How many hours a week do(es) your breadwinner(s) work?

[MeghansMom]

I wasn't sure what constituted the different classes, so I googled and found this article: http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-income-class-are-you.aspx

 

I retired two years ago, but worked a non-traditional schedule of 3-on/4-off away from home. It ranged from 65-75 hours per week, included an interstate commute, and according to the article earned lower middle class wages. It was typical of my colleagues, even across the industry, but not for my friends in other industries at lower middle class wage jobs. They worked less hours, for sure.

 

My ex-husband is considered our breadwinner, I guess. When he switched from active duty to civilian, his pay went up enough to where he could match my former salary - which he does, in the form of spousal support, and which allowed me to retire. The article puts him at upper class income. He works a standard 40 hour work week, at a job he can't bring home with him. 

 

He's not typical of our friends in the same earning bracket, though. They all work 8-10 hour days, and intermittently at home in the evenings and on weekends.  We were talking about that the other day, how I'd hate to feel tied to my job (emails, texts) but how companies are increasingly expecting it and are blurring the line between work and home - while we not only allow, but unwittingly encourage it through (over)use of and Pavlovian responses to technological advances.

 

According to that article, we were satisfied middle class and now we are struggling middle class. The loss of bonuses, some benefits and having no pay raises for eight years did that. They did this past year reestablish bonuses, still no pay raises, but it saved us. That and his second job. Slowly but surely we are getting back on our feet. :)

 

I am hoping to go back to college myself and get a different degree besides social work. :p

 

 

[HS Mom in NC]

He owns his own business and works from home.  He works at least 50 hours most weeks.  He writes computer software. The most I ever saw him work were 80 hour weeks.

[tm919]

My husband works about 50-60 hours a week when you factor in all the "extra" time with emails at home, meetings at home, "emergencies" and so on. On the record, he works maybe 45.

 

I worked about 70 before I went to part-time, now I work 35ish. I think for more and more professional jobs, an "extra" 50% hours is pretty common. 

 

I do notice my husband works longer hours now that I am not really bringing home good benefits & the same level salary. Before, we could both afford to tell our jobs to take a hike (ignore the email, don't leave a contact number), but now that we are so dependent on his job for benefits & the much higher salary, he never says no.

[Joker]

Dh leaves between 7-7:30am and takes at least one dd to school on his way during the school year. He is home by 5pm (if not earlier) most nights. Maybe once or twice a week he's not home until 6pm. He does do some work from home some nights and weekends but he uses his laptop and sits on the couch. He's not shutoff from us and talks with us while he works.

 

We're about to move and he will be exclusively working from home and will have flexibility to run errands or shuttle dds around. He will have to fly back to the office for a few days here and there which will be different since he's always minimized his traveling without us.

 

We know we're lucky. Dh's degree and experience has allowed him to never be without a good job and allows us flexibility.

[sbgrace]

My husband is in governmental (state govt) accounting, and works 8 hour days. That includes 1 hour lunch but travel is on your own time, so often it averages out. So I'll say a 40 hour work week, but it really depends on how much he is traveling in a particular week. He could make more in private accounting, but the trade off in work hours and stress never seemed worth it to us.

 

 

[myfunnybunch]

Dh usually works 40-60+ hours, depending on where they are in the work cycle. He works from home and his schedule is flexible, so there's no commute, and he's usually available for family needs.

[rdj2027]

Hubby is on active duty, anywhere between 60 and 80 hours a week.  

[Ausmumof3]

50-60

[AimeeM]

DH is in a professional field (engineer). He works a 40 hour week (8:30-5:00 or 5:30) generally. Salary. Occasionally a problem crops up and he either works from his home computer, fields calls, or is at the office a bit late, but it isn't common.

 

ETA: He works for a private (albeit very large) company - not a government job. His company is, however, a foreign-owned company, and I would imagine that the country's vision of what makes a work week contributes to the pretty even hours.

[SparklyUnicorn]

Frequent travel is something he absolutely did not want.  We had a long distance relationship prior to getting married and it was extremely difficult.  But ironically his first job he got after moving here he was told that the position involved zero travel.  Awesome.  Two weeks in they asked him to accompany them to Germany because they recently acquired a German company.   They only asked him to travel one other time years later, but to somewhere nearby and only for 2 days.  It was kind of a nice opportunity because he could visit his family.  But really of all things....

