Egg's journal

[guitarplayer]

The silver lining is that with accepting the offer, you have hit one of your goals from several pages back of earning over £100k per annum. I might be misremembering it, or maybe the goal has changed - but if was still in place, then congrats!

[Egg]

I think there is value in those days where one works long and hard and effective.
...
I know there are days when… i don’t exactly give my full effort for a variety of reasons.
Well, I find the “extra hardcore” days are what I owe to compensate.

Yes true, this is me too. I find achieving flow state plays a large role in how effectively I am doing work tasks. The daytime is just not conducive to it often because of meetings and messages breaking the momentum. So yeah, maybe it's not as unhealthy as I think it might be. I also share your sentiment about feeling a duty towards one's employer to do your best for them, even if you could get away with less without being fired

[Egg]

The silver lining is that with accepting the offer, you have hit one of your goals from several pages back of earning over £100k per annum. I might be misremembering it, or maybe the goal has changed - but if was still in place, then congrats!

Yeah, it's definitely been an ambition of mine. I think technically if I achieve the on-target level bonus (also depends on company performance, not only mine) it'll be ~£98k (I rounded up a bit in my earlier post). But in this case the exact number isn't a major psychological milestone; it's more about but the general nature of becoming what I consider a "high earner". We'll see in the coming months what it feels like to get the extra money, but i intend to invest 100% of the difference vs my old pay, so I expect to see investments grow noticeably again, where they've been stalling for the last few years. It's more MMM (and MMM-lite at that) than ERE but it may open the door to low-effort eventual FIRE.

I haven't talked much about spending recently but I've thrown around some over optimistic percentage figures in previous posts if I recall correctly. I've started tracking spending properly only quite recently and last year we spent around £30k (just under). My net income was something like £40k. And so far this year our monthly spending has even increased a bit.

The spending goes something like this:
- Council tax: £130
- Electric and gas: £150
- Water: £40
- Internet: £30
- Phone: £10
- Children's nursery: £250
- TV licence (mensualised): £14
- Netflix: £8
- Gym+swim: £35
- Therapy: £200+
- Storage unit (really needs to go): £135
- Car insurance (mensualised): £65
- Car tax (mensualised): £13
- Fuel: £80
- Uber rides: £40
- House insurance (mensualised): £17
- Groceries: £500
- General stuff off Amazon and similar: £80
- Eating out: £250
- Charity: £150
- Travel/holidays (mensualised): £400

Which accounts for about £2600 per month. Even at 100k that's not a particularly impressive saving rate, but at least it'd be back to the FIRE-at-some-point level whereas £2600 spending on an income of, say, £3450 isn't really getting there any time soon.

Of course there are some things like the self storage which could be cut fairly painlessly and others like eating out that cold be reduced by choice. But my partner is intending to return to work in a couple of years once our kids are at school and tbh that's the main thing that I feel would shift the needle financially.

[Sabaka]

Well done on taking the job Egg! I get the worry about the occasional overworking. In some ways I just think it is the nature of software development, peaks and troughs in terms of work effort. Especially at the level you're at now, I imagine that expectations can be high and hard to put off! I generally think that the mellow period comes a bit later... The hardest workers at my place are the people with young families to support, which makes sense I guess. Also, the more prestigious the job, the higher the innate desire to prove oneself up to the task!

Also interesting to hear your thoughts on the private/public distinction. I'd come to a similar conclusion that it is generally a false distinction. All comes down to a company/team level imo.

Will the incoming expansion of free childcare (assuming it survives a general election lol) help at all with that cost? Childcare costs are a scandal in this country, especially given that the actual workers are generally on barely above minimum wage. Where do all the profits go?

Well done again, great work!