Front-Loader, not Free-Loader

For those of you who think this will be a post about finances, I hate to disappoint, but it is most certainly not. However, I must begin by clearly defining and explaining the term of the day prior to jumping into my main point. That being said, with no further ado, let’s kick this off with the definition of “front-loading”:

To distribute (cost, effort, time spent, etc.) unevenly, with the greater proportion being given at the beginning of the process;

To concentrate maximum effort at the outset, consequently allowing for reduced effort during later stages.

What is an example of front-loading?

In money-lending, the term “front-load” is often heard. Certain types of loans can have interest payments front-loaded. This means that the borrower will pay higher amounts towards interest at the outset of the loan. However, that amount naturally decreases over the life of the loan, as the principal amount of the loan is also decreasing. In effect, towards the middle and end stages of the loan, an ever higher proportion of each payment will be applied towards the loan’s principal.

This is why it seems to take forever to see a decrease in the principal amount of your mortgage for the first few years of owning a home. Most of your monthly payment is simply being sucked up by the amount of interest owed on such a large principal amount. The good news is that when that principal number DOES begin to noticeably decrease, the process of paying down this principal speeds up exponentially. This happens because an ever greater portion of your monthly payment is beginning to be applied to the principal and less applied to interest. Soon, the amount that is going towards interest seems piddly when compared to the amount that is being shaved off the principal amount every month. This is the moment when you can finally start seeing the light at the end of the mortgage-tunnel! Interest-free and mortgage-free is a great place to be!

Now imagine this scenario:

You did it! You have finally paid all your dues to that bank. You have been working relentlessly for so many years. For most people, it takes 30 years to accomplish, but you have done it in 15! You have striven to put all your extra scrounged pennies straight into this loan in order to pay it off early. No vacations, no treats, no extras, just ALL IN on paying off this debt, 24/7/365. You have finally found yourself ready to enjoy the fruits of your labor and RELAX! Right!?!? You’ve earned it…? The right to be done…? Ha! Think again! Now, someone is telling you it doesn’t matter if you paid the 30 year loan off in 15 years. You still owe more! No matter that you sacrificed and gave your all for those 15 years. No matter that you have paid the same amount in 15 years as others who have taken the full 30 years to pay. Regardless of this fact, you must still continue to pay dues for the future 15 years.

Hmmmm….?? Something doesn’t quite add up here…

I think we should do some math.

*The following illustration is an oversimplification, of course. For example, perhaps the paid-labor-partner mows grass for 1 hour per week throughout the summer months. Perhaps they take over as parent-on-call for a few hours per week. Perhaps they have so much spare time at their disposal that they decide to take on a side-hustle on top of their typical 40 hours per week. Who knows? But for the sake of simplicity, we must keep things general. In this example, just imagine that all the typical unpaid labor of running a household is on the unpaid-labor-partner, while the paid-labor-partner carries the 40-hours-per-week paid load.

How many hours is a person with a full-time job expected to work over the course of their career?

Working full time as the paid-labor-partner comes with many perks. Not only do you receive a paycheck for time served, you also enjoy a healthy work/life balance that usually looks something like this: 33% of your week doing work-related things such as working, preparing to go to work, and commuting to work; 33% of your week sleeping; and the remaining 33% of the time is free choice. Not a bad gig!

Throughout the course of a typical life, a person is expected to work around 40 hours per week from the time they are age 22 until retirement around age 62. One also expects to have approximately 4 +/- weeks off during each of those 40 years for one reason or another, usually a combination of paid vacation and paid sick leave. (Yes, I understand that in the early stages of a career, only 2 weeks paid vacation/sick leave may be given, and that more than 4 weeks are possible after being in that field for a while. For simplicity, we will just use the number “4 weeks” as an overall average earned over the 40 year period.) This adds up to a total of about 48 weeks of labor at 40 hours per week. So:

40 hours per week x 48 weeks x 40 years = 76,800 hours of labor in a typical lifetime.

After putting in all these hours, it is generally considered acceptable to hang up your hat and move on to retirement! Time to relax and enjoy the rest of your life. The world is your oyster! You have earned the right to decide from this point forward how you choose to fill your days. You have made your contribution to this world and now have the pleasure to do whatever you want to do. Congratulations!

What happens to those who are NOT able to follow the “typical” layout of labor distribution over the course of 40 years?

Some people don’t have the option of trickling their expected 76,800 working hours over a period of 40 years. Instead, you become a parent and exit the paid workforce in order to become the unpaid-labor-partner in the home.

In this scenario, for approximately the first 5 years carrying the title of unpaid-labor-partner, you work nonstop doing everything for everybody; any and all tasks that fall under the umbrella of “monetarily non-reimbursable” are your burden to carry. Here is a sampling of how you might spend those first 5 years:

After calculating all of the time spent working, being on call, and lugging around your second shadow (all pro-bono) during these 5 years, 24/7/365, you will have by this time already contributed a whopping 43,800 hours to your total expected contribution of 76,800. That, my friends, is OVER HALF of the total expected 40-year contribution in only 5 years time!

Meanwhile, the paid-labor-partner has racked up, hmmm, let’s see…clocked-in for 40 hours and clocked-out the entire rest of the week x 48 weeks x 5 years…a measly 9,600 hours of contribution over that same 5-year period. Looks like they still have a ways to go to finish their total expected working hours contribution before their retirement can finally kick in! 

