Workplace Wellbeing: How earning less can pay off with a better quality of life

Though we’re living through a cost-of-living crisis deciding to earn less to improve your quality of life isn’t necessarily a poor decision

Sarah Flynn who stopped commuting for a better work/life balance. Picture: Barry Cronin.

Taking a pay cut to improve her work-life balance didn’t work out so well for Sarah Flynn the first time she did it. The 29-year-old from Meath was 20 and had recently become a mother.

“When my maternity leave was up, I didn’t want to go back to my full-time office job,” Flynn says. “So I left to set up an antenatal business. It allowed me to be there for my son, but because I had no savings, I took a huge financial hit.”

She returned to full-time work in 2020 and is now head of business development in an accountancy firm. But when she had her daughter, last year, and faced the same dilemma about returning to work, she decided to “step back again, but not as blindly as last time”.

Flynn went down to a four-day week, instead of giving up on her job entirely. “Our income has dropped 20%,” says Flynn. “But with tweaks to the budget, it doesn’t feel like too much of a hit.”

Those tweaks involved selling the second family car and Flynn using her day off for meal prep, so she doesn’t have to buy expensive ready meals on workdays.

“I also use that day to catch up on housework and the admin that comes with family life,” she says. “Saturday would previously have been given over to those chores, but now it’s for family. So we all benefit from me taking a day off.”

Elaine Connolly also decided to work and earn less to spend more time with her family.

Elaine Connolly: I knew I needed to spend less time at work and more with my family

She met her husband, who’s from Cork, when they were both working in Australia.

The couple returned to Ireland because they wanted to be closer to family, but the 39-year-old says, “It didn’t take us long to miss the sunny weather and outdoor lifestyle.”

So they relocated to Spain.

Connolly’s job as a senior HR director moved with her, but her husband’s didn’t. He switched to consultancy work, which meant that Connolly’s salary became the family’s only guaranteed income.

It was an excellent salary, but it required her to work hard. Her employers were based in New York, so she would start early to catch up on what had happened the night before and work late into the evenings for up to 80 hours a week.

Promotions and pay rises followed, but Connolly eventually started wondering if they were worth the sacrifice.

The moment I realised something had to change was when my eight-year-old son complained that he never saw me. That’s when I asked myself why I was continuing to chase a career that was no longer working for me.

She handed in her notice and finished work in July. She is fortunate to have enough savings to cover the family’s expenses for the coming year and says she is “now in the messy middle of figuring out next steps”.

A career coach advised her to develop a portfolio career of multiple income streams. So that’s what she is trying to do. She works part-time on HR projects, invests in the stock market and has trained in social-media management with plans to take on clients.

“I’ve also started documenting my experience as @Elaine.careerchange on Instagram and @Elaine.inspain on TikTok,” she says.

“My income has taken a huge hit for now, but I’m working and living the way that I want.”

Changed priorities

Prioritising family life and wellbeing by stepping down a rung or two of the career ladder and earning less is a decision many employees would consider making. A global survey of 16,086 adults, carried out by Ford Trends in 2024, found that 52% would accept a 20% pay cut if it enhanced their quality of life. In a 2026 EmployFlex survey of 300 adults, 78.5% said they would be happy to earn less if they had greater flexibility.

Career coach Patricia Tiernan (leapcoaching.ie) says people who are thinking about working less are prompted to do so for different reasons.

Patricia Tiernan says people often decide to spend less time at work due to health concerns

Health concerns are a recurring theme. Tiernan gives the example of a client who “spent decades in a financial-services job she hated because she was afraid to give up her salary. The fact that she was increasingly out on sick leave is what finally convinced her to go.”

Being promoted to a level at which they no longer enjoy their jobs is another. Tiernan explains that “some people feel there is too much politics at the top” and “don’t like managing people”.

But the reason she encounters most often is the one cited by Flynn and Connolly: People want to gain back time they can then spend with their families.

Denise Conlon is the head of financial services at sysfinancial.ie. Even though we’re living through a cost-of-living crisis, she tells people that “choosing a lower salary isn’t necessarily a poor decision. It may be the right decision if it supports family needs, health, wellbeing, flexibility, or long-term career satisfaction.”

Denise Conlon, head of financial services at sysfinancial.ie

Conlon asks her clients to start by establishing exactly how much they need to cover their essential living expenses, such as mortgage or rent, utilities, childcare, food, and transport.

“Once they have that baseline figure, they can then see whether their new salary would allow them to live comfortably or cause financial pressure,” she says.

Conlon also recommends that people “stress-test their decision by living on the projected salary for two to three months, before making the move to see whether it’s genuinely manageable”.

She advises people to consider the broader impact of a pay cut, too. Lower pay can affect pension contributions, health insurance, and other benefits, all of which should be factored in to the decision-making process. “There may also be an impact on career progression as people who step back can be overlooked for promotions and opportunities.”

What to consider

For clients who are thinking about making a significant career change, Tiernan asks them to consider the following four questions:

1. What is the worst that can happen, and what can you do to ensure that it doesn’t?

2. What is the best that can happen, and how can you set yourself up for that?

3. What is most likely to happen, and how would you feel about that?

4. Which outcome would you regret more?

“By mapping out the risks and benefits,” says Tiernan, “you can identify what you can control and become clearer about whether you really want to make a change.”

What helped Connolly make her decision was realising she could happily live on a lot less money.

“We had moved to Spain for the lifestyle, but I wasn’t enjoying that lifestyle because I worked so much,” she says.

“This morning, I went for a run, dropped my son at school, and did some work before picking him up again. This time last year, I’d have been stuck to my desk and too busy to do any of that. I’ve gained so much by stepping back from work.”

Two things were crucial to Flynn’s decision to go part-time. One was ensuring her income allowed her family to live comfortably. “My negative experience the first time I took a pay cut taught me that too tight a budget would leave me feeling stretched and affect my enjoyment of life,” she says.

The other was having an honest conversation with her employer. “I didn’t want working part-time to become an unspoken barrier to progression,” says Flynn.

“I also wanted to make sure I could go back to full-time work, if I wanted to. My employer was great about all of that and, so far, the decision to take a pay cut is working out for my family and me.”

The moment I realised that something had to change was when my eight-year-old son complained that he never saw me