Lately, my thoughts keep wandering to working even less and less. On one hand, it’s not practical. We both still need to work and I carry the family’s health insurance. On the other hand, don’t we all dream of working less? And as much as I know it’s a daydream, I recall back to when I was thinking about working less the first time and how that eventually lead to my consulting job. So, it does seem like there’s some value here in visioning. As a CEO, I remember always asking my staff, “What does success look like?” The ideas behind the question – which drove them nuts – were twofold. If we couldn’t envision success as a unit, we were likely to all be pursuing slightly different goals and if we didn’t have an endpoint in mind, we could very well get lost in getting there.
So, even as my vision of working even less is merely a pipe dream at this point, it’s also important to me that I keep the dream alive. First, it provides a little release in the form of escapism from my daily reality. Additionally, it helps me begin to envision what success looks like.
For me, success starts with the house being fully renovated and retirement being fully funded. Those are the big guardrails. We have come pretty far on both fronts, but candidly, we still have pretty far to go. But, putting financial realities aside, what does the other part of success look like. Or more succinctly put, what does my life look like when I get to “even less”?
Essentially, I really think I want to work the equivalent of maybe 10-12 hours per week. Enough that I can still engage my brain and still be active in my field but not enough that it ever cuts into my everyday. At 10 hours a week, I could easily do that in three half-days or two longer, 5-hour days. Twelve hours? That’s a little tougher but I could swing it.
And what would I do with all of that glorious extra time? I’d start first with the basics. My house that gets a little sideways come Thursday evening? Yep, that would be cleaned. Meals? Definitely made at home and from scratch with a little more aforethought than I do right now. Gardens? I wouldn’t fear my husband overplanting so that I would get slammed with canning tomatoes just as I was slammed with work. My perennial gardens would be gorgeous as well. My herb gardens would all get dried and stored versus the waste we had last year. My clothesline would be full and my canning books, which sit largely unused, would be dog-eared.
But how about the other things? Those would get done, too. My husband and I would take two weeks each year and hike the Appalachian Trail. I’d have a place in Florida where we could take ourselves – and our cats – for a couple of months each winter to escape this northern climate. I’d spend time with my sisters, their husbands and my nieces and nephew, building the kind of memories that mean the world to me. Darryl and I would have dinner dates and not just because someone is too tired to cook. I’d visit my friends, which are strewn all over the county. Darryl and I would take that trip back to California. And I’d enjoy my furry little beings as only a stay-at-home kitty momma can do.
But how do I get there from here? It starts with finishing renovations. Currently, we save over 30% of our disposable income to pay for renovations. When those are done, that expense permanently goes away. Retirement is not yet fully funded and regardless of what I do, it likely needs to stay funded at the monthly contribution level I do now. It’s the only way to get to full-on complete retirement by 65. Again, those are the major guardrails in place.
From there, it’s a little more about planning. If the healthcare marketplaces stay stable, we don’t need employer-based insurance. Yes, it’s more expensive – and thus requires more funds – but it untethers me to a specific full-time equivalent to stay eligible for health insurance. With everything paid for – including those pesky renovations – we can live on considerably less and maintain our lifestyle (although it’s not like we live a fancy pants lifestyle anyway).
And my days could be glorious. Continuing to wake up without an alarm, there would be no pressure to start my workday. I could get to it whenever I wanted rather than worrying that if I don’t get an early start, I’m going to be working late into the evening. I could plan for long stretches of downtime and actually keep to those plans. Currently, I attempt to plan for three-day weekends each weekend and rarely get to enjoy that.
At the end of the day, here’s the deal: I KNOW how to achieve the things I truly want. That’s what I was able to do as a CEO and it’s worked every single time in my life. Every. Single. Time. From first desiring to make career changes that put me in greater positions of influence to becoming a CEO to turning around a struggling organization to taking a part-time job and now, to working less. Sometimes it takes years and significant planning to make it happen. At other times, it happens without much effort on my part. But if I want it? I know how to make it happen. So, the planning starts now. And in a few years? Well, come back and see. I imagine I’ll be working about 10-12 hours per week.
The Yuppie Homesteader 