Choosing Family Over Finances- Becoming a Part-Time Stay at Home Dad

If you’re reading this on April 29th it means two things: I published this post on time, and it’s my first day being a part-time stay at home dad. April 26th marked the official end of Mrs. Burrito Bowl’s maternity leave.  Due to the fact that our baby routinely makes this face…

…or if she really gets going, this face…

…we decided we couldn’t bare to put her in daycare.  There were other reasons too, such as daycare is more expensive than our rent, but mostly we didn’t want to see that face every morning.

“Why do we even need daycare? She seems pretty self-reliant.” Mr. Burrito Bowl

Baby Burrito Bowl has not learned to fully roll over, so Mrs. Burrito Bowl says she’s incapable of watching herself. Also, she can’t crawl or be trusted to cook her own food. This means someone needs to be watching her at all times.  Since Mrs. Burrito Bowl messed up by working hard in school and getting a good job with insurance and great benefits, it isn’t feasible for her to stop working entirely. So once again it’s up to me to pick up the slack. I need to become a part-time stay at home dad.

A little about me: I’m a project manager for a construction company.  It’s my job to make sure the building is being built as efficiently and quickly as possible.  I’m also the un-elected parking enforcement, disagreement arbitrator, question answerer, and all around good guy. It’s not the type of job you can typically do part-time, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Choosing family over finances.

I’m going to work from home Monday-Wednesday, and actually show up to work Thursday and Friday.  I’ll have to check the job sites some evenings to make sure everything stays on schedule, but for the most part I’ll be off the first three days of the workweek.

For the first month my boss agreed to pay me my regular salary while we see how this works out. After that he says my pay will most likely go down dramatically. This first month is a trial period to see how much value I can provide the company working part-time.

Why would my boss agree to let me work two out of five days and still pay me the same? One, he’s a procrastinator and didn’t get around to hiring a replacement for me, and two (and most importantly) I’ve made myself hard to replace.

Over the two years I’ve worked for this company I’ve done my best to be an extremely hard worker. Okay, a pretty hard worker. The part of my job I struggle with the most is taking time to bullshit.  If there’s a project that needs done my OCD doesn’t let me take the foot off the gas until the task is completed.

I’ll often go the entire day without taking any breaks, not even lunch. This means I’m providing great value to my employer. I also fill in the gaps by doing several odd jobs that nobody else really wants to do. In short-I’m hard to replace.  This isn’t me trying to brag.  This is just good advice- be hard to replace.

I don’t have the knowledge in home building that many project managers do. It’s definitely a weak point for me. Instead of trying to be something I’m not, I concentrate on filling in the gaps.

I’m essentially doing three people’s jobs- A backend project manager, a customer service rep, and an unskilled laborer.

Many project managers refuse to lift a tool of any kind, especially a broom. They feel doing any of the actual work themselves is beneath them. For my company there’s only two project managers and our boss above us.  Both myself and the other project manager buck the typical project manager trend.  We routinely pick up tools and do actual work.

The other project manager actually knows what he’s doing with tools, but I usually just hold them in a Zoolander type of way. I’m pretty good at the broom though, not to sound arrogant.

Not only do I do the scheduling, calling, problem solving etc., that it takes to keep the project running, I also do the low-level grunt work as often as I can.  Usually that grunt work involves sweeping or cleaning of some type. It’s not all glitz and glam, though.

Be Hard to Replace

My company can’t just hire an unskilled laborer to replace me because an unskilled laborer wouldn’t have the organization necessary for keeping the project rolling smoothly. They also can’t just hire a different project manager, because almost no project managers would be willing to do the grunt work I do.

I have another skill most project managers don’t have due to my previous career in retail- customer service.  Building a house and providing customer service to home owners are two skills that seldom go hand in hand.  No one else in my company wants to do the homeowner walks and warranty work required for a company that builds and sells homes.

In short, I am hard to replace because you’d need to hire two, maybe three people to get my job done.  Doing this for the salary I’m making would be next to impossible.

For my company it’s worth keeping me around, even less than full-time.

So how did I swing this arrangement?

First and foremost I am lucky to have a boss who will entertain such an idea.  He has a soft spot for kids and respects that I’m putting my family above everything else. Still, it’s a perilous thing trying to negotiate salary, workload, and expectations.  It’s a battle of who has the power.  Who needs who more? Do I need the job more or does the job need me more?

People generally don’t like feeling like they’re getting the worse end of a deal and many would sooner shoot themselves in the foot rather than see someone else get the better of a negotiation. I am very thankful my boss is willing to give this arrangement a try.

I imagine if most people went to their boss and told them they’d like to stay home Monday-Wednesday they’d get laughed out of their bosses office.  So how did I manage to swing this schedule?

I have the ability to walk away.

Frugality and saving money are a huge part of our lives.  We’ve lived below our means and saved the rest for so long that we’re no longer living paycheck to paycheck. In fact, if we wanted to deplete our savings entirely neither of us would need to work for several years.

My boss knows how frugal we are. He knows that when I say, “I need to work from home Monday-Wednesday so that I can watch my daughter, I understand if you need to let me go,” I’m not bluffing.  I really will walk away from the job entirely.

I’ve been a manager before.  I’ve been the guy who has to make sure he’s fielding the best team possible.  If he feels like he has to let me go, I get it.  No hard feelings here.

The Power of Walking Away

This is incredibly powerful because it takes away the employers advantage in negotiations.  Normally if we tell an employer that we need to work part-time they have all the power. They can say ‘no’ because they know we don’t have the ability to leave our position entirely.  We’re essentially coming to them with our hat in our hand hoping to get something.  If they do agree to let us work part-time they can pay us way less than we’re worth, because they know we need to get paid something.

I’m able to stand my ground and stick to my guns because we don’t need the money to survive.

I’ve made myself hard to replace, and I’ve made my job easy to live without.  I’m able to ask for the extraordinary, because we’ve positioned ourselves financially to walk away from anything less than our ideal situation.

Nowhere during the negotiations was it confrontational. I calmly said that I enjoy working here, but I have to do what’s best for my family. I gave him the option of letting me go entirely or having me around part-time.

The key is I really was willing to walk away.  I wasn’t bluffing. If my boss had said, “No, either work full-time or don’t work at all,” I would have said “Thank you for the opportunity, I’ve enjoyed working for you,” and happily walked way from my job altogether.

Becoming a Part-Time Stay at Home Dad

I don’t know how this arrangement is going to work out.  For the first month I’ll be paid my regular salary, but my boss has said that after that I’ll have to take a pay cut.  This first month is a test to see if it even works to have me part-time. My goal is to be so irreplaceable that he wants to pay me my full salary.

After May, if it’s not working for either party, I’m happy to walk away. It will be more stressful for me, because I have less time but the same responsibilities.

Throughout all of this I’ve enjoyed negotiating from a position of strength. I don’t have to hope my boss keeps me around at any salary. I’ll be fine no matter what my company decides to do after May.

This next month I’ll be spending a lot of time with my daughter, getting to know her better. We’ve only ever spent a few hours at a time without Mrs. Burrito Bowl.  This will be a huge adjustment for all three of us.

I’m nervous and excited. It’s a new chapter in our lives and I’m excited to see where the road takes us. I don’t know if it’s going to work out or not.  What I do know is I won’t ever regret choosing family over finances.

Read Part II to see what happened! Boom. Cliffhanger.

If you enjoyed this article please share it with your friends and enemies.

Since you’re still here, maybe read one or two of these articles?

Letting Go of Anger

Why Pursue Fi- The Pros and Cons of the Frugal Lifestyle

Things We Should Stop Doing