Three Day Work Week?

It’s a public holiday tomorrow and it’s a nice feeling to have a day off after working two days. I’m writing this post on the bus home while my wife is out having drinks with her colleagues. Random thought – If she is going be out late tonight, I might drop by my parent’s place to visit them since I didn’t see them last weekend.

Anyway, this got me thinking about how great it would be not having to work a full week of five days. You just have more energy to do other stuff since you don’t feel as wiped out by mid week. In fact, the ideal arrangement is that we can work a three day week. Either Mon, Wed and Fri so we won’t have to go to work two days in a row or Mon to Wed so we always have a long weekend to go travelling.

Wouldn’t that be fantastic? Now we just have to find those jobs that allow for such an arrangement. The truth is that we like the professional and social engagement that office work offers especially when we have colleagues that we get along with. Self-employment seems to be quite isolating and I’m not sure whether we are suitable for it. But we don’t see ourselves working full-time five days a week as well and not working at all is only possible if we find something interesting to keep ourselves busy with.

Maybe the solution really is to have a three day work week. Sufficient engagement with the outside world to keep ourselves up to date and sufficient downtime to develop hobbies and enjoy leisure activities together as a couple or family if we decide to have children. The other reason for this coming up is that my manager has just returned from maternity leave and negotiated a three day work week at reduced pay. So it is possible!

The purpose of this post was really just to pen down this idea of a reduced work week while taking the bus home. At some point in time, our asset portfolio would reach what I call a critical size whereby the dividends and interest would form the investment contributions instead of savings from our monthly salaries. By then, we should be okay with a lower pay since the salary only needs to cover the expenses while the asset portfolio will keep growing by itself.

This will be the penultimate stage to financial independence because the last stage would be for the dividends and interest to cover our expenses as well. Just something for us to look forward to while having a mid week break!