Parents who are home by 5-6pm from work - what do you do?

[Anonymous]

Non-profit fundraising. I can flex my time and as long as I'm hitting my numbers no one really knows or care what I'm doing at a particular time.

[Anonymous]

I work from home 4 days a week for a university. I make $110K and usually work from 9am-4pm (but take calls/answer emails from my phone earlier and later through the day). 3 kids with 3 different schedules/activities.

DH works from home usually 3 days a week, in the office 2 days a week - but his hours are more like 7am - 7pm (give or take). He makes around $550K per year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you do that you get to work from home full time?

To answer your question, I’m a lawyer who “mommytracked” herself into a crappy position that lets me leave the office at a regular time.

Same. I am a 'momytracked' lawyer (of counsel, transactional so no court) and I work from home 2-3 days a week and office 2-3 days a week. I leave by 4:30. DH is a partner in a finance firm and is either on the road or work from home, so he's around every evening he's in town. Had kids late after our careers were established.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you do that you get to work from home full time?

To answer your question, I’m a lawyer who “mommytracked” herself into a crappy position that lets me leave the office at a regular time.

Same. I am a 'momytracked' lawyer (of counsel, transactional so no court) and I work from home 2-3 days a week and office 2-3 days a week. I leave by 4:30. DH is a partner in a finance firm and is either on the road or work from home, so he's around every evening he's in town. Had kids late after our careers were established.

Adding we do all this and still make over $1m per year HHI, not to brag, just to say it is possible to have work/life balance, but we had our kids late and DH was already a managing partner and I was on partner track but chose to cut back significantly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you do that you get to work from home full time?

To answer your question, I’m a lawyer who “mommytracked” herself into a crappy position that lets me leave the office at a regular time.

Same. I am a 'momytracked' lawyer (of counsel, transactional so no court) and I work from home 2-3 days a week and office 2-3 days a week. I leave by 4:30. DH is a partner in a finance firm and is either on the road or work from home, so he's around every evening he's in town. Had kids late after our careers were established.

Adding we do all this and still make over $1m per year HHI, not to brag, just to say it is possible to have work/life balance, but we had our kids late and DH was already a managing partner and I was on partner track but chose to cut back significantly.

Not to brag.

DH is in finance right?

[Anonymous]

I'm a professor. In the fall I am home by 4pm or earlier and WFH many days. In the spring it's sometimes the same, or sometimes I teach a later class and get home around 7 two days per week. I am basically always home mid May - mid August. I do work in the evenings, weekends, etc... in spurts but it isn't bad at all and I always have time for carpool, sports, and me.

My DH goes in 2-3 days per week and gets home between 6:30-8 depending on traffic and when he leaves. Pre-pandemic this was 5x/week. It was terrible.

When we go into the office DH leaves between 7:30-8:30 and I leave at 7:30 or sometimes closer to lunch (again, depends on the day).

I stagger my late days with my husband's office days so someone if always home after school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:both of us can walk to work in 15-20 min or bike in 5 min (couch to office time). this also means we don't need cars.
(think georgetown to K street)

I'm shocked at how long some people commute and how much money they spend on transport, when they don't even seem to have time to enjoy their suburban spreads.

we calculated that walking to work allowed us to buy 300-400K 'more house'. so we spent that money to buy a place not far from work.

Hopefully neither of your jobs involve math because no one’s commute cost that doesn’t involve regular flying would come anywhere near $300-$400k.

I assume they did the following math:

1 hr commute each way per person: 4 hours of "commute time" day, 20 hours a week, 50 weeks a year: 1000 hours.

If they both make $600k+ which is possible for BigLaw partners, sales, etc. that works out to $300/hr. which would get you to $300k

The tricky part is that usually those jobs are not hourly, so converting commute time to work time would not boost their salary by $300k. But its what they consider their time "worth" to justify the more expensive house.

Most likely they are just ridiculously rich where $400k doesn't really matter.

Huh?

They're not saying that their boosted their annual income by $300-400/year. They spent that much more on a house to make up for the savings in commuting costs. $300k in mortgage costs is, what, $1200 at 3% on a 30 year?

I'd say they're better at math than all of you.

