As the title suggests… Would you rather be in a £60,000 job that is really boring or doing something really fun for £30,000? Both are a reasonable 35hrs a week. What would be your reasons for your decision?

44 comments

  3. Work is to pay the bills. Even “fun” jobs have dull moments too. To choose the £60K job is a no brainer.

  4. Boring job for £60k.

    If you’d said really gross, or physically horrific, or dangerous, or something, give me the £30k. But I’m actually okay with a nice boring job. Boring means it’s probably easy. I can be quite relaxed when bored. And I’d rather do fun stuff with my family, and also be able to save for holidays and to put a decent amount into a retirement fund, so I’ll take more money thank you.

  5. Depends on the specifics.

    Let’s say for argument’s sake that the fun job was travelling and accommodation is paid for, meaning that essentially I could be location independent so wouldn’t need a ‘home’ and all associated bills then I might choose that.

    Assuming that’s not the case and it’s just business as usual as far as life goes outside of work. Probably the latter, as it’s kind of my situation anyway.

    Why that? The extra income enables a better quality of life outside of work and if the money is looked after well, then retiring earlier is much more achievable.

  6. I’ll take the £60k as I’m struggling to think of any job that I wouldn’t eventually find boring.

  7. Boring job for 35h a week? Gimme that 60k, I’ll use it to fund hobbies and study in all that free time I’ll have. 😀

  8. 60K v 30K is too vast a difference for me to give a fuck about enjoying my job. Especially if the worst you can say about it is that it’s boring.

    Give me the 60K.

  10. I have no issue being bored, it’s being stressed by melodramas and non stop phone calls of stupidity that I hate.

    I’ll take the boring data entry job for 60,000 and listen to podcasts and Kisstory all day everytime please

  14. Not been in the UK long, but if you choose the 30K job over the 60K one, you are an idiot(sorry not sorry). The extra 30k makes a huge difference to your life and drastically improves your lifestyle and secures your long term future. If you have 35 hr work week, you still have another 40 to 50 hrs in the week to enjoy life.

    Now if the choices were 60k and 90k, you might be excused for taking the fun lower paying one, but definitely not for 30k and 60k.

  15. I’ll take bored over stressed, worried or anxious any day of the week. £60k is enough for a comfortable life (in most of the country) compared to £30k being around average. The financial security significantly outweighs the boredom.

  16. Having done both I’d choose an interesting job over money any day of the week.

    At one job I was being paid a shedload to aggregate and collate around 5 or 6 different key metrics from 15 systems into 20 reports which covered 15 countries, multiple divisions and practice areas, etc.

    It took me almost 3 weeks to collate the following months reports, it was such a dull, inefficient and frustrating task that had to be completed alongside other deliverables.

    If the company had been willing to consider automating parts of the role, or rationalising their reporting systems I could’ve stuck it out. Implementing those changes would’ve been interesting and it would’ve given me hope too.

    But they weren’t. Typical small company mentality. In spite of the salary I had to quit after a couple of months.

    I think it takes a certain kind of mindset to be a pencil pusher that is happy to accept things the way they are. Other people require more mental stimulation and get a kick out of challenging ways of working and improving things.

  19. 60k any day. For the 30k difference I can fund a lot of non-boring activities to keep me entertained.
    It really gets on my tits when people comment derogatively about being money driven. As if you can pay your bills with anything other than cold hard cash

  22. Can I take the £60,000 job, but do it part time?

    Assuming the salary would be pro rata’d it’d be £36,000 for a three day week.

    That seems most appealing.

  23. I have enough hobbies outside of work to balance a boring job. So long as the hours were reliable a good routine would help with boring stints at work.

  25. 60k

    Work is there to earn the money I need to do the shit I want to do in my non work time.

    If it’s interesting then that’s great, but if it’s boring then so be it.

  26. 60k so I could put a large chunk into saving every year so I can then do what I like later in life (presuming i make it there).

  27. There is no right answer to this question. Its a personal decision that is heavily affected by your goals and personality. Yes more money is helpful and seems obvious if you are fine with mudane jobs and can justify this with home life or hobbies and other activities which make the trade off worthwhile.

