"The stress of being a billionaire"

[scrabbler1]

I actually told my boss this year I would rather have additonal vacation days then a raise. He looked at me like I had two heads but this mindset underscores how much I value my free time (or perhaps how lazy I am)!

I don't recall my boss looking at me like I had two heads, but twice in my final 8 years of working I asked my boss to reduce my weekly number of hours worked. This must have run contrary to nearly everything he had ever heard an employee ask him (save a new mom returning to work PT after maternity leave). My pay raises decreased, too, not that I cared a whole lot. If I willingly reduced my pay by 40%, did I really care if I got a 2% or 3% raise later?

I find it very empowering to be able to ask for such a thing, asking to be paid LESS because I wanted the time off, albeit unpaid, and forgo most of my benefits along the way. I simply hated the commute so much that eventually, I needed to reduce it to ZERO from as little as 2 days a week and resign (ER) in 2008 after 7 years of various pat-time working arrangements.