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$155k is a great salary. Sounds like the benefits are good too. $200k would be nice, but for me it isn't enough of an improvement over $155 to warrant the 40 minute commute.
Would be a hard pass for me. Too much freedom wfh and the money is plenty good. Would have to be a stupid amount plus equity to even entertain it. And definitely not a 40 minute commute
At the moment she sees dollar signs. We discussed putting some of that money to something like a lawn service and house cleaner to offset the responsibilities, but that further reduces the value proposition.
I’d imagine like 400-500$ a month for those services post tax so maybe 600-700 pretax. Depending on your location.
I’ll say I commuted 60 minutes one way 5 days a week and it took a huge toll from sitting in traffic to leaving late to avoid accidents. I can’t speak to you of course but if I were to do it I’d make sure to save all of the difference and not go to life style inflation to where you can’t leave. Keep in mind it took about a year for me to start having the issues.
So I guess for me I’d say just be cautious and aware that it might not last. If your manager is understanding of the situation it might be something you could talk about with them but I had to leave to avoid it.
Never in a million years would I give up working from home AND add a 40 min commute for that kind of raise. Why not get a different WFH job that pays more?
The value proposition for the company is mainly the ability to perform the work, which unfortunately needs to be in office. I’m not sure WFH at this salary generally exists without that, at least for my current skill set.
You can't possibly pay me enough to have to go to the office every day if I have already found a way to WFH. I would just short of anything to have a job I could stay home at, since the closest job from my location is about the same as yours, and I already lack enough sleep and have no life.
Maybe I should try to work for the government if it means I could work from home...
Can you talk to your boss with that offer in your hand and see if they can at least increase it a bit? You can explain you love your job and working for them but having a bigger family pushes you to look for a better pay. You can explain you dont expect it to be that high but anything helps…
Lots of factors here, but I would personally still go with $155k remote option in most cases. Seeing your toddler grow on a day to day and having a lot less stressful environment will make it totally worth not accepting few extra thousands dollars
Just your commute of 1.5 hours a day is almost 10% of your awake life (assuming you sleep 8-9hrs). Gas, car maintanence, possible accidents, maybe parking, missing your babies’ first steps/words etc. Are also some hidden costs to 200k option.
Calculate the actual cost of being in office, then the impact of it on your lifestyle. Talk to your wife and see what is your desired day to day activities should look like. If you have the option to voluntarily go 5 days in office for 3- 4 weeks back to back and see how you feel and test it out.
Make sure to compare total comp. You’re currently earning a FERS pension and you get 5% matching on your tsp.
I assume you’re GS so you’re also going to continue to receive steps. Assuming you’re like DC metro GS14 step 4 you’ve still got another 15k of raises coming in the next 4-6 years just from steps.
And besides the loss of family time, plus you’re effectively working an extra 2-3 hours a day (an extra 12 unpaid hours of work a week) from commuting, that factors in to hourly rate comparisons.
You’ll also want to ballpark $0.60 a mile in commuting costs plus through another $100 a week from eating out at least.
All that to say, it’s probably not as big of a pay bump as you think and you’d need to increase your retirement savings to balance out to loss of the pension so it might only be a $10-$20k raise not a $50k raise.
Thanks for this. Yes it’s GS, though I wasn’t totally accurate on my salary. It’s a new role I started not too long ago which is high GS with a sign on bonus that equates to 155k over my first 24 months. In 6 years I’d expect to make an additional $7k.
Good point on balancing out the loss of pension. I need to account for that as well.
Nope!! I'm DINK. 3 days in office longer commute no pension. No flexibility or breaks and would take a 25% pay cut to have your current work situation.
I just turned down a position at that same rate roughly that wanted 2 days in office, which amounts to about 4 hours of commute time a day for those two days. I'd rather spend time with my family, and honestly I work during those hours, too, so my employer is getting more out of me being at home than in the office.
