James's blog: Spreadsheets

Shortly after Christmas I handed my notice in to move to a smaller City firm.  My old employers were fairly sanguine about my resignation.  They knew that I had struggled with the conflicting demands of work and parenthood for some time and that I had come close to leaving on a number of occasions.  The only thing that some of the partners seemed alarmed by was how I would cope with a large reduction in salary coinciding with a forthcoming house move and my daughter shortly starting at private school.

A number of my peers have recently made the move to US firms operating in London; a very lucrative career path but to my mind something unlikely to be compatible with being able to maintain a sensible form of family life.  That said, as my final day at my old firm approached I did start to wonder whether this was the right stage in my career to be accepting a much smaller salary.

Don't get me wrong, I'm lucky to be extremely well paid still and am far from being on the bread line.  But this is the first time since my student days that I've had to familiarise myself with Excel to prepare, and try to stick to, a budget.  It has certainly made me realise what a false reality I've been living in during my working life, especially when I compare the position to my parents (who regularly had to hide from the milkman in the early months of their marriage when they couldn't afford to pay him!).  And it has also made me aware of how much money I used to waste (although there is still some room for improvement in this regard).

The question in the months to come, of course, will be whether sacrificing a higher salary has been worth it.  While it is still early days in my new role, the answer so far is a resounding yes.  Over the last couple of months I've made it home for dinner with my wife almost every evening.  I'm now enjoying my day off with my daughter more as I'm no longer ridiculously sleep-deprived.  And my weekends are no longer spent trying to juggle seeing family with an over-whelming work 'to do' list with the result that I'm much more relaxed and have more time to do the things that I want to do.  There aren't any columns for these things on my budgeting spreadsheet but, then again, I couldn't place a value on them anyway!

James is a lawyer in the City.  He recently moved on from a Magic Circle firm, where he had spent eight years, in search of a better work/life balance.  He now works a four day week at a smaller City firm and looks after his 3-year old daughter on his "day off".