How much less pay to be happy?

[The Bacon Junkie]

I'm nowhere near $75k.   

But then again, I'm a teacher...  I make maybe half that.   

[CairnsDuc]

The wife and I used to both work full time, we had a huge mortgage, and we never saw each other or had time to enjoy the house we were paying off, the couple of days we had off were spent cleaning, mowing and looking after the place, after 2 years I said to the wife I can't do this for another 25 years, we had 2 maxed credit cards, a small personal loan.

We sold the house and the bit of money we made, we invested, and sadly a decent chunk went down the drain because of the financial crisis.
I lost my job because the company I worked for could not ride out the GFC. there was no full time work around, so I applied for a Part time/Casual job with a electrical retailer and that change in job has pushed us down a path we never expected to go down, and we couldn't be happier!

As a result of me switching to part time work, I am now the House Husband (Or House pregnant dog as the wife likes to say!   )
We really expected to struggle and go backwards financially, but It had some unexpected benefits:

- We are now Eating better, because of the hours we were doing (on average 50 - 60 hours each) per week we were eating a lot of junk food, now I cook a meal each night (I do all the cooking, the wife can not cook to save herself) we don't buy lunches any more,  I now have time to go out and search for better quality Meat, Fruit and Veg, we are saving a small fortune because we are not buying junk food just about every night (We have a "Bad day" once a week, we get junk food on that day only)

- We are much cleaner, I now have a strict timetable of cleaning for the week, certain days I clean the house, the Bathroom, every few days the Towels and Sheets get washed. before it was a case when we remembered or the dirty dishes reached the ceiling. I'm a bit of clean freak, but when working full time doing 60+ hours in a week, I could not be bothered when I had a day off, or just do a half assed effort at cleaning.

- We moved interstate! We were tired of living in a town where everyone knew mine or my Wife's parents, we couldn't go anywhere or do anything without our parents finding out about it. so we spent 12 months looking at our options and we moved to Tasmania (Island state south of mainland Australia) The town we lived in was so stuck up it was incredible. We love it down here, cheaper to live, great roads, awesome scenery, beautiful country side and friendly people.
my only regret about the move? we should have done it years ago!

- Depression, I was diagnosed with Depression about 6 years ago, I was on Zoloft everyday, and some days the Depression became almost overwhelming, since the switch to part time work, I have stopped taking the Zoloft and I have learnt to manage the depression myself, in fact the Black Cloud events (That's what I call the time when the Depression is at it's worst, when you are really feeling down) have become very mild. the wife says that she can see the difference since I changed my work habits.  

I could go on and on about all the major and minor differences it has made to our lives.

The silly part is we have less money coming in, but we are much happier! Since the move we have been living off the wifes wage only, (I just found work last week and start next week) but we are happy. I have had full time work since I left school 18 years ago, I could never have imagined working part time, I must admit it scared me when I applied to do part time work (Meaning less money coming in) but we can now see even with less money coming in we are happier and healthier for it.

Very happy!  

[mitt]

The wife and I used to both work full time, we had a huge mortgage, and we never saw each other or had time to enjoy the house we were paying off, the couple of days we had off were spent cleaning, mowing and looking after the place, after 2 years I said to the wife I can't do this for another 25 years, we had 2 maxed credit cards, a small personal loan.


Very happy!  

Good for you     It is nice reading stories like this.

mitt