 

 

[abba12]

This thread makes me so thankful for my country, where you don't need to be a high income earner to support a family, and where the general attitude in most work places is still towards an 8 hour day. Sure, there are some fields where you will work the 60 or 70 hours, but I am seeing posts here from people also in engineering, my husbands field, talking about 50+ hour weeks. My husband has worked for two different engineering firms, and full time hours were considered 38 (though regular overtime made it more like 43) and 40. No take home work. Even the managers, the big bosses at these firms, never worked more than the 40 hours. In fact, if the employees were on overtime, they'd often get in before the boss did, or leave after him, depending on the hours. 

 

He can no longer work full time (which, for us means only 40 hours, half of what some of your husbands are doing!) for medical reasons, and we were complaining when he did work full time that he didn't have enough time at home! (though, the undiagnosed sleep condition making him nearly unable to function after an 8 hour day probably contributed to that feeling). He's on 24 hours now with a very respectable hourly rate, and I am doing 10-16 at an alright rate, so combined we make up the equivalent of a decent single full time job. It works for us, though I'd hardly consider us upper middle class by any means. I'm beginning to realize how lucky we are to have made this arrangement work though, and the time, for us, is more than worth the money lost. 

 

I hope I'm not making anyone feel bad here, I'm just amazed at the cultural difference when it's laid out like this. I know people in good paying jobs, no 6-figures, but decent, respectable jobs, and none of them ever work more than 50 hours even including work at home. Australia has a pretty relaxed attitude I guess, or maybe I just know all the wrong people! Point is, I'm feeling very lucky. It must be very hard to deal with the situations I'm reading described here. 

[Wheres Toto]

My company's typical work week is 35 hours a week.  I generally work somewhere between 35 and 40 hours a week unless it's a very unusual week.  I do check email from my company issued cell phone from home, but that doesn't add more than 15 minutes or so to my day most of the time (actually tonight I'll be jumping on my computer for a little while, maybe 15-30 minutes).  My title is Senior Management Coordinator but I"m pretty much an executive assistant, for an extremely large multi-national company.  From what I've heard, the previous holders of my position put in a lot more OT but I'm able to get my work done in 35-40 hours.

 

Dh works 40 hours a week at his new job, but is putting in another 10-20 hours on weekends wrapping up stuff from his company that they are dissolving.  Once that is done around August, he won't be working those extra hours anymore.  He is an executive level VP (that also does hands-on lab work) for a small company.

 

Both of us have commutes of about 10-15 minutes.  He works 4.7 miles from home, I work 5.1 miles   We looked it up because we each thought we were closer.  :laugh:

 

ETA:  Dh is salaried but I am hourly.  I have to work 40 hours and then I get 1/2 pay "overtime" (some kind of flex time rule).

 

ETA-again, LOL:  According to the article linked above, we are Upper Class as a household (the 5% not the 1%).  2/3 of our income is Dh but I fall into the lower middle with just mine.  BUT we live in an extremely high COL area so it doesn't go as far as it would most other places, and I wouldn't be making what I do in most other places.

 

I don't understand this from the article:  In the middle of the middle classes is the lower middle class.  In the middle of the middle is the lower middle?  Huh?

[VANURSEPRAC]

About 60

And managers are always on call

 

If you want a 40 hr or less week here you take a govt job.

 

 

I work 40 hours a week with pretty awesome benefits and my work drive is 11 mins from my door to work. Yep, it is a govt job and I would not trade it for the world. It keeps my  "single mom of 12 y/o"  life manageable.

[SparklyUnicorn]

This thread makes me so thankful for my country, where you don't need to be a high income earner to support a family, and where the general attitude in most work places is still towards an 8 hour day. Sure, there are some fields where you will work the 60 or 70 hours, but I am seeing posts here from people also in engineering, my husbands field, talking about 50+ hour weeks. My husband has worked for two different engineering firms, and full time hours were considered 38 (though regular overtime made it more like 43) and 40. No take home work. Even the managers, the big bosses at these firms, never worked more than the 40 hours. In fact, if the employees were on overtime, they'd often get in before the boss did, or leave after him, depending on the hours. 

