[quote=scott-at-alumni]I have a slightly different perspective. My wife and I do well enough at our respective careers that we’ve always had one person home with the kids. We’ve been taking turns, on a 3- to 5-year timescale. I’m home with our kids right now. I do a bunch of volunteer work at the schools and for some other community projects.
The thing I worry about is this – what will our kids think of this? Do they think of me as retired? Lounging around the house?? When they were smaller, I spent plenty of time working 60-70 hour weeks on fun, cool projects at work and I loved it. And I think hard work carries you a long way. So I worry about my kids thinking life is easy, and relaxing, and you always have time for your kids, without realizing it took a bunch of sacrifice to get here and this hasn’t always been our lifestyle.
Yes, I want my kids to remember that I or my wife were always there for them when they were small.
But I also want them to remember that we both worked hard and loved our work.
So, when you think about retiring “to spend more time with your kids” think about the lessons they will learn watching you as well.
And remember, once they are 13, they won’t want to be seen in public with you anyway ;^)[/quote]
Scott,
What you mentioned is EXACTLY what I think a lot about as well. Funny you mention this as my wife and I were talking about this exact subject the other day.
Before they were born I worked insane hours and started a few businesses that were successful but they took long hard hours and a lot of investment of both time and money.
The past 4 years we’ve spent at least 100+ days each year traveling around the world (our 3 year old daughter has already been to 20+ countries if that gives you an idea on the travel schedule). Of course now that she started pre-school we will cut way down. But we will still travel over her holidays and summer vacations.
But I have the exact same worries as you do. I still work a few hours a day on the phone and internet. I have an office outside of the USA and employees there but I don’t go there much now. So I’m mostly working out of the house.
We don’t want them to think life is not about hard work and they will never know all the hard work that it took to get here. But part of why I think I’ll go back to work eventually is what you mentioned.
Kids learn a lot about just watching and the environment they are in. So you brought up a great point with this. We also don’t want our kids to think life is all fun and games and easy. We believe in being well traveled and showing them the world and giving them a good life but I also want them to know how important it is to work hard.
Do you plan on going back to work full-time? My wife also is a stay at home mom and we both plan on doing a lot of volunteer work at school. So we’re trying to find a happy balance…
