Current situation is I’m 33 and my wife is 35. We have two daughters aged 1.5 and 2.5 years old. We don’t intend to have any more.
I’m the sole income earner (wife is SAHM and runs a small business on side which doesn’t make much money, more a passion project to stay sane).
With the two kids, wanting to spend more time with them and being able to support my family on my income plus save a bit towards retirement each year for the first time in my life I’m considering stopping to climb the corporate ladder and pushing so hard at work for a time period until the kids get older and we are getting more sleep and less run down from catching illness off the kids, etc.
This is such a monumental mental shift for me as since birth have always strived for the next step (preschool, school, university, entry job, management job, bigger management job). I’m wanting to just sit tight and have a bit more balance for the next few years but unsure how to go about it talking to the boss, how to change my mentality, etc.
I just finished reading Scott Trench's book, "Set for Life" about two weeks ago. He states that there are two types of jobs. One is a salary job that is based on 40 hours/week and produces annual raises of 3%. The other job is not based on hours, but production. The more you produce, the more you make. You can double, triple or quadruple your income, if your production does the same. If you want to put your heart and soul into a production job, that is a good use of time. However, increasing your hours from 40 hours/week to 50-60 hours/week to try to get the attention of your boss for a 3% raise is a waste of time.
If you are in the typical salary job, put in your 40 hours and do a good job. However, it's typically a waste of time to go beyond that. I have always felt this way, but Scott did a much better job of describing it. I had a conversation with a friend regarding this about two years ago. He is a computer programmer and was previously in a salary job. I'm guessing his salary was 120K. When he was given opportunities for extra work at his salary job, he pretty much always said "no." However, he did consulting gigs on the side. I think his hourly rate was $100-$150/hour.
He did the math and it was way more lucrative to do 5-10 hours/week of side gigs than use that time on a salary job in which he simply "hopes and begs" for a raise to justify the extra time. The side gigs were guaranteed.
My college builds in a small amount of merit pay for raises for faculty. In a typical year if you "meet" expectations, you get a 2% raise. If you "exceed" expectations, you get a 3% raise. My salary is 54K/year. If I bust my ass and go "above and beyond", I get an extra $540/year. Do you think that is where I'm going to spend my extra time? That's a hard no.
My most difficult year of teaching was 2020 and all faculty didn't get a raise. Last year was probably my easiest year of teaching and we are scheduled to get a 5% raise. I'm not sure of how they are going to do the split. It might be 4.5%/5.5% for "meets" or "exceeds".
So for 2020, you could have "exceeds" expectations and received no raise. For 2021, you could have "meets" expectations and received a 4.5% raise. It really doesn't matter how hard you work. What really matters is the state budget.