 

He can no longer work full time (which, for us means only 40 hours, half of what some of your husbands are doing!) for medical reasons, and we were complaining when he did work full time that he didn't have enough time at home! (though, the undiagnosed sleep condition making him nearly unable to function after an 8 hour day probably contributed to that feeling). He's on 24 hours now with a very respectable hourly rate, and I am doing 10-16 at an alright rate, so combined we make up the equivalent of a decent single full time job. It works for us, though I'd hardly consider us upper middle class by any means. I'm beginning to realize how lucky we are to have made this arrangement work though, and the time, for us, is more than worth the money lost. 

 

I hope I'm not making anyone feel bad here, I'm just amazed at the cultural difference when it's laid out like this. I know people in good paying jobs, no 6-figures, but decent, respectable jobs, and none of them ever work more than 50 hours even including work at home. Australia has a pretty relaxed attitude I guess, or maybe I just know all the wrong people! Point is, I'm feeling very lucky. It must be very hard to deal with the situations I'm reading described here. 

 

Yeah frankly I think it's disgusting to make people work 60/70 hours per week on a regular basis.  And on top of that give them almost no time off.  We aren't unfeeling machines. 

 

Not to mention I'm not convinced anyone actually WORKS that many hours.  I have my doubts that most people can perform well for that entire amount of time.  I know myself when I worked overtime I was pretty absent mentally a lot of that time.  I also had periods where I worked very slowly or not at all. 

[Arcadia]

Australia has a pretty relaxed attitude I guess, or maybe I just know all the wrong people! Point is, I'm feeling very lucky. It must be very hard to deal with the situations I'm reading described here.

I do find the Sydney office more relaxed than the Paris or London office which in turn is more relaxed than the Silicon Valley office when I was in MNCs. The inside joke was that the Sydney hardware engineers are out surfing. So same division but different locale has different work culture.

The Sydney guys I worked with generally feel confident of their local universities for their kids so not as worried about college expenses. As in confident of the quality of the universities and confident their kids would make it in.

[*lifeoftheparty*]

DH works 40 hours a week- 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. He's home by 3:00 pm everyday.

 

No weekends. No overtime. And his job deals with classified stuff- so no phone calls or emails about work allowed, and especially no to taking work home.

 

It's a pretty sweet deal we have going on.

[Arcadia]

If there is overtime pay and the overtime is from after 9pm, it did helped doubled the take home pay for the lab technicians in the MNC that I did my internship with.

The lab techs (male and female) went home for dinner at 5pm and came back to do overtime at 9pm. They get paid double their hourly rate and also per diem for dinner and breakfast as well as mileage to office. Some testing needed to be monitored for 24 hrs which was why the techs did overtime as needed.

[Garga]

40-45 hours a week. When he teaches a class (twice a year maybe) each class is about 80 hours of work over a 15 week period. He makes a very nice salary. Not anything like 6 figures, though.

 

He has ADHD and has learned how to harnass it so that he gets an astounding amount of work done in a very short amount of time.

 

Note: he's hired to work 35 hours a week, but he works through his lunch and a bit late each night. So, even though he works only 40-45 hours a week, it's 1-2 extra hours than what's he's been hired to do each day.

 

Also, it's a 2 hour commute each day (total), so he's out of the house for 10-11 hours each day.

[creekland]

FWIW, not everyone working many hours hates it.  My hubby thrives on it.  He loves what he does and enjoys working.  When he takes time off (Sundays) he often isn't sure what to do.  He's fine if we travel or I have things planned out for us, but sitting around doing nothing (or watching TV, etc) is not his thing at all.

 

When the kids were young he always had plenty of time to do things with them since he works from our house and has a very flexible schedule.  We used to purposely take every (nice weather) Tuesday off as a family day and go hiking/geocaching and we took notoriously long road trips fairly often (long = > 2 weeks).

 

When we travel he's always available to do things on the schedule I make - or spontaneously come up with.

 

But at home, he's itching to be doing something during his waking hours or he gets stressed.  It's not only his job.  It's what he loves.  No one forces him (ever), he wants to put in the hours.

 

FWIW, I am not genetically the same.  I enjoy my leisure time!

