An accounting manager struggled with work-life balance at PwC, Walmart, and Google. Leaving the Bay Area is what finally changed the tide.

• Mike Manalac is an account manager who struggled to balance his ambitious career with family life.
• He chose a work-life balance over salary but his goal of starting a family was still out of reach.
• Manalac relocated from the Bay Area to Chicago for lower living costs and finally started a family.

As Mike Manalac entered his 30s, all he wanted was to have an exciting career and start a family — but he had no idea how difficult it would be to achieve both.

He's a Chicago-based accounting manager at Google, a husband, and a father of a three-year-old. He's worked with some of the biggest finance (PwC), Fortune 500s (Walmart Corporate), and tech companies. He knew reaching his career aspirations would require him to make sacrifices, but he quickly realized those sacrifices often directly conflicted with his goal to make family life a top priority.

"Work always had to take top priority, which meant dropping what I was doing in off-hours to answer a phone call or jump on my laptop," Manalac told Business Insider. "I didn't want to end up with a lackluster career and a bunch of regrets, but I also didn't want to be one of those workaholics that lived to work either."

It took him 11 years and multiple strategic career moves, but he finally achieved the work-life balance he'd always wanted. He has no regrets and only one thing he would've done differently. Manalac shared the key decisions that contributed to his work-life success.

He chose work-life balance over a higher salary

Manalac's career journey kicked into high gear in 2016 when he moved from Baltimore — where he'd worked as an audit manager for the previous eight years — to San Francisco to join PwC and transition closer to Silicon Valley for tech opportunities. But he left PwC after only five months.

"My wife and I had recently moved to San Francisco, and we were so excited to explore our new hometown," Manalac said. "But since I worked 12 hours a day during the week and half-days on Saturdays, we didn't have much time to explore together. It almost felt like we lived separate lives."

Manalac would eat lunch and dinner at the office and said some days he'd never see daylight. By the time he returned home, all he wanted to do was sleep, and most days, he felt like he and his now-wife were just ships passing in the night.

"When it started to feel like we lived more like roommates, we agreed that a change was needed."

After PwC, he took a position with Walmart's eCommerce division, which offered greater work-life balance but a major salary reduction. Still, Manalac felt his decision was well worth it because of the drastic improvements in work-life balance.

Manalac actively pursued his dream job and finally landed it

Their financial tide turned when at age 30, Manalac received a job offer from Google in 2017. He described the management role as the dream job he'd been chasing since moving to the Bay Area.

For over a year, he'd periodically email a Google recruiter with his updated résumé. He finally received an offer for a phone screen interview. Then, after two months and multiple rounds of interviews, Manalac received the offer.

"Google's compensation package was a 25% increase in salary, and it also included an annual bonus and stock awards, which made the bump much more," Manalac said. "As long as I could consistently perform at a high level, I was encouraged to take advantage of all of the amenities."

If Manalac wanted to go to the gym, take a bike ride, visit another office on campus, or get a massage in the middle of the day, he could do it without asking permission or feeling guilty.

Despite the amenities and compensation, Manalac's one-bedroom apartment in the Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco was nearly $3,000 a month, and he had to endure a four-hour daily commute. Plus, he and his wife were starting to feel the pressure to start a family but had to put it on hold until they were financially ready.

Manalac decided to move out of the Bay Area and transfer to Google's Chicago offices.

The couple relocated to a more cost-effective city

While they'd both grown to love San Francisco, Manalac said he also knew Chicago was a better location for the couple to settle down and finally start a family.

"I volunteered to relocate to enjoy Chicago's lower cost of living, excellent public transportation network, and its closer proximity to the family we have in Michigan and Maryland," Manalac said.

They purchased a three-unit home in Chicago for $830,000, with a mortgage of around $4,631. They live in one unit and rent out the other two, and the combined rental income covers most of their mortgage. "It's been a good investment and a game changer in helping offset our daycare costs of $2,242 per month — $26,913 annually — and achieving the family-life balance I desired."

He advises new professionals to be strategic with the first 10 years of their career

Though he has no regrets, Manalac said ideally, he would've taken career risks a few years earlier to reach this point of his career in his early 30s.

"Starting my career at the onset of the great recession in 2008 meant playing it safe with my career decisions." He stayed at his first employer for seven years and believes those were the prime years to experiment with different job opportunities and gain a wider variety of work experience.

For anyone starting their corporate career and hoping to avoid some of the work-family challenges that Manalac encountered, he recommends clarifying what you want in your life and profession. "Be strategic with how you spend the first 10 years of your career in particular," Manalac said.

"Life has a way of catching up with you, so use these early years to take calculated risks and swing big."

If you work in Big Tech or finance and would like to share your work-life balance story, email Tess Martinelli at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com