Adventure: Working a Reduced Schedule
- The Involved Dad
- Mar 22, 2018
- 3 min read
I saw a video the other day that said, "by the time our kids graduate from high school, we will have spent 90% of all the time we'll ever spend with them." Hearing this has lit a huge fire under my butt to spend as much time with Rose as possible. Early on The Misses and I agreed that we did not want to put Rose into daycare. To us, it just didn't seem right to have to hire someone to raise your child so you can work. Not to mention the fact that a significant amount of the money you're working for would then be going towards paying for the daycare. Don't get me wrong, we understand that for many families out there, there just isn't any other option, but for us, it just wouldn't work. We worked hard to plan and get our finances in order before having children (posts about this to come soon).
So then, the question became, "how are we going to make this work with my work schedule?" As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm a workaholic who easily worked 60+ hours a week. So when we found out The Misses was pregnant, I planned on getting rid of some of my jobs. Slowly but surely I reduced my workload. First thing to go was my extra consulting work as a Dietitian. I stopped taking clients and currently only service one on a monthly basis. Next to go was my teaching position at the community college. Now I was down to just my management position at the hospital, however, that was still 50 hours a week, at minimum. This was a big improvement, but still wouldn't work. My wife's a nurse who's schedule allows her 4 days off per week. This meant that I needed to have at least three days off per week in order to cover the days that she worked. So when she works I watch baby, and when I work, she watches baby. With this goal in mind, I approached my director. I explained that my wife and I live alone, with all of our family living back in Hawaii and daycare just wasn't an option for us. I presented a plan that had me working four 12-hour shifts (as opposed to my five 10-hour shifts) and having three days off. After conferring with his superiors, he came back to say that it couldn't be done. It wouldn't be fair to other managers. After that, I felt a little defeated but I was determined to make this work for my family. I explored our company leave policies and found that my only option was non-paid leave covered under FMLA. This would give me up to twelve weeks to use throughout a twelve month period starting when my daughter was born. At first I thought non-paid leave wouldn't work with our other financial goals, but after running some numbers, I found that it could. You see, daycare is expensive. Its even more expensive if the child is under the age of two. I crunched the numbers and found that if I used a combination of PTO and non-paid FMLA leave my cut in pay would still be less than what we would have to pay in daycare. At that point it was a no brainer. The math didn't lie and we got to avoid someone else raising our child. Now that Rose is born and we've put our plan into action, everything seems to be working out. I'm now back to work with a four-day work week, and in another month The Misses will be heading back to work too. That's when things will really get interesting, but we have a positive outlook. Looking forward, we will have to figure out what to do with my work schedule once my year of FMLA ends. I will likely propose that I keep my schedule or move towards being part-time. If that proposal gets rejected again, then I'll have no problems moving on.