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Absolutely, there is a point below which people just don't have the luxury to not take any extra work they can.

There is, however, also a large group of people who could have more free time but choose to work more because they prefer to own more stuff to having more free time.

I work an 80% job (4-day work weeks) because I have reached the point where I don't really need more money. I don't consider myself rich, but with my spending patterns I don't need to worry about a daily budget anymore, and I have cash leftover to save every month. A lot of people are genuinely surprised by this decision, even though they work the same kind of job as me and therefore many of them likely have a similar financial situation.

There is also a group of people who would like to work less but are in an industry that doesn't really offer part time jobs.

They still (might) have the option of working less by not spending their money and retiring earlier. If you make $200k you probably can't work part time for $100k, but you can spend significantly less than you make and retire a few decades earlier than your peers.

There is also a savings effect which makes making and saving more money start to have huge upsides. aka, if you live on 40k per year and make 60k per year you can retire young, but bump that to 120k and you can 'save' years as long as you don't let lifestyle creep set in.

I'd love to work 4 days. I currently work 5 and work in an industry (finance) where 4 earns you more than enough.

When I work 4 days with wednesday off, I don't even feel like I work... it's just a nice part of my life. On monday I think 'man it's been days since I did anything productive, I'm ready to get busy'. The next day I'm still in that flow, and the day after I've already got a day off. The same for thursday-friday, and then I've got two days off again.

When I work 5 days, on monday I feel glad to get busy again but I'm also dreading the fact that my immediate future is 5 days of work. By thursday I'm feeling like I could be productive working fewer hours, and on friday I'm really glad it's over. Further, my weekends and evenings are mostly busy with unwinding from work and preparing for the next working day. Whereas when I work 4 days, my free time is actually time for fun things.

I'm not a big spender, still on a 2010 iPhone 4 for example to give you a sense of where my priorities are at :p My money is slowly piling up.

So I could do without the money of the 5th day... but here's my issue... While my employer would probably allow 4 days work (which is not standard in and of itself, particularly not in certain industries), I KNOW that I'd be bottom rank when it comes to promotions. There's absolutely no way in hell I'd ever get a managing position working 4 days, at this company. And in a company of 5k, only the assisting/supporting roles have people working part-time. Supervisors or team leaders etc, all work full-time (or more).

I could stay in my current role forever, but it'd stop being interesting and intellectually challenging fairly soon, and I may develop some bitterness when I get to my 30s or 40s and start getting managed by people younger than me, just because they have a different vision on work-life balance.

So I'm pretty much stuck working 5 days, without being 20% more productive, earning money I don't need, because it's made abundantly clear that if you ask to work part-time, you can't ever work in a function of influence or leadership, at this company. And at most company's it's a similar story.

And I sort of get it... in a world of 5-days a week business and lots of people working 5 days, you wan't the manager to be present and available. Whereas assisting/supporting roles can be done by multiple people working part-time. It feels the only thing is left is either to be an entrepreneur or do something special (e.g. lots of jobs as 'special project officer' that's not tied to a m-f 9 to 5), but there's no standard path for regular salarymen to work part-time and still have a solid career in line with their productivity & competencies.

May I ask where you work?

But to be fair, and this won't be a popular comment, but I'm asking honestly, why did you take on a non working partner and child fresh out of college? You evidently have great character to overcome, and I don't know the UK system, but these would be impossible burdens for most middle class Americans before the age of at least 25, and likely put long term if not permanent damping factors on their career growth to be able to get to where you are now.

> most middle class Americans before the age of 25.

That applies only if you live in any of the big urban centers, where the idea that living well until your 30's and even 40's with roommates just to be able to make do in shitty apartments that cost $1000+, not to mention the student loans to pay for the useless degree in humanities. Or alternatively, to choose med/law school and keep deferring the high-income years.

Move to any part of flyover country, choose a career that does not require the stupid treadmill of higher-education and it will be pretty possible to start raising a family at age 25.

Not GP, but my guess is - because people are not robots. Not many people are responsible enough to plan out their lives and then stick to that plan. Also, you sometimes end up in those situations despite your best efforts at being "responsible". Either because of love, unplanned pregnancy... or sudden loss of ability to work of the other partner (think medical issues).

The welfare state[1], would have provided housing benefit (possibly council housing), child benefit, child care, income support for low earners, tax credits, free school meals, free dental/vision etc. On top of this we have the NHS, and a reasonable state education system.

Though I'm guessing that the parent (in both senses of the word) went through this quite a while ago - since the 80's, successive conservative governments have made cuts to welfare programmes/spending, which has been responsible at least in part for bringing social mobility to a standstill in the UK.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state_in_the_United_Ki...

The pithy answer is 'life is complicated, confusing and difficult'.

The slightly longer answer is; I was young, I was (and still am) in love, it's my child (and she's great btw. Aced all her exams, goes to a top University /brag) I felt it was the right thing to do, and, time has borne that out.

I agree it has put a damping factor on my career, but, you know what? (and this goes for a lot of commentary on HN) life is not just about making money and having a good career.

Thanks for answering this.

Sounds like he fell in love with someone who already had a kid.

Perhaps it's best to let the person to whom the question was actually posed answer instead of just making things up.

Is associated with != is caused by. It just means they go together. You will not get happier by valuing your time more than money in a same way that your car will not go faster if you put advertisement stickers all over it, because some study found an association between amount of logotype stickers and average speed of the car.

    So, time vs money is a rich persons dilemma.

It's also a monk or nun's dilemma and a motivating factor in ordination for some.

Is your job sustainable? As in will you be the first to go in a recession? Does your company make profit? Are you in a position where you're producing the value the company makes?

These things bother me as you may be paid a lot, but your company might making $250M losses every year and has no plans on turning profit.

Are you counting that your income might go away and never to return? In which case the threshold might still be too low ;-)

I contract. So if that dries up, I'm screwed. But luckily I have an interest in something that is highly valued in the modern world; software development. So it's incumbent on me to make sure I can get work, and, so far, it's been OK.

I think I said in my original comment that threshold is 'to support the lifestyle one expects' - I purposefully left it open ended. My expectations are a result of my upbringing in a middle class household etc. Also, my point is about low income earners - the majority of the world.

I agree that if your goals in the economic game are to be in a position where you don't have to rely on a salaried income then I'm doing it all wrong. I've made the decision that enjoying the things I can do with the money I have now is worth more than saving more of it for some other end. One has to make choices. I might die tomorrow. Who knows? That said I do make plans for the future.

Highly valued is temporary. Your consultant/agency job is tied to those billion dollar startups that suck up engineering without any profit. It's hard pill to swallow and I hope someone proves me wrong.

It's like the real estate bonds that mixed CCC and AAAs together. In reality, most S/E jobs are highly volatile and incredibly temporary. I don't see doctors in the same situation.

I read a report years ago that said in the U.S. the level of "happiness" increases with your income only up until an average of $60K per year, and after that, increased income had no more effect on happiness.

You may be thinking of this:

High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being (Daniel Kahneman1 and Angus Deaton) http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.abstract

" Income and education are more closely related to life evaluation, but health, care giving, loneliness, and smoking are relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions. When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being."

There have been a handful of studies about this in the US - the marginal utility of more salary => more happiness seems to slow precipitously around $70-75k USD/yr. The last one I looked at in detail seemed pretty clear that more money still made people happier, but it took more, to the point where the gain in happiness from 60-65k was similar tot he gain in happiness from ~80k-95k.