4 day week and reduction in pay - would you?
Discussion
A colleague at work has recently reduced his working hours, and reduced his working days to 4 days from 5. This has also meant a reduction in salary to be in line with his reduced working hours. Horses for courses and all that. That being said i dont know him well, i met him on a course and hes from a totally different department but says his line manager and HR have made it official.
Currently its a 40 hour week, split into 8 hours per day and you can take a max of 1 hour for lunch, minimum 30 mins (lunch is unpaid).
There is an option to work 37 hours due to some old unionised rule, which means you work 8 hours mon to thurs and 5 hours on the friday - to be fair that would suit me, half day friday!
However this chap has gone further and managed to squeeze 37 hours mon to thurs - which is something that has really started to appeal to me.
If i went down this route (just doing the calcs and thinking it through), it would mean that i take a reduction in salary of about 7.5% (40 hrs to 37 hrs). Thing is that i currently pay a large amount into my company pension scheme and thus my actual take home wouldnt be affected - the only down side is that my pension contribution would be reduced to compensate for the reduction in salary. Rather than paying in 10% pension, i would be paying around 5% (my employer would still pay the same regardless of how much i pay in so no loss from that point).
Do i do it or not?
Other points to note;
Im around 20 years from earliest retirement
I dont have any plans if i do have a day off, but 4 on 3 off sounds good!
I dont know if i could go back to 40 hours at a later date
Plan is to stay with this employer for the rest of my working life
Currently its a 40 hour week, split into 8 hours per day and you can take a max of 1 hour for lunch, minimum 30 mins (lunch is unpaid).
There is an option to work 37 hours due to some old unionised rule, which means you work 8 hours mon to thurs and 5 hours on the friday - to be fair that would suit me, half day friday!
However this chap has gone further and managed to squeeze 37 hours mon to thurs - which is something that has really started to appeal to me.
If i went down this route (just doing the calcs and thinking it through), it would mean that i take a reduction in salary of about 7.5% (40 hrs to 37 hrs). Thing is that i currently pay a large amount into my company pension scheme and thus my actual take home wouldnt be affected - the only down side is that my pension contribution would be reduced to compensate for the reduction in salary. Rather than paying in 10% pension, i would be paying around 5% (my employer would still pay the same regardless of how much i pay in so no loss from that point).
Do i do it or not?
Other points to note;
Im around 20 years from earliest retirement
I dont have any plans if i do have a day off, but 4 on 3 off sounds good!
I dont know if i could go back to 40 hours at a later date
Plan is to stay with this employer for the rest of my working life
Scrump said:
Cheers for that, didnt see that one! Looks like no has said a 4 day week (from 5) is a bad thing!
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