Big Decisions
Taking a job you want more for money you want less
A voluntary pay cut is a legitimate decision. It becomes a bad one when the size and duration of the gap were never calculated.
Owen Traoré
Contributing writer, Money After Thirty
Owen writes about safety nets, wills and the planning people postpone indefinitely.
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18 articles
Big Decisions
Starting a business when other people depend on your income
The question is not whether the idea is good. It is how many months the household can run without your salary and what happens at…
Big Decisions
Emigrating, and the money decisions that outlast the move
Moving country resets your pension record, your entitlements and often your professional credentials. Most of it is invisible on…
Big Decisions
Sabbatical or resignation, and what continuity is worth
Both produce time away from work. Only one of them keeps the job, the contributions and the way you are seen on your return.
Big Decisions
Moving closer to ageing parents
It is a caring decision with a financial structure, and the households that do it well have priced the whole thing rather than the…
Safety Nets
The order in which things run out
When income stops, several resources deplete in sequence. Knowing the sequence in advance is what turns a crisis into a timetable.
Safety Nets
When caring responsibilities arrive without notice
A parent's fall or a diagnosis can restructure a household's working life within a week. Almost nobody has thought about it in…
Safety Nets
The page your household would need if you were not there
Not a will and not a plan. A single sheet listing where everything is, which is what people actually search for in the first week.
Safety Nets
When the income is irregular, the buffer does a different job
For salaried households a buffer covers rare shocks. For variable income it covers the normal state of affairs, which changes how…
Safety Nets
The first months of a serious illness in the household
Income falls, costs rise and administration multiplies, all at the point when nobody has capacity for any of it.
Big Decisions
Renovate or move, priced honestly
Both options are more expensive than the version in your head, and they fail in different ways, which is what should decide it.
Big Decisions
Leaving the city because the time costs too much
Moving out is usually presented as a cost decision, and for most households the currency that actually changed hands is hours.
Big Decisions
Selling something you built, and the day after
The negotiation absorbs everything until it completes, and almost nobody plans the years that follow the money arriving.
Safety Nets
Sick pay ends before recovery does
Most arrangements pay for weeks or months, and the conditions that keep people off work for a year do not respect that timetable.
Safety Nets
A buffer, a reserve and a fund are three different jobs
Households talk about savings as one thing, and the money they need next week behaves nothing like the money they need in five…
Safety Nets
Losing a job at forty-eight is not losing one at twenty-eight
The search takes longer, the fixed costs are higher and the household has more people depending on it, which changes what…
Safety Nets
Debt that was sized for two incomes
Borrowing assessed against a household with two earners becomes a very different obligation the moment one of them stops.
Safety Nets
A shock that lasts three years, not three months
Household planning is built around short interruptions, and the events that genuinely damage a household are the ones that do not…