Taking the plunge- part time Dad

Khaderbhai

Hi

I am looking at transitioning to part time hours (either at current employer or a different if they cannot accommodate) due to a change in circumstances and wanting to be around more. We have a young family and I want to prioritise family time rather than my career at this stage (early 30s). 

I would like to hear from other money savers as to how you found the transition if you have done this before and how you managed to balance the reduced wage for the shortish term (several years). My partner may not be working or if they do return it will be 2 days max so it will be tight but believe its possible. 

Thanks

TBagpuss

I think what a lot of families do is to to split the time, so that between the two parents you have in effect one full time job( or a little more) - for instance, you might have one parent working (say) Mon-Wed and the other working Wed-Fri, so each of you has weekdays when you are caring for the home and children, you all have family time together at weekends, and the children spend the majority of time with one or both of you. (Could also work if it was one parent working 3 days and one working 2 days, if you don't want to use external child care at all, or a different split of time depending on your budget and respective incomes.

For instance, if you were to work 3 days and your partner 2 days, then you would not need any paid child care, but if you are the higher earner then you will still be taking an over all drop in family income.

My brother and SIL have this type of arrangements - he works 4 days a week and does compressed hours, so he is actually working almost full time hours , she works 4 days, so they each have a day where they are at home caring for the children, and then children are then cared for by their grandmother one day a week and in nursery 2 days week,. Neither job involved working weekends so at weekends, they are all together, and each parent has time caring for the kids  in the week .

I think having one parent not doing any paid work and the other going part time is likely to be very difficult unless the parent in paid work is very well paid, but of course family time can be one parent plus the children, as well as both parent plus the children.

Another option ight be to look at whether compressed hours would work - e.g. longer working days some days, with a nearly finish / non-working day so you work full time but over 4 days rather than 5  .

If you want to reduce your working hours and your partner is not going to take on hours to make up the difference, the the two of you will need to sit down and look closely at your budget to work out what you will be able to afford and what you will cut from your current spending. Obviously  check whether you would qualify for any other support and what savings you might make (e.g if you have a long commute, there will be some savings on fuel costs,) 

How possible it is will depend on your personal budget and on where, for you as a family, the curt off point comes in balancing the extra time with the children against the strain of the smaller income. Given the current position with the economy I would definitely try to build in a bit of wriggle room in your budget for costs of living rises and emergencies, and bear in mid that if an employer agreed for you to cut your hours (or in a new job, employs you on a part time basis) they don't have any obligation to give you those hours back if/when you want to go back to full time .

Good luck with whatever you decide 

pjcox2005

No longer part-time but reduced when kids were young. Highly recommend it both for life in general and also being closer to kids.

No real key insight apart from sometimes it's not as big a financial hit as you'd perhaps initially expect if it removes nursery fees and higher tax for some people. 

On work, I tried to keep it quite distinct so not working on that day off but you do need to be relatively strong on that point.

Key is to budget for reduced salary but also try to make the most of that day off rather than wasting it by letting it pass by before you realise you haven't done much.

Khaderbhai

Thank you for your comments, really helpful and also reassuring. 

Simon11

I work full time, but its mostly 98% working from home. That makes a huge differences and means I can fill in all the childcare gaps for a 1 year old.

You haven't stated if you do this, or could move to a job offering this?

Tucosalamanca

I have done similar in the past and would agree with all the points that @TBagpuss has made.

With hindsight now that the kids are older, I do wish that we'd worked (or earnt) more.

Bringing up kids is expensive, the 100k or more that we could have earnt, would have been very useful today.

Yes, we've benefitted from a reasonably stress free life, the kids have grown up to exceed our expectations and we're still a solid family unit. In many ways it's worked very well.
The trade off has been no new cars or luxury holidays, no option to choose private schooling, no moving to a bigger house, and an existing house that hasn't had much tlc.
I could easily spend 50k on home improvements, which when kids are heading off to Uni, will have to wait for a few more years yet.
I'm not sure if I'd change anything, we've been fortunate but there's certainly a material price to pay.
I'd say it's essential to keep money coming in and don't forget to put something aside for the future (pensions?)

Khaderbhai

Yes I work ‘hybrid’ at the moment so commuting costs etc are low and if I was to move jobs, I’d again want mainly remote work. @Tucosalamanca I get you but I also think if you’d had done it the other way, you would wish the opposite too. 

They are expensive but I also see the importance of them understanding the value of things and not just being given/bought items, which you see with a lot of families all the time. 

Can handle the modest house, no private schools, non flashy car but would probably struggle with missing holidays in all honesty! 

We are based in the north so living costs are more reasonable and we have always overpaid the mortgage monthly ever since we got one. This will stop but it may feel like we grab some of them funds back from the monthly income if that makes sense.

jDelight

It is very nice to hear that you want to spend more time with your family. To agree with what was mentioned, working from home makes all the difference. If this is in any way an option for you, you should go for it.