[Guest]

Dh worked long, stressful hours for years. In 2006 he had a heart attack and now he's the proud owner of 8 stents. Stress almost killed him, literally. His boss called my cell the morning after dh's heart attack- to ask him what his contingency plan was to keep his test lab running while he recovered. At that moment, dh and I decided not to let work come before his health and since then he works between 40 and 45 hours a week.

 

His boss had a cancer scare a few years later and he has completely changed- he is not the same awful man who called me that morning.

 

If he was a younger man and was trying to climb the corporate ladder, he would have to work more hours, as it seems to be the standard.

That's my biggest worry with my husband, trashing his health going on 4 hours of sleep nightly and working nonstop. We have excellent life insurance if he passed away, but even the thought of him slightly injured due to overwork is my nightmare. We are trying to improve it, but with medical bills and debt to work off it is hard going :(

[TechWife]

If we are counting travel time, which I do because he usually works in-flight and doesn't often fly during regular business hours, then my husband probably averages 65-70. 

 

Tomorrow he will leave the house at 4:30 am, get on a plane and spend the entire workday in another city then get on a plane at 7:00 pm (if meetings end on time and traffic normal) to come home. He will arrive back at our house around 8:30pm if there are no flight delays. Some weeks he works 8:00am - 5:00pm at his office, but most weeks he has at least a one day trip and usually longer trips. At night in the hotel he is usually working on his presentations for the following day (they vary based on what happens each day) and catching up with his email and phone calls from co-workers and clients. When he travels overseas, add at least a day on each end for travel time. When he is in Europe, the workday in Europe is ending while the workday on the east coast of the US is in full swing, so he often has to put in a second day of work if there are things that need his attention (There are lots of conference calls in his line of work).  Then, the people on the west coast of the US are remembering that they need him to address something. He will often work until 11:00 pm with people in the US after putting in a full day at the office when he is in Europe. Occasionally he will have to stay up really late or get up really early to handle a conference call from Japan or China. So, yes, I would say that he works at least 65-70 hours per week. 

[FairProspects]

60-80. We are small business owners. Dh goes to work around 8am, comes home between 8 & 10pm, and then puts in more time on billing, calls, and administrative work in the late evenings and on weekends.

[Tsuga]

FWIW, not everyone working many hours hates it.  My hubby thrives on it.  He loves what he does and enjoys working.  When he takes time off (Sundays) he often isn't sure what to do.  He's fine if we travel or I have things planned out for us, but sitting around doing nothing (or watching TV, etc) is not his thing at all.

 

When the kids were young he always had plenty of time to do things with them since he works from our house and has a very flexible schedule.  We used to purposely take every (nice weather) Tuesday off as a family day and go hiking/geocaching and we took notoriously long road trips fairly often (long = > 2 weeks).

 

When we travel he's always available to do things on the schedule I make - or spontaneously come up with.

 

But at home, he's itching to be doing something during his waking hours or he gets stressed.  It's not only his job.  It's what he loves.  No one forces him (ever), he wants to put in the hours.

 

FWIW, I am not genetically the same.  I enjoy my leisure time!

 

Oh, absolutely. I like both of my jobs and I am grateful to be earning the money. I don't feel that 60 hours total, max is too much for me.

 

I was more thinking--several people have said this was a "lot" of hours and I thought, gee whiz, just how much am I getting screwed here? LOL! I thought sixty hours for about six figures was okay, considering that I do what I love and work in the public sector (please note, this is not a single six-figure job, but a lot of stuff cobbled together).

[TechWife]

That's my biggest worry with my husband, trashing his health going on 4 hours of sleep nightly and working nonstop. 

 

I can relate to this - one of my biggest worries is that dh will fall asleep while driving home from the airport when he has been awake since 4:00 am or after a long trip. Thankfully, he is taking care of his health. He eats very well and runs daily - even when he is traveling. He will give up sleep in order to run, though. Which leads me back to my worry...

 

[Wabi Sabi]

My dh is the primary breadwinner and he averages 35-40 hours a week. While there are high expectations of him at work, it isn't particularly high stress and is rather enjoyable for him. It is a professional position within an academic environment. He has a 10 minute commute and immense flexibility in his schedule. Work/life balance is extremely high priority for us, so it's really the ideal position for him. 

