I took a 50% salary cut. I’m happier with my career, but I’m still getting used to the money part

“I could tell they thought I was absurd. But…if I didn’t make a career pivot now, would I have the chance to do so later?”

Three months after my husband and I moved into our house, it started falling apart.

First was the central air unit that needed a part replaced, then a different part replaced. Then the basement flooded, not once, but twice before we could schedule a crew to jackhammer into the concrete to install a drainage system. Then the first cold snap of the fall hit, and the boiler did something I can only describe as “crapped out.”

At first, I was active in seeking solutions to the problems our 80-year-old house threw our way. I’d write a check for the deposit on a repair, and my husband would pay the remainder. We hadn’t combined our finances yet — still haven’t, six months after the wedding — and although his salary far surpasses mine, I felt like everything was under control.

But after several years of throwing money at problems without hesitation, I was all out. I had nothing left to chip in for those modern expenses that are somewhat expected but unscheduled.

A little over a year before moving into the house, I’d cut my salary in half to take a job that would allow me to pursue my career goals. The work is fulfilling, but I’m still figuring out my relationship with money in this phase of my life.

This all started back in 2020, the year that represents some of the worst experiences of our collective lives. But it also represents my best earnings ever, thanks to a series of extremely fortunate employment events. As those months of lockdowns and uncertainty dragged on, I started making a salary $20,000 higher, then $30,000 higher, than I ever had before.

I paid off what was left of my student loans from grad school. I built up an emergency fund. I significantly increased my contributions to my retirement accounts. For the first time in my entire adult life, I didn’t owe anything to anyone.

If I wanted to buy something, I did. The frugal part of me, the part that remembered once selling a box full of CDs as a college student to pay for groceries, never completely went away. I shopped secondhand, but I went to the high-end consignment stores more often than Goodwill. I splurged on experiences once leaving the house became normal again: $100 haircuts, getting my car detailed, premium seating at concerts, memberships for fitness classes. Plus, there were gifts for family members and donations to organizations I loved.

I didn’t need a budget. I didn’t need to dip into my emergency fund. For more than two years, big paychecks dropped into my bank account regularly, and I didn’t ever need to think about how far out my next payday was.

But something about my career kept nagging at me. I thought I had financial freedom, the one thing I had wanted for so long. But the energy from my early years in personal finance writing — both my own energy and that of the personal finance community at large — had changed. Personal finance felt less like helping each individual person better their circumstances and more like rewriting the same content once or twice a year so search engines would show it to readers.

I was starting to feel like a hamster on a wheel. And the money? I didn’t think it would last. I had endured enough media industry layoff cycles to know the earliest signs that, eventually, a significant reduction in force could take my comfort away in an instant.

I started having conversations with people in journalism who were doing the kind of work I really wanted to do: investigative, enterprise, the long articles you sit down with on a weekend morning and take an entire cup of coffee to read. What would I have to do, if I wanted to do that?

These kind people told me the skills that would be helpful and strategies to look for sustainable work that wouldn’t feel so hamster-wheely. They also told me that pursuing investigative reporting would likely require a pay cut at first, especially for someone with an untraditional career path who didn’t go to journalism school or survive many of the typical rites of passage of young reporters.

At first, I resisted. I couldn’t imagine returning to a salary level I had been grateful for more than five years prior, especially if a new job would require moving to a new place. I had a few casual conversations with hiring managers, who nearly choked when I told them what I wanted to earn. “That’s not going to happen,” one told me, blunt but almost wistful. “Not here.”

I could tell they thought I was absurd. I started to think I was irrational, too. But I was entering my late 30s, and if I didn’t make a career pivot now, would I have the chance to do so later?

Over the course of a few months, I increased my savings and started selling off unneeded possessions while I completed interviews at a small nonprofit newsroom where my salary would be modest, but my job would be stable. I crunched the numbers over and over to be sure I could survive financially with only 50% of the salary I had grown used to.

A few weeks into 2023, my then-fiance and I finally packed up our two households and three cats and left the Florida beaches for the Virginia mountains. Moving and settling in a new place was expensive (it’s always expensive), but I was completely at peace with my decision.

And I still am. I work harder than I did during those few “rich” years, but I have more to show myself for it at the end of the day. I do work I am proud of, and I am striving for goals that are challenging, but not impossible.

It helps a whole lot that I have a supportive husband, and we are not financially responsible for anyone else, like an aging parent or a small child.

My husband volunteered to fill in the income gap when I changed jobs, and reiterated his willingness to do so when we moved from our apartment in Virginia, where we stayed for the first year, to our house. He’s paid for our many house repairs without a complaint, without a sharp comment. When a trip to the emergency room ended with me getting a $900 bill after insurance, he told me not to pay him my share of the mortgage that month so I could pay the bill in full right away.

I have a hard time taking financial help and a harder time asking for it, even though this is the person who promised me “for richer or poorer.” I’m grateful to him, for offering support and for remaining calm during those moments when I feel like I’m not doing my fair share.

But the regular spending, the purchases that aren’t a result of careful joint decisions, are so confusing. I pay for everything with a credit card for the points, a habit from my past life when the points quickly added up to a reward that felt like it was worth the trouble. When the statement comes, I second-guess every purchase. Should I have bought the brand-name eye drops from Walgreens? The $14 bottle of wine from a local shop? The gym membership I use twice a week, but usually not three times a week?

What about all the annual memberships I put on auto-pay long ago, for professional associations, my writing portfolio web hosting or cloud storage for a decade of digital photos? These subscriptions provide value, but every time one renews for $75 to $120, my stomach drops a little. Where is the line between necessity and lifestyle creep, or between frivolous spending and deserving a little treat?

I’m nearly 40, have achieved the traditional success markers of a career, a home and a spouse, but I am barely breaking even. My emergency fund remains mostly intact, but mostly for my fear that if I take money out, I’ll never again have a surplus to rebuild the balance.

Sometimes I think I should pick up a second job again, even though I already work irregular hours. I kept a long-time freelance writing client for the first year of my new job, but earning the few hundred extra a month felt like it sapped my energy to enjoy the weekends without a true break from working. Sometimes I look at job listings for journalism jobs that pay more than mine, but sound like they take place in miserable work environments. I talk to my husband when I’m feeling stressed about money, and he assures me he’ll take care of me because it’s what partners do for one another.

I do not know when I’ll be able to take a turn caring for him in the same way he does for me now. And I don’t know when these feelings of anxiety and doubt will pass. All I know is that the feelings are real. And eventually, as I continue to adjust and learn, they will fade into a new confidence.

Lisa Rowan is a journalist living in Roanoke, Virginia. Her book Money Hacks was released in 2020. Find her on Instagram.

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