‘I took a £20,000 pay cut to be happier’
Ambition burnout is the latest career buzzword, but would you leave a high paying job to protect your mental health and boost job satisfaction during a cost-of-living crisis? Radhika Sanghani reports
Last year, Alice*, 35, was working as a lawyer for a high-profile firm, earning £160,000 a year. On paper, things looked great. She was winning cases that made newspaper front pages, and she could afford to treat herself to luxury holidays several times a year. But the truth was that her health was suffering.
“I was so stressed,” she explains. “I was working long hours, about 9am to 8pm, but the problem was the high-stakes nature of the job. There was so much pressure that it was having a really detrimental effect on my health.”
She had to see a doctor about stress-related heart palpitations, while her mental health also suffered. In her private life, she was struggling to conceive with her husband, and when fertility doctors kept warning her against stress, she realised something had to change.
“I thought, what’s the point of working this hard if I can’t enjoy my life in good health?” she says. “Doctors said don’t stress but how can you with 75 emails waiting for you after a one-hour appointment? I wasn’t sleeping enough or able to exercise. I knew something had to change.”
Alice decided to leave her prestigious firm and move instead to a smaller law firm, taking a £20,000 pay cut. “Now I work 9am to 6pm but I have a lot more time to think and breathe while I work. In my previous role, I had huge amounts of responsibility and no agency. Those two things combined caused me to feel undervalued and anxious. Here, I actually have more responsibility, but because I have the ability to make my own choices, I don’t feel so burnt out.”
Her stress levels have dramatically reduced, while her happiness has increased – making the £20,000 pay cut fully worth it. “It actually doesn’t make much difference to my everyday life. I was so time poor before I spent so much more money on conveniences like taxis and ordering food. But even if it was more noticeable, it would still be worth it to preserve my health.”
Alice is one of a growing number of millennials who are taking pay cuts for a better work-life balance. A recent study by the international schools group ACS found that one in 10 workers want to quit their jobs, while 54 per cent say that they are currently not working in their dream career.
Last year, a global study by the Oxford Longevity Project found half of Gen Z and millennials would take a pay cut if their employer made an effort to prioritise their wellbeing, compared to just a fifth of boomers. While a survey by LinkedIn found that younger workers were more open to pay cuts than older colleagues, especially if it offered them flexibility.
“This does seem unusual in a cost-of-living crisis,” says career coach Jenny Holliday. “But it’s showing a return to the values of a role, and the feelings around our work life rather than just the ‘take home’. There was a time when climbing the career ladder was the only focus when you’d secured your first job. More money, more status, a new title... we were conditioned to want to ‘work our way to the top’. But the top can be lonely – and all the money in the world won’t help you feel happy if you don’t love the work you do.”
Jasmine* discovered this a few years ago when, aged 39, she was travelling the world for her career in event planning, working 15-hour days on events with million-pound budgets, sometimes earning up to £10,000 a month, and an average of £80,000 a year. She started asking herself questions like “surely there is more to working life than this” and “what do I really want to get from the 50-plus years that I will need to work”?
“I hope that doesn’t make me seem ungrateful. I guess I just felt that I had a bit of calling – as cliched as this sounds,” she says. “The money was, of course, great, but it wasn’t fulfilling or exciting any more. The volunteering I had done and was doing at the time was giving me a buzz that no £10k plus invoice I submitted at the end of a month could.”
She decided to leave her work in events, taking her skills to work at a homeless charity, where her take-home pay was £1,698 a month, and around £27,000 a year. “It turns out I was good at it,” she says. “But more than that, I was making a tangible difference to people’s lives by supporting them through complicated housing applications. I felt hugely rewarded in my work for the first time, I think – and the reward was in no way financial, it was more than that. It was helping people. It was using my skills and my privilege to help people who need it.”
There’s nothing that’s worth more than mental stability
For Hattie Lamb, 34, the motivation to take a pay cut was less about purpose – something she already had working as a manager in a charity shop – and more about protecting her mental health. She used to work five days a week in her job, taking home around £2,500 a month, until she had a mental health breakdown a few years ago.
“I had to take eight months off work,” she explains. “From that moment, I knew what happens when your mental health goes so far to rock bottom that you can’t function. It put everything in perspective for me. There’s nothing that’s worth more than mental stability.”
When she was ready to go back to work, she decided to work only four days a week, even though it would decrease her income by over £600 a month, and over £7,000 a year. “I’d use that day to do things that were good for my mental health like doing a gardening diploma and chi gong. I earned enough to pay my rent and bills, which was all that mattered.”
She’s now on maternity leave and plans to return to a four-day week later in the year. “Ambition stopped mattering to me, which might not necessarily be a good thing, but it was the right thing for me at the time,” she says, looking back on her mental health struggles. “And it hasn’t come back really. I want to achieve things and I have ambition, but it’s not in a ‘I want to be the best’ or ‘I want to earn the most money’ kind of way.”
She’s not alone. Meera*, 32, took a pay cut back in 2021, when she was working as a clinical pharmacist and earning £39,000 a year. She moved to a role that paid £5,000 less, but found herself working fewer hours and enjoying her work more – a decision she doesn’t regret.
Meera now earns £56,000, having worked her way up – but is about to hand in her notice to take another pay cut, this time for £2,000.
She’s aware that the pay cut – along with added costs for commuting – will mean she’ll need to think twice about spending. “I’ll be more mindful of holidays and going out to eat less, as well as gym memberships,” she says. “But I’m moving because I'll hopefully be happier, less stressed, without pressure, even though the hours are the same. I hope I’ll have better work-life balance with more stability without travelling overnight for work.”
Jenny Holliday says this attitude is common amongst millennials and younger generations. “When it comes to work-life balance, I think millennials are much more budget-conscious,” she explains. “They are keen to save money, they're thrifters and money savers, and with that comes the realisation that you don't need a huge salary to be happy. Jobs can be fewer hours, less pay, but still have good benefits, too.”
Jasmine now earns up to £50,000 a year – still £30,000 less than she was on five years ago – but she doesn’t regret her decision to take a pay cut. “It was the best decision I ever made and I have never looked back, not for one moment. Not even when my landlord whacked the rent up on my London flat and I had to move out because I could no longer afford it.”
*Names have been changed
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