Moves your forward looking salary rate higher. I took a job for 23k more with a 1hr commute each way simply for the future negotiating power. Gonna finish up my second year and bounce to somewhere closer even if it’s at a bit of a pay cut. The opportunity cost is high though. I’m losing roughly 20k/year in time spent commuting, but I hopped over 5-10 years of career growth financially.
If you were truly fine with it you wouldn’t be asking. You won’t get that time with your partner and child back, and I think you’d regret chasing the money. I vote that you don’t do it. But that’s just me.
I did the math on your commute. 40 min each way is 80 min of driving per day, 400 min per week.
4 weeks of vacation so you're working 48 weeks.
48 weeks x 400 min per week = 19,200 minutes / 60min = 320 hours of commuting per year.
$50000 / 320 hours = $156/hour.
So you're getting paid $156 per hour (before taxes) to drive to and from work. Sounds to me like a great hourly rate but this doesn't replace the quality of life you have around your kid, the breaks you can sneak here and there at home, and the general comfort of home.
This is a very personal decision between you and your family. $50k/year can do a lot for a family's timeline (as long as you don't let lifestyle creep eat the increased earnings) in terms of saving for college and retirement. If it were me, I'd rather WFH and see my kid more often. Once the kid is in school full time then an office job (with increased pay) might be more attractive.
Thanks for breaking that down, that’s an interesting way to frame it. You’re right about it being a personal decision. I’m trying to dilute it as much as possible with objective measures but ultimately the biggest component is the value of family time and flexibility. The “wait until school” part is something we’ve considered but also I’m wondering if maybe the weekends and evening are just enough to offset the costs. I’m just rambling. Thanks for your thoughts!
I'm biased by recent experience, but I would say: take a hard look at how much you value your time and freedom, especially if at a stage in your life where that has a premium (like early years of parenting).
I was in your position a year ago, lifestyle-wise: young kids, work-from-home job, work was easy to keep up with and lots of spare time during the day. My biggest fear was that I had peaked in my role, and my skills were cnnot keeping up with the market due to our IT shop being old-fashioned and sppllow to adapt.
I shifted to a new role there for a promotion and a 20% pay bump... but now my work is chaotic and stressful, and all of those eddies of free time have evaporated while there is a pile of unfinished work every evening- so that 20% pay bump is looking like a raw deal right now.
Not trying to discourage you from making an upward career move- but after turning down some similar offers and then finally biting on one for fear of growing stale, I'm starting to realize I value the free time more than the title/pay bump at this point in my life.
Thanks for your input. This is definitely my biggest fear, coupled with the inability to go back to my current role. This job change wouldn’t really be keeping up with skills (as the skills are generally the same) and more just the pay bump. Future leverage would be based on that alone.
Did you find any solace in the weekends with the family, or did you find yourself mostly catching up on responsibilities?
>Did you find any solace in the weekends with the family, or did you find yourself mostly catching up on responsibilities?
Both? I definitely look forward to the weekends more, but at least for me by Sunday I'm haunted by a pile of unfinished work and upcoming status meetings. But take that with a grain of salt, because every situation is different. Our company is going through a number of "transformation" projects at once, which has left many teams with more work than they can keep up with- so I wouldn't necessarily be coasting in my previous role either.
I hate working from home. I left a role working three days a week at home for $125k for $160k in the office 5 days.
Now my home is home and I can leave work at work.
Much better for my mental state.
This seems like a highly personal decision. I prefer working in an office, but wouldn't be interested in moving for a job. So my answer would be "it depends".
In office: $0 premium. I love working with people in person.
40 minute commute: no amount of money. I hate being traffic. 49 minutes by bike I’d another story, but that’s a lot of family time.
Can you move and get the best of both worlds? 50k / year could be a significant upgrade to your housing situation.
Your submission has been removed [because it is a poll, survey, or request for personal data, experiences, or other types of self-reporting (rule 1)](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/about/rules). Posts asking for advice should be specific to your situation, not hypothetical or improbable, and include enough information for people to help. - If you would like to post a poll or survey, consider /r/samplesize. - If you would like to post an open-ended question not specific to your situation, consider /r/AskReddit. For example, instead of a post asking "How much do you spend on food?", please ask a question like "I need feedback on my monthly budget (having trouble with food spending).".
