Part-time long term or full-time short term

[sjt]

Hello all,
I've been a long time lurker on these boards and have finally signed up. I'm looking for advice.

My home is fully paid off, no debt, and about 5 years worth of expenses saved.

I have two choices:
1) Work full-time for the next 5 years to save enough money to last me 20. My background in IT allows me to make a good amount of money in a short time...but boy do I not like the work. At all.
2) Work part-time for the next 20 years and save no money doing something I wouldn't hate.

Pragmatically, it makes more sense to work for those 5 years. I've been more on the part-time schedule the last decade, but as I'm getting older (mid 40's), I'm wondering if just getting my savings back up makes more sense.

There is no "dream job" out there for me. I simply don't like putting my life energy into work. I just want to put food on the table and not have to worry about my savings if a meteorite hit my roof.

Thoughts?

[rube]

You present this as these two are the only options, but I would encourage you to see if there are more options.
Even though there might not be a dream job, I am sure there you can find/create a job that feels (much) better. Or you do FT for 1 or 2 years, then PT for some time and go back to FT again for a short period.

Regarding FT or PT, this seems to be largely a personal preference. There is no good or bad. See the various journals here.

[AxelHeyst]

What is your burn rate? Any room for reducing it, thus turning 5 years FU into 7 or 10? Or turning “five more years of FTE” into “18 more months”?

Keep in mind the number of journals of people who quit or go on sebbatical and find something they enjoy doing that other people will pay them for, or discover that their estimated post-quit burn rate was much higher than it turned out in reality.

If you didn’t have to work, what would you do with your time?

[Blackjack]

I find myself sitting in the same boat (FT income >> income needed, but find the work less pleasant); and I agree with Rube; you may be more likely (now with a paid off house, small bills, etc) to be able to switch to a job you want, and end up much happier / fulfilled from the work, while still being able to save some money. I haven't looked through your journal (if you have one), but you might be able to trade down some spending as well to increase that savings rate percentage and thus be able to lower that necessary work threshold to something very minor. That is one of the basic collapsed (failure mode) views of ERE, trading skill acquisition for monetary spending. If you have been lurking for a while I would bet you already understand that notion, at least theoretically.

If I was in exactly the same position as you, I would switch to a more enjoyable or novel job / field / etc. In Axel's view, "the stoke" or "the work" that you feel called to do. If you haven't found work that way, I would do either FT or PT and try to search out that work (FT if I still had time to search, PT if there's not much slack time in there), then look at transitioning to the other. If the "the work" or "the stoke" isn't the kind of thing that can generally create an income, or training costs are too high, etc, then I'd consider the enjoyment calculus between the two approaches, but I'd likely take a PT gig still earning above 1x spending and spend more of my life working on the things that I want to, instead of continuing rapid acceleration. This does, of course, have trade-off costs.

[GandK]

Based only on what you've posted, I'd choose the 20 years of part time. Having that extra time would give me a chance to find a better way to make money.

[macg]

I think there's another option as well. Continue working in the job you have, just do it differently so that you don't hate it, or at least so that it doesn't bother you. Whether that means changing your perspective on it, or just not doing certain parts, telling your boss you aren't doing XXX anymore ... whatever it is you need to do to make it work for 5 years.

What's the worst case? They end up not liking your choices, in which case you can leave anyway.

Then you can use your time, free of the toxicity from the job, to figure out what you want to do going forward.

[Blackjack]

Rough cut to decision tree, let me know if you want something added

[George the original one]

Money isn't everything except when you have none.

Unless PT work pays more than the bills, there's little point in it and even less financial security. If you need to change careers, then do so, but the reality of PT work is you'll still need to do more of it than you probably care for. The higher certainty of a 5-year sentence vs. a 20-year sentence seems a no-brainer to me.

[Scott 2]

Are you guys finding tech amenable to part time work?

When I explored the idea, ancillary aspects - establishing myself as an expert, operating the business, sourcing work, keeping up to speed, etc. - seemed like they would demand full time commitment anyways.

I would either grind out full time tech (I did) or live cheap to pursue semi-ERE in my desired field. The half in solution feels like picking neither.

[sjt]

Thank you all so much for the responses. Each of your thoughts are greatly appreciated and resonate in different manners.

My burn rate is not adjustable, at least not enough to make any appreciable difference in timeline.

The rub for me is finding "the work". I've gone through countless months of attempting to figure that out to no avail. Work has always, since day one, been a means to an end. My stoke I suppose is not having to work, which leads to obtaining the highest paying job I can stomach. That just doesn't wash as a life well lived.

Defining this as a 5 year sentence is dead on. That's how it feels.

Perhaps some feedback on resources to find "the work" may be in order. Any advice in that realm might help.

[white belt]

My burn rate is not adjustable, at least not enough to make any appreciable difference in timeline.