I work full time as well.  My job is low-wage, hourly, and in the non-profit/social service sector. Despite working 50-65 hours a week I bring home less than 1/3 of the total family income. It is high stress, but it works for my family because it offers nontraditional work hours, flexibility that still allows me to be home with the kids through most of the week, and 6 weeks/year of paid vacation. 

[Brit29]

60 hours here. Dh rarely works weekends and is done by 6 most nights. However in his industry he needs to do a lot of research and education to stay relevant. So he probably spends another 10-15 hours a week doing that. 

[MeaganS]

My dh works about 90+ hours a week and he is a 2nd year resident. Last month, he literally had 2 days off and was working 16 hours a day otherwise. In the last year, he worked Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Halloween night, and 4th of July night. His salary is low enough to qualify us for WIC, although we live in a low COL area and own a comfortable house. It won't get better in the next 5 years at least, but it works for us. Homeschooling allows us to prioritize family time when he is available. This weekend, in fact, he is off for 3 days which is totally unheard of for us and we are planning on making the most of it!

[AnnE-girl]

One other thing about work hours in regard to quality of life is that commute times make a big difference. For the first few years DH was working his current job, he drove a little over an hour each way and rarely did the extra networking, etc. activities that he could have been doing because he wanted to get home to us. Now his commute is 15 minutes each way with heavy traffic. He's technically spending more time on work-related activities, but we have more time as a family than we did when his commute was longer.

[Ausmumof3]

This thread makes me so thankful for my country, where you don't need to be a high income earner to support a family, and where the general attitude in most work places is still towards an 8 hour day. Sure, there are some fields where you will work the 60 or 70 hours, but I am seeing posts here from people also in engineering, my husbands field, talking about 50+ hour weeks. My husband has worked for two different engineering firms, and full time hours were considered 38 (though regular overtime made it more like 43) and 40. No take home work. Even the managers, the big bosses at these firms, never worked more than the 40 hours. In fact, if the employees were on overtime, they'd often get in before the boss did, or leave after him, depending on the hours.

 

He can no longer work full time (which, for us means only 40 hours, half of what some of your husbands are doing!) for medical reasons, and we were complaining when he did work full time that he didn't have enough time at home! (though, the undiagnosed sleep condition making him nearly unable to function after an 8 hour day probably contributed to that feeling). He's on 24 hours now with a very respectable hourly rate, and I am doing 10-16 at an alright rate, so combined we make up the equivalent of a decent single full time job. It works for us, though I'd hardly consider us upper middle class by any means. I'm beginning to realize how lucky we are to have made this arrangement work though, and the time, for us, is more than worth the money lost.

 

I hope I'm not making anyone feel bad here, I'm just amazed at the cultural difference when it's laid out like this. I know people in good paying jobs, no 6-figures, but decent, respectable jobs, and none of them ever work more than 50 hours even including work at home. Australia has a pretty relaxed attitude I guess, or maybe I just know all the wrong people! Point is, I'm feeling very lucky. It must be very hard to deal with the situations I'm reading described here.

Yes. My dh was doing on the upper end of hours for our friends circle and that was at around 60 - 70 per week. It's not the norm.

 

I think a lot of Australians have a longer commute time though so you have to factor that in. When my dh works 50 hours he's away 60 if he's working 70 he's away 80. We still have all that awesome annual leave etc though.

[teachermom2834]

Dh is sole wage earner for family of 6. He works about 50 hours a week at his career job and about 15-20 weekly on his side gig (works from home at night/weekend). Side gig allows me to stay home. I would be willing to work a part time job but he commands a much higher wage than I would. He would rather work than have me gone and be responsible for meals, chores, etc. It works for us but dh is kind of a workaholic and doesn't expect downtime for hobbies, etc.

[creekland]

My guy's commute time is however long it takes him to walk from upstairs (where the bedrooms are) to downstairs (where he works).  Maybe 10 - 15 seconds? Longer if he stops by the fridge to grab something first.  :lol:

[MomtoCandJ]

45 regularly

[Btervet]

My DH works 40 hours. It was really important to us that he took a 9-5 job, no weekends, no overtime, little travel. I am grateful that his education allowed him to get a job with those conditions and still support us comfortably in a very HCOL area. He has a 20-40 minute commute depending on traffic.