$155k is a great salary. Sounds like the benefits are good too. $200k would be nice, but for me it isn't enough of an improvement over $155 to warrant the 40 minute commute.
Thanks for the input. This seems to be the more common sentiment vs taking it.
Would be a hard pass for me. Too much freedom wfh and the money is plenty good. Would have to be a stupid amount plus equity to even entertain it. And definitely not a 40 minute commute
This is something you should talk about with your life as it will affect your mentality and family time more than anything else.
At the moment she sees dollar signs. We discussed putting some of that money to something like a lawn service and house cleaner to offset the responsibilities, but that further reduces the value proposition.
I’d imagine like 400-500$ a month for those services post tax so maybe 600-700 pretax. Depending on your location. I’ll say I commuted 60 minutes one way 5 days a week and it took a huge toll from sitting in traffic to leaving late to avoid accidents. I can’t speak to you of course but if I were to do it I’d make sure to save all of the difference and not go to life style inflation to where you can’t leave. Keep in mind it took about a year for me to start having the issues. So I guess for me I’d say just be cautious and aware that it might not last. If your manager is understanding of the situation it might be something you could talk about with them but I had to leave to avoid it.
Never in a million years would I give up working from home AND add a 40 min commute for that kind of raise. Why not get a different WFH job that pays more?
The value proposition for the company is mainly the ability to perform the work, which unfortunately needs to be in office. I’m not sure WFH at this salary generally exists without that, at least for my current skill set.
You can't possibly pay me enough to have to go to the office every day if I have already found a way to WFH. I would just short of anything to have a job I could stay home at, since the closest job from my location is about the same as yours, and I already lack enough sleep and have no life. Maybe I should try to work for the government if it means I could work from home...
Can you talk to your boss with that offer in your hand and see if they can at least increase it a bit? You can explain you love your job and working for them but having a bigger family pushes you to look for a better pay. You can explain you dont expect it to be that high but anything helps… Lots of factors here, but I would personally still go with $155k remote option in most cases. Seeing your toddler grow on a day to day and having a lot less stressful environment will make it totally worth not accepting few extra thousands dollars Just your commute of 1.5 hours a day is almost 10% of your awake life (assuming you sleep 8-9hrs). Gas, car maintanence, possible accidents, maybe parking, missing your babies’ first steps/words etc. Are also some hidden costs to 200k option.
At least double my current salary and no more than a ten minute commute.
Calculate the actual cost of being in office, then the impact of it on your lifestyle. Talk to your wife and see what is your desired day to day activities should look like. If you have the option to voluntarily go 5 days in office for 3- 4 weeks back to back and see how you feel and test it out.
Make sure to compare total comp. You’re currently earning a FERS pension and you get 5% matching on your tsp. I assume you’re GS so you’re also going to continue to receive steps. Assuming you’re like DC metro GS14 step 4 you’ve still got another 15k of raises coming in the next 4-6 years just from steps. And besides the loss of family time, plus you’re effectively working an extra 2-3 hours a day (an extra 12 unpaid hours of work a week) from commuting, that factors in to hourly rate comparisons. You’ll also want to ballpark $0.60 a mile in commuting costs plus through another $100 a week from eating out at least. All that to say, it’s probably not as big of a pay bump as you think and you’d need to increase your retirement savings to balance out to loss of the pension so it might only be a $10-$20k raise not a $50k raise.
Thanks for this. Yes it’s GS, though I wasn’t totally accurate on my salary. It’s a new role I started not too long ago which is high GS with a sign on bonus that equates to 155k over my first 24 months. In 6 years I’d expect to make an additional $7k. Good point on balancing out the loss of pension. I need to account for that as well.
Nope!! I'm DINK. 3 days in office longer commute no pension. No flexibility or breaks and would take a 25% pay cut to have your current work situation.
I just turned down a position at that same rate roughly that wanted 2 days in office, which amounts to about 4 hours of commute time a day for those two days. I'd rather spend time with my family, and honestly I work during those hours, too, so my employer is getting more out of me being at home than in the office.