The rub for me is finding "the work". I've gone through countless months of attempting to figure that out to no avail. Work has always, since day one, been a means to an end. My stoke I suppose is not having to work, which leads to obtaining the highest paying job I can stomach. That just doesn't wash as a life well lived.

Why isn’t your burn rate adjustable? If your savings rate is 80% and you’re working in IT making a high income then I’m under the assumption that you are nowhere near the low end of expenses.

You’re willing to put countless months into figuring out how to make work more tolerable, but no time into reducing expenses so that you can work much less?

[sjt]

Sorry for the miscommunication here.

I've been fully retired for the last two years, and semi-retired for the previous 10. I'm definitely at the low end of expenses, and have been for a decade now.

It is now time, however, to get back to earning enough to cover expenses.

[white belt]

It’s hard to give useful advice without a complete picture.

-What did you do with your free time for the past 2 years while you were retired? What about the 10 years before that when you were semi-retired?

-When you say you have low expenses, are we talking <$10k a year?

-You have a paid off house. Is there a way to generate income from your house to supplement income you make while working?

[sjt]

Understood.

Free time: A lot of reading, hobbies (piano, painting, music), meditation, general self-improvement. Exercise. Learning to cook. Gardening. Time with friends. Prior to that I'd take freelance IT jobs for local businesses. Prior to that I was in IT management.

Expenses: $8000/yr

Regarding the house-It is on acreage, in a temperate region (Portland), so it may be possible to create income from growing things.

[zbigi]

Are you guys finding tech amenable to part time work?

When I explored the idea, ancillary aspects - establishing myself as an expert, operating the business, sourcing work, keeping up to speed, etc. - seemed like they would demand full time commitment anyways.

I would either grind out full time tech (I did) or live cheap to pursue semi-ERE in my desired field. The half in solution feels like picking neither.

I've worked part-time in tech three times: at 60% (Monday - Wednesday), 50% (every other week) and 10% (every other Monday of full-time capacity. It's very doable, but only with employer who already knows your value. It has to be presented as an ultimatum, then they practically have no choice but to accept.

Anyway, in my case I found that the 50-60% PT jobs were not worth it for me - they provided considerably less money, while essentially being as depressing and soul-crushing as the FT variant.

[zbigi]

Understood.

Free time: A lot of reading, hobbies (piano, painting, music), meditation, general self-improvement. Exercise. Learning to cook. Gardening. Time with friends. Prior to that I'd take freelance IT jobs for local businesses. Prior to that I was in IT management.

Expenses: $8000/yr

Regarding the house-It is on acreage, in a temperate region (Portland), so it may be possible to create income from growing things.

I guess your story is a good counterpoint to the optimism that many people demonstrate here: "all that free time will likely enable you to find something else you like to do, and can get paid for". I'm always somewhat sceptical about it. It may be true in the US, where money practically grows on trees , but in most other regions of the world, it's not that easy making semi-decent money, let alone while doing anything you might like.

[7Wannabe5]

Another way to solve the problem would be to recognize that you are relatively "house poor." IOW, too much of your current net worth is invested in your own housing. A quick search reveals that the average home value in Portland is over $500,000, so even if your home is only worth $300,000, that still represents almost 90% of your net worth. So, for example, one way out of your dilemma would be to pay $40,000 cash for a rough cabin somewhere in the rural Midwest, and then you would have a SWR at better than 3% from the proceeds of the cash-out of your Portland house. On some thread, Jacob offered rough rule of thumb that your own housing should only represent 10% of net worth.

OTOH, you might want to take this advice with a grain of salt given that it is offered by somebody who is still paying for an apartment on top of property taxes, because the house she paid $6000 cash for remains uninhabitable OTOOH, think about that; if your house is worth $300,000, you could sell it and buy maybe 10 or 20 houses in various states of disrepair in my neck of the woods!

[chenda]

If you rented the house and lived in a LCOL area perhaps you could fully ERE now?

[sjt]

Our home was inherited from family, and part of that deal was keeping it for the next generation. It fell into our lap and enabled the lifestyle we already aspired to. So selling isn't really an option.

[Blackjack]

I find the constant asks to relocate if you live in a MCOL - HCOL area unfair (I understand from a monetary perspective obviously), but I think as @7wb5 argued in another thread, I don’t think it is fair to be told to relocate from where your family or friends are if an area is expensive or has gotten expensive in the last few years (real estate prices doubled in some areas since 2020). This essentially all comes back to the “should you count or not count housing expenses” argument in the FI community that causes a real tussle when it comes up. I also understand that it’s the primary cost driving all work in those regions just to stay alive/ afloat, and it may be 5 years + of work just to pay off the house, thus it isn’t necessarily compatible with 3-5 year ERE and having an 80%+ savings rate (see my paltry 50%ish savings rate due to housing costs in a VHCOL area).