Now let’s imagine that you begin homeschooling your child. (Many legitimate reasons exist for opting to homeschool. That, however, is a subject for another day.) During years 5 to 13 of your child’s life, 8 years in all, a slight adjustment is made to your workload. For these 8 years, you add the following (unpaid) work hours to your total lifetime expected contribution:

1. Minimally 8 hours per day x 5 days per week doing hands-on activities with your child and instructing your child in all subjects (Year-round! Unless you actually decide to send them to some type of full-time daycare during the summer months, you still have your child with you ALL day, EVERY day…and yet I’m only officially adding 40 weekly hours to this calculation.)

40 hours per week x 52 weeks x 8 years = 16,640 hours

2. 15-20 hours per week (but let’s just use 15) as household manager: cooking, dishes, cleaning, laundry, running errands, etc. (no vacations/sick leave granted)

15 hours per week x 52 weeks x 8 years = 6,240 hours

3. 10 hours per week running your part time business (4 weeks unpaid vacation)

10 hours per week x 48 weeks x 8 years = 3,840 hours

4. Your child also exists on weekends. However, since they are growing up quickly during these years, your hands-on involvement isn’t fully necessary every minute of every day. Yes, you are still the default parent on Saturdays and Sundays, so you are still not really free to just go off and do whatever you want, whenever you want. You are still the responsible party on these so-called “days off.” Also, oftentimes, many of the 15-20 weekly hours of household manager tasks tend to be distributed to the weekends, since almost every waking minute is already filled from Monday through Friday. In particular, food preparation and cleanup definitely don’t discriminate: weekdays, weekends, holidays – ALL are equal in the eyes of food preparation and cleanup. However, I will not add any official working hours here, although I probably should do so.

In case you haven’t yet figured this out, this schedule equates minimally to a 65 hour work week for 48 out of 52 weeks of every year, and a 55 hour work week for the other 4 weeks of every year…for 8 YEARS IN A ROW. Admittedly, however, this is a cakewalk in comparison to the grueling schedule that you survived during those first 5 years!

So, the grand total hours contributed during parenting/homeschool years 5 through 13 equate to 26,720 hours of (mostly unpaid) labor. During this same 8 year period, the paid-labor-partner has put in 15,360 hours.

Lets calculate all totals we have up to this point, encompassing the entire first 13 years of parenthood:

Unpaid-labor partner: 70,520 total hours of labor

Paid-labor partner: 24,960 total hours of labor

WOW! At this point, the unpaid-labor-partner is a scant 6,280 hours away from having contributed 100% of their expected labor contribution! Almost 92% of their 40 year labor “debt” has been paid off in a matter of 13 years! At this point, you have about 5 more years to go with your child under your roof, after which time you will officially become an empty nester. You still have basic household duties to accomplish, which will no doubt easily add up to the remaining 6,280 hours you have left to contribute. However, from here on out, you carry a much lighter load. High five! Looks like you are on track to an early retirement!

But…wait a second…you better sit down because what I’m about to say next absolutely defies reason…

As all too often happens, after putting in all those thousands of hours, all that labor is taken for granted, overlooked, and in some cases even looked down upon as not having been worth anything at all. After all, according to some people, work that is of any value will obviously receive monetary reimbursement; and since all your work was uncompensated, it follows that it must have been of no worth, right?

So now what? What is expected? After all those hours of grueling, thankless work, it is expected that you will continue to WORK MORE! Now, after 13 years of nonstop energy output and with just over 6,000 work hours left in your expected labor contribution debt account, your hours of time already served simply don’t count. You are now likened to a free-loader because you dare to take a season of time to breathe in peace, a time to step back from drowning in drudgery.  Now, you must continue to contribute even though you have already FRONT-LOADED all of your contributions.

Hold everything, stop right there, because it sounds like you are being taken advantage of and like someone else needs to learn how to do basic math.

If I so choose to become a full-time paid-labor-partner any time between now (70,000+ hours into my contribution) and the end of my life, that is my prerogative. However, if I choose to finish paying off that final 8% of what I owe and call it a day, that is totally up to me. I worked and I slaved. I deserve retirement, too. I front-loaded most of what I owe and I deserve credit for having paid those dues. In no way can a person be considered a free-loader after having already contributed their fair share of labor.

All you unpaid-labor-partners out there, stand up for yourselves and what you have accomplished! It is up to you whether you continue laboring after you have already sacrificed your fair share of blood, sweat, and tears. If necessary, pull out a pencil, paper, and calculator and show that greedy bully the math. You worked more hours than they could ever fully imagine. You dealt with more crap (literal and figurative) than they could ever truly know. You have earned the right to retire, if you so choose. You should not be forced to pay more hours of your life than what they themselves must pay. You should not be penalized for having front-loaded all your efforts.

The fact is that you have never been a free-loader, and it will forever be impossible for you to be considered a free-loader. The fact is that you HAVE contributed your fair share. All of those hours you labored DO count, and they DID make a difference. Any time someone dares to put you and the word free-loader in the same sentence, simply reply with one simple phrase in the sweetest voice and smile that you can muster: “I’m sorry, but I think you meant to say ‘front-loader.’”

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*I do not want readers to think that I have a rotten husband. Although he used to think along these lines, he has matured so much in his views and understanding over the past few years, and I want to make sure to give him credit for that growth. I have an amazing husband, and he will support my decision when the time comes for me to decide whether to 1. take my early retirement after contributing all my expected hours or 2. decide to donate hours of my life, above and beyond what is typically expected, to working for pay outside of the home. I want to acknowledge that I am truly blessed to have him as my life partner! My main goal in writing this was not to throw unappreciative, clueless spouses under the bus (although if the shoe fits, wear it). Instead, I have written this as a means to prove to myself and to others in similar circumstances that unpaid labor truly counts just as much as paid labor. No more, no less. You should not be made to feel “less-than” or undeserving of a “retirement” simply because you were not compensated monetarily for your thousands of hours of physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting work.