[Anonymous]

I am highly paid in tech field and I am done at 4:30pm. It is a choice I have made and I let people know that I have kids and I am done. It has not impacted me negatively at all and I am happy that my team is following my lead.

your spouse is making choices to stay at work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:both of us can walk to work in 15-20 min or bike in 5 min (couch to office time). this also means we don't need cars.
(think georgetown to K street)

I'm shocked at how long some people commute and how much money they spend on transport, when they don't even seem to have time to enjoy their suburban spreads.

we calculated that walking to work allowed us to buy 300-400K 'more house'. so we spent that money to buy a place not far from work.

Hopefully neither of your jobs involve math because no one’s commute cost that doesn’t involve regular flying would come anywhere near $300-$400k.

I assume they did the following math:

1 hr commute each way per person: 4 hours of "commute time" day, 20 hours a week, 50 weeks a year: 1000 hours.

If they both make $600k+ which is possible for BigLaw partners, sales, etc. that works out to $300/hr. which would get you to $300k

The tricky part is that usually those jobs are not hourly, so converting commute time to work time would not boost their salary by $300k. But its what they consider their time "worth" to justify the more expensive house.

Most likely they are just ridiculously rich where $400k doesn't really matter.

Huh?

They're not saying that their boosted their annual income by $300-400/year. They spent that much more on a house to make up for the savings in commuting costs. $300k in mortgage costs is, what, $1200 at 3% on a 30 year?

I'd say they're better at math than all of you.

I didn’t criticize their math, that was the PP I responded to.

Either way, commuting cost saved are unlikely $1200/month, unless they completely forgo cars at all, have no Uber or taxi cars, and were driving luxury vehicles. I’m pretty sure they were adding in the time spent commuting at their hourly wage even if they weren’t earning that.

There’s a reason most people move further out — in actual real dollars it ends up being cheaper. And what if they have to change jobs, they options are limited to a mile from their house!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am highly paid in tech field and I am done at 4:30pm. It is a choice I have made and I let people know that I have kids and I am done. It has not impacted me negatively at all and I am happy that my team is following my lead.

your spouse is making choices to stay at work.

Tech employees are currently in high demand so you have that leverage.not all industries enjoy that.

And I’m guessing you are a mom mentioning you have kids; a dad who pulled that would be setting them selves up in a bad way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am highly paid in tech field and I am done at 4:30pm. It is a choice I have made and I let people know that I have kids and I am done. It has not impacted me negatively at all and I am happy that my team is following my lead.

your spouse is making choices to stay at work.

Tech employees are currently in high demand so you have that leverage.not all industries enjoy that.

And I’m guessing you are a mom mentioning you have kids; a dad who pulled that would be setting them selves up in a bad way.

I have a guy who reports to me who recently had triplets. He leaves before me because he needs to save his marriage.

[Anonymous]

This whole thread is an illustration of how effed up American culture is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am highly paid in tech field and I am done at 4:30pm. It is a choice I have made and I let people know that I have kids and I am done. It has not impacted me negatively at all and I am happy that my team is following my lead.

your spouse is making choices to stay at work.

Tech employees are currently in high demand so you have that leverage.not all industries enjoy that.

And I’m guessing you are a mom mentioning you have kids; a dad who pulled that would be setting them selves up in a bad way.

I have a guy who reports to me who recently had triplets. He leaves before me because he needs to save his marriage.

Yeah, when you have a freakish birth, that’s the added justification that a dad needs to leave. I mean TRIPLETS!

If he just had a normal infant, he would be knee capping his career.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This whole thread is an illustration of how effed up American culture is.

Yep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We shouldn't praise people for working til 7 pm and it shouldn't be the norm. Our work world needs to change.

Unless they want to. I manage a team of people with a valuable skill set (data science, programmers etc) and frankly many want to work 10:30-7.

The implication of saying someone shouldn’t work until 7pm is that they’re starting at 9am or so. Working from 10:30-7 is an 8.5 hour day; that’s pretty typical. PP is saying that working a 10 hour day shouldn’t be the norm and I agree.

I'm the person that wrote that and that's how I meant it. Thanks!