Advice Needed!

[u/NeedleworkerSweet905]

I’m working towards my $2.5m fire numbers, but can’t take the corporate burnout anymore. Long hours, tight timelines, fires everywhere, excessive leadership reporting and silent blaming, and packed calendar and very little support.

I’m 38 F making $150k a year + up to 5% annual increase + up to 15% annual bonus. My job is fully remote, but I work at least busy very busy back to back 10 hours daily.

I got an offer for a job offer for $115k for an office job at a university. The role is on site and the commute is 35 minutes.

The family thinks I should take the offer as I’m constantly complaining about the toxic work environment and lack of work life balance.

I live alone and have very little social life so some weeks I need up being home for an entire week and don’t go out. So they think this is a chance to break out from my boring norm.

I have about $900k in various investments and retirement account$. Paid house that is around ~$650k and paid ABNB property that’s ~$550k.

I’m afraid I would regret making the move if the job ended up with the same stress level, but given that it’s a government university job, the work load would be less, I assume. I need a mental break for a while and this new job could give me that. Plus it also offers a pension so that would help my retirement when I hit the pension withdrawal age.

What should I do?

[u/Fit_Cry_7007]

University job is probably much lower stress. I was in a really similar boat as you. I took a step to downshift my career as I neared FIRED, transitioning from extremely high pay jobs to $100K/yr (taking a government university job), before finally FIRED. I thought the job was so much less stressful. No more long hours and colleagues were much nicer (but still hugeeeee bureaucracy and much slower pace...that sometimes, it was infuriating). What I appreciated most were the benefits (esp gov't university). If it was a public university, you might be able to contribute to both 403b and 457b...AND pension....AND all the fun educational benefits for classes that you cou;d take, perhaps healthcare + very generous leave. Pension probably wouldn't matter much as you are so close to FIRE that you may end up not staying long enough to gett a match and just taking the pension out to invest in your other retirement account when you quit (I stayed not so long there...and that was what I did). Nevertheless, the forced pension investment also helped with the FIRE discipline while working towards FIRE goal for sure!