    However if you invest a great deal of your time and energy in work and you are not being engaged or growing then the mental toll it will take will far outweigh the benefit.

    One of the hardest lessons to learn is that mental/physical health is far more valuable than you think to financial decicion making and ability to earn in the long run (lets ignore the glaringly obvious that it is also very important to happiness) . It is also very difficult to tell you’re in the hole until its too late. Ultimately you could save 60k (much less after tax I’d guess) in two years but you could spend it all and more on a life style to help you forget how much you dislike your job or blow it on any number of poor financial decisions.

  28. Job you loved for sure (assuming fun equates to love and passion for the role here).

    £30k isn’t nearly enough to trade your happiness. I always find when I’m bored and uninspired at work it seeps through to me personal life as well.

  29. Fun job for £30k all day long, you spend an unfathomable amount of time at work, you can’t take anything with you when your times up so you may as well have a laugh if you can.

  31. At the moment I’d probably pick the money because I’m kind of saving for a house, but I have been in a job before where I earned around £50k and I was so fed up with it, I ended up asking to go part-time (3-days a week) at a loss of 40% of that money, and I didn’t regret it, because those four-day weekends were the best.

    Right now, in my current job, I am longing for those four-day weekends again, but don’t really want to sacrifice that much money.

  32. If you could guarantee that the really fun job remains really fun until I retire, which is obviously a long shot, then I’d take the £30k. What such a job would entail I don’t know, the perfect scenario is probably something that involves testing amusement parks, holidays, festivals, attractions, events, bars & restaurants etc.. The things I was doing would need to be things I’d like to do in my leisure time and there’d need to be enough variety in them. Stuff that I’d be spending most of the £60k salary on anyway, but with more time to do other stuff.

    Alternatively, if you could guarantee me a £30k a year income doing my hobby (music) I’d be pretty content with that as well. More than most musicians get (and more than I’m currently on).

  33. If the worst thing about the £60k job is that it’s boring, then it’s a pretty sweet deal. I’d happily do a boring job for £60k/year. I wouldn’t do a job that actively made me miserable for that much though – no amount of money is worth that.

    Even a £30k job would be a huge bump from what I’m currently earning though, so either is fine with me.

  34. £30k fun job. More money doesn’t always mean a better quality of life. I wouldn’t want the Sunday Dread.

  35. I know a guy who was offered 2 jobs. He took the lower paid one as he felt he was more suited to it. Fast forward 10 years and he’s made director. Gets £10m (I kid you not) when the company is bought out (Pets at Home).

  37. HOW much fun are we talking about? If it was doing my my hobbies and the role guaranteed a social and sex life, the fuk yeah.

  38. Fun job for 30k. That’s plenty of money to live on. I wouldn’t have any use for much more than that.

  40. I’m surprised at people who would consider being bored for 5 days a week vs having fun. I earn a way lot less than 30k, so both seem attractive, but I actually love my job, so would take something great to move away from it.

    Never really struggled for money. Am just really careful with it.

  41. £26k is probably about as high as I’m going to get, so both of these options make me sad.

    Fun for £30k assuming boring means ‘soul destroyingly boring’. If it’s just an absence of fun then 60k for sure

  42. In a previous life back in the turn of the new millenia I quit a 40k a year position that I’d fell out of love with to take a summer job working from April to September every year, travelling the UK earning £300 a weekend supplemented with bar work at my local pub on the days I was home.

    Not one single regret.

  43. I left industry to go into teaching.

    My peers are now all in the 60-100k region. I’m languishing on c£40k

    But honestly. I LOVE my job.

    I couldn’t do what they do. In front of a computer all day. Clients. Deadlines. Reports. Tried it. Hated it.

    I get to spent six hours a day with amazing teens, send them off to Uni and watch them grow from 11 to 19.

    And I work a reasonable workload cos I reduced my hours (I have 5 1/2 days a fortnight – or I’d be on over 50k).

    I also mark for the exam boards, which ups my overall money and gives my kids better outcomes.

  44. I mean….the £30k fun job would be a pay rise for me so yeah I’ll take it.

    I have a ‘fun’ job, working in a museum. We get paid fuck all and the workload is enormous BUT I get to work in a castle, so hey.

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