Thank you everyone for the inspiring thread! Yesterday(!) I submitted my official request to drop down to 4-days (32 hours) per week in 2025!
I'll have to come back with an update once it happens and I can really answer these questions, but here's a little bit in the meantime:
why you did are doing it?
After a decade of working, saving, investing, and a lucrative house sale + move to a lower COL area, I (36yo) can afford to retire. My SO (34yo underpaid college professor) wants to keep working for a while, and all of our friends (mostly also underpaid college professors) work full time. Socially, I think that it would be strange for me to cease working completely. Reducing hours will let me claw back more of my time each week for hobbies, exercise, and travel while still having a job to chat about.
For reference, my salary+bonus as an Electrical Engineer is $150k-200k per year, and college professors in NE Arkansas start at ~$50k per year. I haven't bothered tracking our expenses, but I know that I max out my mega backdoor Roth 401k, both IRAs, and SO's 401k-equivalent. Knowing that, and that we still have money left over for taxable investments, I expect that we could retire on our $2M in invested assets.
what your downshift will look like?
I already work from home, but now it will be Monday through Thursday for a total of 32 hours. There is a responsibility at work that I do not enjoy, and I am negotiating how to shed that responsibility. It looks likely so far, so I can keep what I enjoy and lose what I don't.
One interesting stipulation management is toying with is asking me to help them find and hire someone to take over that responsibility and do it full time.
what do you think you will like about it?
50% more weekend for only a <20% reduction in pay thanks to marginal tax rates!
what isn't so awesome about it are you concerned about going forward?
a: My company is pretty generous with holidays, and many seem to fall on Fridays. I haven't worked out with management and HR how that will work, but hopefully I still get some benefit.
b: My SO plans to keep working, so a lot of my new freedom will still be spent alone or finding new friends. At first, I think that this will be awesome to spend on my own hobbies, but long term I think I will incorporate some volunteering or classes to enrich my life and meet new people.
what are your plans going forward around downshifting and FIRE?
Try it out and go from there! I can always go back up to 40 hours later if I would rather trade my time for more money.
Long-term, I could see myself tapering down to 24 hours/3 days at this job. Even better would be an occupation that lets me work part-time during the academic year while my SO is working, and then have the summers off. I'm not sure how feasible this is; my current job would not be conducive to that, and I didn't enjoy teaching much when I was a TA in grad school.