Would you work away from home for double your salary?

Thank you all so much for sharing your perspectives - the points you are raising both negative and positive are some of the things we are discussing at the moment as well as giving us new things to consider.

To answer some questions:

Our marriage is really strong and we communicate well. We definitely talk rather than sit and brood so that will help us I think. My DH would be okay with the fact that he'd need to pitch in at weekends, even if he was tired and I'd be okay with trying to minimise the mundane stuff so we could relax and have fun as a family.

My DH does a lot around the house and is a great Dad so I will feel his absence sharply in that respect. I'll miss him from a personal perspective too but I'm an independent person and don't mind my own company so will be okay with watching TV/reading/pottering in the evenings. Plus I can meet friends for coffee during the day so will have adult conversation.

The job is UK-only so no international travel to contend with though long train journeys can be tiring.

If I wasn't coping/happy with the situation my DH would drop the job in a heartbeat, I'm 100% confident of that. Likewise if he hated it I'd be totally happy with him quitting (after finding something else of course!) He could fairly easily find contract work in his field, securing a permanent role would take longer.

We just bought a nice house in a nice area and we are doing okay month to month. The thing that is missing is financial security and that is very important to us. We know from experience that life can change in a moment and that a nest egg can help lessen the impact of that. That said, I think we will eventually get to that place of financial security without a job like this, it will just take a lot longer.

getmore4less wrote: »

One thing that will be the killer is if the job is 9am Mon to 5pm Friday

Add the travel and the weekend is gone if the location is quite a way.

If there is a bit of flexibility so you can at least get 3 full evenings at home and 2 days it can be a lot more tolerable.

if he is in the same location fairly regularly and it is predictable and interesting he can build up the knowledge base so that you and the kids can have long weekends full weeks when there is no school.
The other advantage of this is hubby does not have to travel those weekends and that makes a big difference.

It also does not have to be hotels all the time which can get a bit soul destroying, sites like AirBnB have made accommodation options much easier to find, either short term room lets, apartments or even full houses.

Military families deal with this sort of thing on regular basis but if it is something you have never experienced in you life it can be little difficult adapting.

The up side is a couple of years of seriously good money could knock 5 years off retirement age.

This could be the sticking point - if he has to eat into his weekends to get somewhere for 9am Monday morning then he won't take the job. Being away Mon to Thur and often Mon to Fri is hard enough without losing some of the precious weekend as well. AirBnB is a great idea to make things feel a bit more homely for him and us visiting for a long weekend would be great too - give him a week without travel and all of us the opportunity for more quality time.

DH has a two month notice period and the role doesn't start until the new year so the company are sounding him out rather than pushing for an answer which is good as it gives us time to talk through all the options. There's still some stuff we don't know too - like benefits and how much flexibility there will be around setting up his own meetings (e.g. 10am in Aberdeen rather than 9am!) so we'll see what happens.