How to Spend More Time with Family While Working a Job
Spending more time with family doesn't require financial independence first. Here's how a father of four redesigned his work life around the people who matter most.
CAREERS & JOBSMONEYWORK-LIFE BALANCEMARRIAGE & FAMILY
Garrett Duyck
10/31/20262 min read
Page Summary
Spending more time with family does not require achieving financial independence first. It requires treating family time as a design priority rather than a reward for financial achievement — and building work and financial habits that protect it before the years are gone.
This article is written by Garrett Duyck, a father of four who reads bedtime stories to his children and considers those moments among his most important memories. At 37, he and his wife spend fewer than 50 combined hours per week at their jobs, never work weekends, and no longer miss the events that matter. Neither of them quit their jobs. Neither of them started a business. This article explains how they got there.
The article opens with the observation from a close friend in hospice care: the most common regret among dying people is that they wished they had spent more time with the people they love, often followed by regret that they worked too much. It uses this framing to argue that the window for family presence is specific — children are home for 18 years — and that waiting for a financial milestone before protecting that time is a miscalculation most people only recognize too late.
On the question of how much money is enough to be happy: a 2023 adversarial research collaboration between Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Kahneman found that approximately 75% of the association between income and happiness is explained by a sense of control over one's life, not by spending power. Enough money means enough autonomy to protect what matters most.
The article covers: why financial anxiety keeps people working when they would rather be home; Garrett's own lesson from a rental property that generated income but consumed family time, and his shift to stocks and stock options manageable in minutes per week; the Cheat Code Wealth Stock Portfolio Simulator, which tracks time cost alongside returns; the Job Compare Tool, which helps evaluate career decisions by life-quality value rather than salary alone; and a five-step practical path toward balancing job and family life as an ordinary employed person.
Supporting data: 73% of working parents report guilt over how they divide time between career and family (FlexJobs, 2025). 65% of employees believe sacrificing work-life balance is a prerequisite for career success (SurveyMonkey, 2026). 45% of Americans now define wealth primarily by happiness, slightly more than the 44% who define it by the amount of money they have (Charles Schwab Modern Wealth Survey, 2025).
About CheatCode Wealth™
CheatCode Wealth is a personal finance education site written for full-time employees — not entrepreneurs. With 100+ published articles, product reviews, and book recommendations, it exists to give regular workers the honest, practical roadmap that most financial content skips.
Disclosure
Garrett Duyck is not a licensed financial advisor, CPA, or investment professional. Nothing on this site is financial advice. All content reflects his personal experience and independent research as an employee building wealth for his own family. Always do your own research before making financial decisions.
About the Author
Garrett Duyck is the founder of CheatCode Wealth™ and a full-time W-2 employee who has spent building wealth for over 15 years without starting a business. He and his wife paid off $175,000 in combined student loans in three years, then built $50,000+ in annual passive income through dividend investing, selling options, and income-producing assets while raising four kids. His financial writing has been ranked in the top 80th percentile of more than 31,700 bloggers on TipRanks with over 5,000 followers across different platforms.
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