I’ve signed on the dotted line to reduce my ‘work’ week to 60% = 3 days per week. With two  kids in elementary school we wanted to find better balance in our lives so that we weren’t quite so frazzled by Friday. The idea sounded good but it took a little bit of figuring to understand the impact on our budget. More to the point…could we still balance our budget with less income?

Everyone’s situation is different but here are the things we considered:

• Child care expenses would decrease although not by the same amount as my income
• Could I make up the reduced income in other ways?
• Would the change affect benefits and insurance coverages?
• Would we still meet our financial goals? (This was a big one because we wondered whether the relief now would jeopardize our long term travel plans, retirement, kids’ education or current lifestyle?)

Many of these questions could be answered with some math or a little research. The tricky part was putting a value on being able to pick up the kids from school twice a week and being less frazzled by Friday (I’m sure the kids will appreciate a less ‘snapish’ mom). I suspect that we will not regret our decision one bit!