It's pretty straight forward in terms of pros and cons.

Cons:

You'll need to tighten your budget to account for the missing 12k. Depending on your country's tax rules, you'll contribute less to government benefit programs, which could have a small effect later. At worst, you'll see how you could have tightened your budget already and been saving and investing that money (12k over 10 years can result in maybe 150k).

One last con. If you do this, but don't follow through with effort, you'll potentially carry that mental weight. It seems like you're already past that kind of problem though, given how well you've used your time to build something else successful.

Pros:

There's no better time to trade back some money for your time than when you are younger, get paid less, and have fewer obligations. It's also easier to tighten a budget when you live alone (you don't say, but I'm making some assumptions).

You've already had some success, so committing more time to this effort of independence can be seen as a reasonable and even smart investment. Strike while the iron is hot.

If you start earlier, that gives you more time to slowly build successful independent software businesses, and you'll need that time. It can take a while.

As others have said, you can always go back to working full time (maybe with another job and maybe even a pay rise). You can further mitigate risk by setting some sort of arbitrary deadline, such as "I'll do this for 1 year and stop only if I haven't made more traction".

Parting thoughts:

I wish you the best of luck. If you haven't already, it seems like you'd enjoy and benefit from Pieter Levels book at https://readmake.com.

Take the day off and enjoy your life, work is not everything (as I think you may agree, given your goal to live off of software you've built). You can always go back to 5 days later on if you don't like it.

Let's do some math first.

1.5 months of work sold for 10K. That's 1/6th of your current salary. Let's say your current salary is X. So the equation becomes:

    1/6 * currentSalary = 10,000. 
    currentSalary = 60,000

With a 20% cut, your current salary would reduce to 60,000 * 0.8 = 48,000

So with the pay cut, you need to make at least 12,000 to break even. Let's assume you only work 1 day a week on your side project. You made 10K from the 1st side project. So the question really is can you make that additional 12K with this additional 1 day you have ?

I would say Why not. You made 10K when you worked full time. Now you have another full day available to work on your own thing. So I would say you should definitely aim for making 12K (break even) + additional.

Without Math btw, I would anyway go for it.

Congrats with the sale! But if you're asking here, you probably don't believe strongly enough that you can repeat your performance. I'd suggest not to take the pay cut. You can invest that money into your startup instead (eg in ads). And it'll force you to focus on the most important things with your next side project.

Buy the time back with the work week reduction and build to sell. Invest proceeds. Buy back time faster. Repeat until freedom. A “Freedom flywheel” if you will.

Life is short and then we die. Time is non renewable. Autonomy and being able to direct your own work is valuable as well.

In my 20s and 30s, I spent a lot of my free time working on side businesses. Despite some success, they never really worked out for me.

I don't regret the time I spent as it made me a much better developer.

The only negative is that I feel like I worked enough in my life and don't have the energy for side projects anymore. I tried, it didn't work, but that's ok.

I read about how most founders don't succeed until their 40-50s, and I think "wow, now is my time!" I don't really have the energy for it.

I get good sleep, I exercise, and feel great, but working nights and weekends isn't for me any more. I've been there, tried that.

Just work on your own projects two hours before work each day, no need to give up salary.

You'll be amazed at what you can build with consistent effort.

I definitely wouldn't take this deal. You're working 40 hours a week, not 80, which means you already have more than enough time to work on your own projects. If you have enough drive and willpower to continue that independent work, the hold-up has nothing to do with time.

This looks like a ChatGPT prompt, especially as you ask for pros and cons! I guess for the way you ask the question, you won't get many answers back..

But I'll answer it with another question. What do you need more now, money or time? You'll find the answer to your initial question there..

Good luck!

Is it remote or onsite? Keep the full salary and become good enough in your day job that you don't need 40h of work to do the minimum to keep your job. Use all the time left to code your way out of the job creating your side projects

$60,000 is a very small amount of money to give away your best years for. It's a no-brainer to me, whether you work on your own project or not.

It depends on your overall financial situation. If it is stable und you can ideally still save some money for an emergency fund after the cut, I would recommend that you do so. And if it were possible to increase working hours back to 5 days a week again, it would almost be a no-brainer. Then just give it a try.

> I have been offered the ability to work 1 less day every week. This would come with a 20% pay cut.

Counter and say you’ll do it for a 10% cut. Or try for no cut.

Everything’s negotiable.

Future self employment income should be discounted for risk. Some people might (will) not pay and potential projects never start or actual projects get cancelled at higher rates than layoffs in ordinary employment.

Cash flow is another issue. Employment pays regularly. Contract work does not so you might go a few months between paydays. If you can’t afford that, you are under capitalized.

A better job is another option. Sure job hunting sucks. But self employment means you are always job hunting. And anyway, you could find a better job and still work on the side.

Good luck.