[Annie G]

I can relate to this - one of my biggest worries is that dh will fall asleep while driving home from the airport when he has been awake since 4:00 am or after a long trip. Thankfully, he is taking care of his health. He eats very well and runs daily - even when he is traveling. He will give up sleep in order to run, though. Which leads me back to my worry...

 

When dh first started working for this company he had to do a good bit of traveling, and they had a driver take him to and from the airport. I always thought that was so they could work during the commute.  I was so glad when he moved down to the test lab because there is almost no travel now. His commute is about a mile- I am in heaven with that.  

 

Eating well and working out helps but the stress can be so hard to manage with employers reducing labor force and piling more responsibilities on those who are still there. 

[Farrar]

Technically 40, but actually less and he usually works from home. He is in a middle class, well paid job. The caveat is that it's in the middle of the night. However, the nature of dh's job is that there's a deadline every morning and once the deadline is passed, it's done. There's genuinely very little to do until the next night. This means there's never any lingering "more" he could have done, nothing to worry over. When I was teaching, there was always more I could be doing, always more I could put into it. Not so for dh, so there's never a reason to work longer hours.

 

We're very lucky, I realize.

[waa510]

Dh is incredibly lucky to work in a field that pays a ton yet has a great work/life balance of working 40..maybe 50 hours a few times a year. We can even have him bike to work here, which is great. His typical commute was about 25-30 minutes drive in the states.

 

 We had no idea, naively, that this was not others' experience until we started to make more friends in other fields and outside the military arena. Now, he does have to travel a bit more but we can come along on the longer trips and they're to places like Hawaii or Guam. We're considering going back to his former job in VA b/c the work/life situation was a rock-solid 40/week and his days off, ability to work from home and vacation time were very flexible. 

[Hunter's Moon]

DH and I live in a LCOL area. We've currently moved, so DH is looking for work and I'm the sole earner at this time.

 

I work as an independent contractor - we can get by on me working about 20 hours a week and I work from home. I absolutely live the flexibility and freedom.

 

I work more than 20, however. I'm building my own business as well, so I spend a lot of time asvertising, marketing, networking, etc. It can be difficult to step away from work as it seems there's always more I can be doing.

[Frances]

My husband, the primary earner, is in healthcare and works 30 hours per week, but only 6 ten hour shifts every two weeks. His commute is a three minute walk and he comes home for a nap on his dinner break. When he was in academia, he worked 60-80 hours per week year round, including summers. He still teaches one month out of the year which adds about 20 hours per week during that time, although more than half of it is commuting.

 

I work 40 hours per week. My schedule is quite flexible, although I usually choose to work five days a week in the office for about 30 hours and then do the rest at home in the evenings. During the short days of winter, I like to still have plenty of daylight when I get home. For the summer, I sometimes do all of my work at the air conditioned office and then have my evenings free. I'm also fortunate to have a short commute. It takes less than five minutes for my husband to drive me in the morning and about twenty minutes for me to walk home in the afternoon.

[swellmomma]

Last school year I worked anywhere from 30-40 hrs a week, this summer I am doing 35 hrs a week consistently, next school year I will be doing 48-50 hours a week.  I am the sole breadwinner, so I have to do what I need to in order to support my family.  My commute is not overly long, about 20 minutes each way.  In the evenings during the school year I have college classes online.  At least until I graduate next spring.  I could cut back and work like 25 hours a week, but that leaves us struggling a bit financially and with no upward progress in my position which is not good long term for my career.

[Cottonwood]

Dh, 60 hrs a week.  But he's retiring (1st retirement..he's 40) so I'm not sure what it'll be next month. LOL  

[Cammie]

60-70 - high level engineering management.  8:30-5:30 in the office.  Often 9 PM to 1 AM on the phone with teams around the world.

[VeganCupcake]

Mine generally works 40, but once a month he has one night that can be very very late, so that week is more like 50ish. He is an engineer, not a manager. I know his manager works many more hours. 

[Tsuga]

I just want to say--I like and appreciate everyone's posting. I feel better. But that doesn't mean I like that some of your families are working so many hours, for so little or that you're struggling.

