The Lemon Fool

Moving to a 4 day week
Today is the first day of "I no longer work Fridays".
I like my job, work with a small team of very smart guys, and we do interesting and cool stuff, but the big downside is the lengthy commute, which is tough at this time of year (2 hours driving a day in the dark/rain on the motorway).
I earn enough to make tax an issue. I have been keeping below the punitive 'reclaim personal allowances' marginal tax + NI rate of 62% by making significant contributions to a SIPP. This no longer makes sense as I am going to get clobbered by the LTA.
Contributing factor is that I had a nasty health scare last spring, and I would like to make sure that I have some time to enjoy to look after myself and enjoy things.

So decision to scale back, stop paying into SIPP, and take the extra as free time (which is not taxed yet).
Executing a plan for management succession at work, if this progresses well, I shall scale back some more next year. Ideal will be to get to a position of handing over the reins for day to day management, and just working specific projects, maybe a couple of days a week. This just postpones the day I need to exercise my DB pension, and I leave the SIPP + ISA hyp snowballing. Also keeps me doing intellectually stimulating stuff while I work out what else I want to do (have toyed with idea of OU degree on software engineering, but not particularly gripped by that).

Got tennis coaching booked this morning - trying to get fit and lose weight.
Got personal language tutor turning up this afternoon, need to work on my French if I want to keep the option of retiring there.
She Who Must Be Obeyed has given me a small list of chores as well.
First stage in FIRE.
Feels good.

Very well done!

I moved to four days a week when I started my current job in October 2018 and wouldn't want to go back to five days. The thing is, I reckon I get pretty much as much work done in four days as I did in five, since I am more focused when I'm there, and I schedule personal stuff like medical appointments etc. for my days off.

With hindsight I should probably have pushed for a five day week with one day 'working from home' (yeah, right!) but you know what they say about hindsight...

Gostevie

Gostevie wrote:Very well done!

I moved to four days a week when I started my current job in October 2018 and wouldn't want to go back to five days. The thing is, I reckon I get pretty much as much work done in four days as I did in five, since I am more focused when I'm there, and I schedule personal stuff like medical appointments etc. for my days off.

With hindsight I should probably have pushed for a five day week with one day 'working from home' (yeah, right!) but you know what they say about hindsight...

Gostevie

Could you at some opportune moment like appraisal/revue you try and negotiate 3 days contact with 1 day from home? I'm looking to have a conversation about reducing my hours, unfortunately working form home won't be an option so I'm going to open with 3 days compressed hours putting in a 30 hour week. I can be really productive out of normal operating hours, some jobs can only be done evenings and weekends currently so I am currently adding to the wage bill on overtime/TOIL for some tasks.

and to TUK020 - well done. I think that's a full victory to be honest. The win being jacking it in on your terms.

I've been pretty much full time work from home for the past couple of years.
Benefits include my commute reducing to the length of time it takes to get downstairs. I can be out of bed at 8.25 and at my desk at 8.30. I can also finish at 5.30 and have my first gin by 5.31.
Trouble is that I tend to get up at 7 and be at work by 7.05 and forget to have my first gin until the other half gets home at 6.30 so I think the company has won in terms of hours they get from me.
But the sheer joy of not having to do a London commute makes it worthwhile, not to mention not having to sit in a crowded, noisy office when trying to get work done. The company still has some residual presenteeism that needs to be knocked back every now and again, but if you have the option to work from home I'd take it any day.

I work 3 days a week, have done for the last 6 years - the job was originally advertised as a 3 day a week one. I moved roles within the same organisation but kept it at 3 days, despite them trying to persuade me other wise! Going to 4 days would mean me going above the threshold for the personal allowance to be removed and it just didn't seem worth it. I think theres a bit of a pivot when the number of days you're out the office in a normal week exceeds the number you're in, you're mind set changes quite a bit.

Overall I really enjoy it but certainly in my organisation once you're at 3 days a week career progression is limited - something I'm not particularly interested in as I'm on the home straits to early retirement now. I'm pretty strict with keeping to the 3 days, at times managers have tried to persuade me to come in the occasional extra day and I've been "Of course, I'll only come in 2 days next week". I show flexibility during the 2 months or so the team is really busy and do a 4 day week but getting paid the pro-rata extra amount.

I've also worked a 4 day week as well, but in some ways found this harder. Managers seemed to take the view that well 4 days is only 1 day less than 5 so if I work just a little bit more efficiently I can cover a full time workload. Whilst theres something in that I found I was probably doing only 10% less hours for 20% less pay. When you get to only doing three days, its more obvious that the work load needs to be adjusted.

TUK020 wrote:Got tennis coaching booked this morning - trying to get fit and lose weight.
Got personal language tutor turning up this afternoon, need to work on my French if I want to keep the option of retiring there.
She Who Must Be Obeyed has given me a small list of chores as well.
First stage in FIRE.
Feels good.

I am officially jealous!

StepOne