss of possibly $200 to improve my mental well-being and spend time with my kids and wife.