People frequently ask me how I juggle work with kids.

Here’s how:

For four years, I’ve had the option of living something like a 1950’s working family man.

My husband, Adam, has been the nominal primary carer. The stay-at-home-parent, if you prefer.

This means I don’t have to do things like:

• grocery shop.

• cook.

• prepare lunchboxes.

• do school drop-offs and pick-ups for our two primary school aged kids.

• arrange childcare coverage when I want to attend meetings, or go out at night, or travel interstate.

…unless I want to.

It’s a kind of freedom few get to enjoy.

For me, it’s been a massive perk of FI and our chosen lifestyle design.

To be clear, I still do these things.

I’ll do a couple of school runs each week.

Those I don’t do, I’m still part of the getting ready process. I’m making breakfast, encouraging teeth brushing, turning down collars, and sending everyone off with a hug and kiss.

I’m just usually in my PJs the whole time and don’t have to get dressed for the 300m walk to school.

I’m usually at the door to welcome them home, too.

I’ll still prepare meals.

I’m the resident baker in our house, so school lunches often include a muffin or slice I’ve made.

I mass produce lunches for the freezer every few weeks. I’ll pop out for milk, bread or whatever ingredient we’re missing for dinner.

Whenever there’s a sleepover or birthday party or family pot-luck, it’s usually me buying and prepping the food.

I’ll still check if it’s OK for me to go out on a given night.

I’ll make sure Adam hasn’t got something on that means he can’t be with our kids. 99% of the time, it’s all good.

But I still ask, as a courtesy, and make sure everything’s in the paper calendar hanging on our pantry door.

The point is: I don’t have to.

I choose to.

When I get busy, I can drop it all until I’m not busy again.

It’s this mental, emotional and physical freedom that’s allowed me to end up with a to-do list of ridiculous proportions.

A long to-do list hasn’t worried me during these four years.

…but life is about to change.

Adam is going back to work.

You might be wondering: why?

Several reasons, but first among them is that four years is a long time to be away from any career or industry.

If he leaves it another year, going back gets much harder.

Usually, it’s the stay-at-home-mums (SAHMs) in this boat. They often go back part-time, or at a lower level, and very often at a lower pay rate.

Rest assured, ladies: similar problems affect men when they’ve been off work for years to care for kids, too.

Unlike SAHMs, they get more questions like:

(Yes, that’s a real quote from a job interview Adam attended in 2017. He was looking to return to work after a year off.)

Secondly, we may be FI, but that doesn’t mean we’re:

• willing to abandon careers we enjoy,

• planning to do no work for the rest of our lives, or

• certain we’ll always have enough money.

Maintaining the ability to earn a decent wage serves many purposes.

We can go back to work if we need (or simply want) more money.

For example, if we decide to send our children to private high school. That’s $50k+ a year post-tax. We’d probably need to sell assets to cover that cost at present.

Or, if something dramatically drops our investment income. Being able to work at a decent pay rate can help get through a market upset so you’re not forced to sell assets or cut lifestyle.

We can also get fulfilment outside the home.

I’m an extrovert with a plethora of friends who I actively spend time with.

Adam isn’t like that. Most of his friends have come from work. Without that common experience, they’ve fallen away. School families haven’t replaced them because we don’t live the same kind of lifestyle most do.

This worries me.

It doesn’t seem to worry him much. But I’ve seen enough miserable 50-something men on anti-depressants. I don’t want to risk him plunging into despair when a sense of connection might make a real difference. It’s not something you can create quickly, so though he shows no signs of going that way, it’s time to be proactive.

Next, being a parent is fabulous. We both love it. But if it’s your be-all, end-all, what happens when the kids leave home?

Does the void they leave trigger a crisis of meaning? A divorce?

Maybe not. Maybe it’s all good, or even fabulous.

But why not have a fabulous career to go back to if you find the void problematic?

Finally, there’s life meaning.

Having something other than family life to fulfil you is important.

Whether it’s paid work or volunteering doesn’t matter in my experience. It’s contributing to something bigger than yourself that makes the difference. It can be a bottomless well of satisfaction if you get the right fit.

So, now Adam gets all the fun of LinkedIn job applications, interviews and the like. Lucky him (not!)

I’ve gone a different way.

I’ve ended up building a financial education business, Money School, as my major means to earn an income.

It’s nice-to-have income, but I care so much about the mission that I find it hard to stop work. I’m time rich, I can choose the work I want. This is what I choose.

I deliver keynotes and workshops when I am booked. I have online courses and my book. It’s enough to keep me happily busy.

It’s also not the only thing I do.

Because Adam is going back to work, I’ve been thinking about what I’ll need to stop doing or ramp back.

As a first step, I listed everything I currently do outside being a parent/partner and Money School (which I spent 20-30 hours a week on at present):

• Starting a new not-for-profit, Future You Money School Ltd (FYMS), with two co-founders. That’s about to ramp up to taking over my Money School (Pty Ltd) hours.