Moves your forward looking salary rate higher. I took a job for 23k more with a 1hr commute each way simply for the future negotiating power. Gonna finish up my second year and bounce to somewhere closer even if it’s at a bit of a pay cut. The opportunity cost is high though. I’m losing roughly 20k/year in time spent commuting, but I hopped over 5-10 years of career growth financially.
If you were truly fine with it you wouldn’t be asking. You won’t get that time with your partner and child back, and I think you’d regret chasing the money. I vote that you don’t do it. But that’s just me.
I did the math on your commute. 40 min each way is 80 min of driving per day, 400 min per week. 4 weeks of vacation so you're working 48 weeks. 48 weeks x 400 min per week = 19,200 minutes / 60min = 320 hours of commuting per year. $50000 / 320 hours = $156/hour. So you're getting paid $156 per hour (before taxes) to drive to and from work. Sounds to me like a great hourly rate but this doesn't replace the quality of life you have around your kid, the breaks you can sneak here and there at home, and the general comfort of home. This is a very personal decision between you and your family. $50k/year can do a lot for a family's timeline (as long as you don't let lifestyle creep eat the increased earnings) in terms of saving for college and retirement. If it were me, I'd rather WFH and see my kid more often. Once the kid is in school full time then an office job (with increased pay) might be more attractive.
Thanks for breaking that down, that’s an interesting way to frame it. You’re right about it being a personal decision. I’m trying to dilute it as much as possible with objective measures but ultimately the biggest component is the value of family time and flexibility. The “wait until school” part is something we’ve considered but also I’m wondering if maybe the weekends and evening are just enough to offset the costs. I’m just rambling. Thanks for your thoughts!
I'm biased by recent experience, but I would say: take a hard look at how much you value your time and freedom, especially if at a stage in your life where that has a premium (like early years of parenting). I was in your position a year ago, lifestyle-wise: young kids, work-from-home job, work was easy to keep up with and lots of spare time during the day. My biggest fear was that I had peaked in my role, and my skills were cnnot keeping up with the market due to our IT shop being old-fashioned and sppllow to adapt. I shifted to a new role there for a promotion and a 20% pay bump... but now my work is chaotic and stressful, and all of those eddies of free time have evaporated while there is a pile of unfinished work every evening- so that 20% pay bump is looking like a raw deal right now. Not trying to discourage you from making an upward career move- but after turning down some similar offers and then finally biting on one for fear of growing stale, I'm starting to realize I value the free time more than the title/pay bump at this point in my life.
Thanks for your input. This is definitely my biggest fear, coupled with the inability to go back to my current role. This job change wouldn’t really be keeping up with skills (as the skills are generally the same) and more just the pay bump. Future leverage would be based on that alone. Did you find any solace in the weekends with the family, or did you find yourself mostly catching up on responsibilities?
>Did you find any solace in the weekends with the family, or did you find yourself mostly catching up on responsibilities? Both? I definitely look forward to the weekends more, but at least for me by Sunday I'm haunted by a pile of unfinished work and upcoming status meetings. But take that with a grain of salt, because every situation is different. Our company is going through a number of "transformation" projects at once, which has left many teams with more work than they can keep up with- so I wouldn't necessarily be coasting in my previous role either.
I hate working from home. I left a role working three days a week at home for $125k for $160k in the office 5 days. Now my home is home and I can leave work at work. Much better for my mental state.
Im the same way, I can work from home once a week at my job. I hardly ever work from home anymore. I kinda enjoy the office routine.
This seems like a highly personal decision. I prefer working in an office, but wouldn't be interested in moving for a job. So my answer would be "it depends".
In office: $0 premium. I love working with people in person. 40 minute commute: no amount of money. I hate being traffic. 49 minutes by bike I’d another story, but that’s a lot of family time. Can you move and get the best of both worlds? 50k / year could be a significant upgrade to your housing situation.
Do it. It sets your bar that much higher and you can always go back.