My spouse and I are both in education (I'm in higher ed, he's in k-12), so we have the luxury of summers off. However, due to our low salaries in a relatively rural area, I often teach online summer classes or have to work on research, which means we aren't as free as many would imagine, and we don't have the money to spend it traveling as much as we'd like while still meeting our retirement goals. Still, we're free from the 8-5 schedule for those couple months and get to do lots of fun free stuff like hike, camp, and work in our garden.
I have an interview for a 12-month administrative position at a university in a higher cost of living location (probably 1/3 more than COL here), but the salary is almost double what I make. It's also much more of a dream job, and while we're happy in our location, I'm not happy in my current position and would very much like to leave the tenure track for this type of job offer. With the salary potential for my spouse, we could easily be in a position to double our annual salaries while only increasing our COL by 1/3 or so, but it would mean giving up our summers together.
This is among our top deliberations (and perhaps it shouldn't even be, and I'd welcome that reality check). We'd also be leaving almost all of our immediate family, so we'd spend more money/time off coming back here to see them. But, we'd be moving to a place that is much more aligned with our values and politics, which would be a welcome change.
I know it's probably too early to think about this at just the interview stage, but I'd be curious how folks around here would view that balance— mediocre professional reality (for me anyway) but matched vacation time with my husband, or much better salaries and professional scenario but a more typical daily/yearly "grind."
It might be worth knowing that part of my current issues with my job is that some significant political blackballing is happening (years ago, I essentially called out an unethical practice, and that's now coming back to bite me). I can't imagine continuing to invest in this job after those issues.