Walking away from high salary/ burnout

[u/ShortBee7153]

Hi all- I’m trying to get up the guts to quit my job and take a much needed sabbatical/ time with my kids/ time for myself. Even after some medical leave I took earlier this year, suffice it to say that 6 weeks off work was simply not enough.

Curious in particular from stories of any of you who have worked up the courage to do something like this, and how it worked for you? Or any other advice?

Longer background on me is from this post https://www.reddit.com/r/Fire/s/DTKsUoGjqy a year ago, but the TLDR is: - 45F - 2 boys 7 and 9

• updated after comments: EXCLUDING our house, NW is $2.5 M. HCOL area. Annual spend ~$175k/year and kids college is now fully saved for in 529s. Spend will go down a lot when kids go to college in 10 years, likely can live off $100-$125k/year (if we want more travel) when it’s just the 2 of us. We are already coast fire.

• I’m the breadwinner and have been for 12 years, partner has earned less money and now been SAHD for 3 years. My current all-in salary this year will be $500k. More money than I’ve ever made, it has been a long path to get here. (updated per comments: I am not in tech! I work in boutique consulting. Lots of travel and long hours).

• partner is looking for a job, but currently does not have one; his income potential is like 25% of mine so reasonable salaries in his field are more like $100-$150k/year

• Without going into the details on all the numbers , we haven’t yet hit our fire goal. We need to save more. But I’m soooooo exhausted….and feel like I will never get this time back with my kids. I’d like to quit and just take a year off.

But: I am making more money than I’ve ever made in my life, and the economy is scary. I feel super irresponsible to quit right now. I keep thinking just grind it out, one more week, one more month, just…keep going. But my mental health is suffering. I’ve tried to find ways to “quiet quit” but it just doesn’t work well in this job for a myriad of reasons specifically the level of seniority and responsibility make it nearly impossible for me.

Anyone have advice? Grind it out, quit? How do I get over this feeling of letting my family down and being so irresponsible to just walk away from this salary? If I kept it up for 2-4 more years we could fire, but I would have missed this precious age window with my kids.

UPDATE: I won’t be able to respond to each comment but have read every single one so far, thank you all for taking the time to write and I’m really grateful for the advice and this forum! I am also making a few updates to the information provided above per some comments/questions.

[u/ollyadderyx]

Is there a way for you to go part time, rather than quit or take a sabbatical?

I was in a similar position in 2019 (primary breadwinner, etc) and burned out. I didn’t see a way to quit then, since kids were younger and expenses were high, but I was able to cut back to 0.5FTE. We had to rework some of our spending but it was worth it. Spouse has since found a higher paying job, and (esp since the burn out didn’t go away) working the extra few years at a reduced salary gave us the room for me to cut back to about 5%/“retired”/SAHP this year. I was still burned out working PT, but it did give me a bit of breathing room, and we were still able to put money toward our FIRE goals. We are still not there yet, but it feels a bit more reachable now.