Hi all.
I recently posted a case study and got some really good advice and pointers. I've been doing a lot of thinking about finances while I've been home on paternity leave and looking at my financial future and my options.
To recap, I am a 34 year old firefighter with a base salary of $68,000. I thoroughly enjoy my job and am one of the lucky few who has a job where work generally does not feel like work. My work schedule is a 24 hours on, 48 hours off with 24 shifts off per year. It typically works out to an average of 8 days per month at the station for my normally scheduled shifts. My wife stays at home. I do not wish to retire early, and plan to work to my full firefighter retirement age of 55.
Historically, I work voluntary overtime. In 2019, I made an extra $35,000 in overtime. This is typically achieved by me picking up shifts at an additional 24 hours at a time. I clocked in excess of 900 hours of overtime in 2019.
While I love my job, and I love making the extra money, and compared to other jobs where I've worked overtime, it's not terribly difficult unless there's a rockin' fire. It can be a grind though. Sometimes, when OT is good, I can stay on duty for 5 days in a row raking in the time and a half. This is difficult being away from my family, and it gets less appealing as my oldest is starting school soon. I also have a newborn son. I missed out on a fair amount of my daughters early years just by needing to work. It makes me sad to think about missing out on that time again with my son. I have been home for 7 weeks since he's been born and have another 5 weeks off until I return to duty. This experience has changed my perspective of how I spend my time.
Another difficult aspect of overtime shifts as a firefighter is they tend to follow me home. If I work an overtime shift it generally means that I've extended my 24 hour shift into a 48 hour shift. So I work 48 hours, come home in the morning, am home for the day before I return to the station the next day. If it's a busy night, (which it commonly is), I get home tired and need to sleep most of the morning and typically end up losing a good chunk of my day off just to rest. Quality time with my family on those days is low. But some days it's an easy shift and I come home and it's easy and I'm full of energy and it's not any big deal. You win some and you lose some.
Okay enough of me trying to convince you that me not working OT is better, here's the facts:
At my current rate of spending when I look at FIREcalc, if I do not put any more money away and get my pension, I have a 100% success rate. That math is easy. If I put in only $7k a year into my 457, I can afford to retire at my full retirement age of 55 without having my pension. I of course am assuming that I would have both, which would mean I have covered my bases in case of a failure of my pension system. I can afford to put in approximately $11k annually, which is more than enough.
On the other hand, I would be giving up 20 years of socking away $20k a year and could me screwing my future self the benefit of all that compounding. I could be extremely wealthy in retirement. I don't really know what difference that makes to me, but I'm not sure if it seems worth it if I can basically feel retired now by showing up to work every third day and still end up at the same point. How do you decide what is enough? Do you keep grinding away or just decide to be happy now and make things work? This question for me is essentially the same as dropping to a part time work status, though I would not be considered financially independent by any means.
And of course I could always try it and if it doesn't work, return to picking up the OT, but there is some mental freedom and peace that comes with the decision of not working OT anymore.
Thanks for any input!