• Itinerant facilitation for the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM). I deliver one day of a corporate immersion for leaders, on systems thinking and design thinking. It’s my way of keeping my connection to my past work. I’ve done around 20 of them in the last 18 months.

• Secretary on the board of my kids’ school. It’s my sixth year on the board. I was Chair for the past two. I stepped back knowing FYMS would take a lot of my time this year.

• Ambassador for Women in Tech WA (WiTWA). Along with a dozen or so other ambassadors, I attend events, speak at their conference, generally champion them in the community.

• Mentor at Ignition. Once a year, I spend a week mentoring a group of start-ups at a local accelerator. It’s an intense week, often finishing at 10pm each day. I also deliver the lecture on finance. During the year, I keep in touch with past mentees (hi Team Yellow folks!)

• Judge for the Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards (MAIAs). I’m one of 20 judges and expecting about eight hours of judging, but there’s lots of incidental stuff along the way like promoting the awards on socials.

• Reference group member for Ecstra Foundation. This involved helping to assess a funding round. It’s only a few hours a year, but I really enjoy it.

• Media commentator. That includes radio interviews (mostly ABC) and quotes for news articles. Combined with my podcast appearances, it’s around once a week for the last three years.

• Executor of my mother’s estate. This has been enormously time consuming. Worth it, and I’m happy to do it, but it’s literally weeks of my time so far and we’re not done yet.

• Walking. I’ve taken up walking for fundraisers, which means training, posting on social media, then walking 35kms in a day twice a year. I walk with some close friends so I get my social kick this way, as well as outdoor exercise.

• Member of various organisations. VentureX HQ, Meshpoints and HKABA specifically. This means attending events, meetings and contributing to online discussion boards.

• Gardening. This is my particular thing at home, and I’ve listed it as work instead of a hobby because you can’t stop when you want to. Because we have fruit trees, it takes a lot of time (mulching, feeding, pruning, netting, harvesting). For my fellow gardeners: we have 2x apples, 1x peach/nectarine graft, mango, 2x avos, 3x limes, lemon, jaboticaba, soursop, grumichama, pomegranate, blueberries, black sapote and figs. Plums and passionfruit are next on the list.

• Moderate a couple of Facebook groups. Specifically KA (private) and the Aussie FIRE Discussion Group. They’re low time cost, but can require frequent attention.

For relaxation, I read one to two novels a week in the evenings before sleep. I watch a lot of movies with our kids. Getting out and about with them, or playing at home, is a great use of any free time too. I get my social fix walking with friends and attending events, such as SXSW Sydney and West Tech Fest, or having friends over to our home.

But, Adam and I will soon switch places.

His ideal end-goal is part time, but it’s more likely he’ll go full time to start.

That means I’ll be the primary carer.

Which is the point of the business I’ve built - I can make it what I want. I can even turn it off when I need to.

…but it doesn’t take a genius to realise I won’t be able to do everything on the above list if I’ve only got ~25 workable hours a week for 80% of the year.

(That’s the ~5hrs per weekday between school drop-offs and pick-ups, 40 weeks a year.)

If he gets a city job, I’ll probably still be fine to attend evening board meetings and the occasional event.

I’ll still be able to exercise, so long as I do it when he or his mum can watch the kids.

But some things will have to give.

I don’t want to end up frantically busy. Not in the physical sense of always in motion, going to the next thing. Not in the mental sense, of always thinking about my endless to-do list.

…which is the point of lifestyle design.

You actively choose how you’ll spend your hours.

You do it consciously, with the intent to make your life as awesome as it can be.

It’s the shit-to-gold ratio I explain in my book:

So, that’s what I’ll be doing over the next month.

Redesigning Money School to reduce the number of hours it needs from me.

Building FYMS with the intent of optimised time from the start.

Reducing or eliminating the activities that I least enjoy and/or deliver the least benefit to others.

Being much more vigilant about what I say ‘yes’ to.

Frankly, I’m looking forward to it.

Times like these are a gift.

They make you reevaluate your choices. They’re a chance to reset where things have gotten out of balance.

May your lifestyle design journey bring you joy, like mine does for me.

About Money School

If you’re new here, welcome! Delighted to have you 😁

This is the blog for Money School, an Australian financial education company.

The main site is at https://www.moneyschool.org.au, but I keep our articles over here on beehiiv.

Everything on the main site and this blog is for educational purposes only. I’m not a financial adviser, nor do I play one on Netflix. I aim to help you learn about money so you can ‘choose your own adventure’.

Money School was co-founded in 2010 by me (Lacey Filipich) and my mother, Fran White. Money School offers workshops, online courses and have an international award-winning book, published with Penguin Life in 2020.

I’m also a regular media commentator on all things personal finance. If you’ve got 16 minutes to spare, you might like to check out my TEDx talk (over 1m views!) on financial independence and mini-retirements.