 

Cammie, I am often on phone calls from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. with Bangalore. So we're even.

[Guest]

Is it weird that I'm glad I'm not alone in having an overworked engineer for a husband? :lol:

[creekland]

Is it weird that I'm glad I'm not alone in having an overworked engineer for a husband? :lol:

 

I'm wondering if we're weird in that we wouldn't change anything.  He enjoys what he does and can take time off whenever we want it, plus we have the income to enjoy that time off...  He/We have no desire to start working for someone again to get fewer hours, but less flexibility for our trips, both the longer ones (taking all of Feb off this past year plus several smaller trips of a weekend or week or three months+ in 2006) or the shorter ones (we often return Monday morning after weekend travel to avoid the massive crowds returning Sunday).

 

Few jobs working for other people would allow that sort of flexibility whenever we get the whim.

 

Maybe, like with other things, our travel junkie habit makes this a no-brainer decision for us whereas others without the addiction think we're weird (to use a nice word).  That wouldn't be the first time.   :coolgleamA:

 

I feel for those who work LONG hours and don't have the flexibility or money as compensation.  That just seems... wrong.  It happens way too often when one can't get a high enough paying job.  It's part of the reason we tip very well, but not all earn tips from their jobs either.

[Alice]

We both work part-time, although dh's company considers him full-time for benefits (health insurance). He works 30-32 hours a week. He is an architect. My hours are much harder to calculate because of call and because they vary depending on number of patients in the hospital. but I estimate about 20-25. We are happy with the way we have managed the work-life balance. It has affected both of our careers, probably more so dh than mine. He will not be promoted to being a partner in his company, although he likely would have been if he wasn't part-time. I will never be a partner in my practice for the same reason. We make plenty of money to live a good life but live in a very high COL area so feel like we are more middle-class or have less than most people. T

 

 

My dh works about 90+ hours a week and he is a 2nd year resident. Last month, he literally had 2 days off and was working 16 hours a day otherwise. In the last year, he worked Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Halloween night, and 4th of July night. His salary is low enough to qualify us for WIC, although we live in a low COL area and own a comfortable house. It won't get better in the next 5 years at least, but it works for us. Homeschooling allows us to prioritize family time when he is available. This weekend, in fact, he is off for 3 days which is totally unheard of for us and we are planning on making the most of it!

 

 

It gets better! When I was a resident I counted hours one week and stopped counting at about 110, it was too depressing to keep going. Hang in there! 

[Jane in NC]

Some of my husband's colleagues work fewer hours although the Fortune 500 that employs him seems to expect salaried professionals to work at least five hours over the standard 40 as a matter of course.  His company went to four "tens" Monday through Thursday several years ago, after doing a 44 hour week one week (four "nines", one "eight") followed by 36 hours the next (four "nines").  Of course the length of time one works, nine or ten hours, is not rigid.  For example, this week my husband was negotiating some language in disclosure agreements. People in other time zones were still working on documents at 6 PM Eastern. He had no choice but to remain at work until the loose ends were neatly tied.

 

I don't think my husband is a workaholic but he is a professional.  It is not really a matter of doing a job but doing a job well. 

 

What prevents him from doing his job though are meetings!  I think this is also common in the professional world.  But this is why he often goes into work on Fridays, a supposed day off. No meetings that day so he can get some real work done.  He often comments that he is one of few in the office that day--although one never knows what people do at home.

 

When our son was younger, my husband did a lot of work related travel.  Technology has eliminated the need for some of that but he continues to travel a bit. 

 

I feel very fortunate.  Our education has allowed both of us to work in the fields we love; the quality of our life is very high.  Yes there are weeks when my poor DH is stressed and stretched thinly, but in general he enjoys his job. 

[Serenade]

Between his "real" work and his consulting work, my DH works 50 - 60 hours a week, although it can be more at times, too.  Right now it's one of those "more" times, and it's definitely taking a toll on his health.

 

[Serenade]

 

 

What prevents him from doing his job though are meetings!  I think this is also common in the professional world.  

 

This.

[Heatherwith4]

It varies, but anywhere from 45-60 hrs/week. During extremely busy times, it can sometimes be even more. He works for a small business in the events industry.