$5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 3 “Discovering FIRE…And Ignoring It”

This is part of a series about my journey to early retirement. In case you missed it, here are the previous parts:

1. $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 1 “Is This Adulting?”
2. $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 2 “Avoiding My Problems With Exercise & Consumerism”

YEAR 3

So remember that friend that was a receptionist at my first agency, turned in-house recruiter for the company that wanted to hire me and then ghosted in Year 1? Well, she’s back! She reached out to me because she had moved from working inside an agency to a straight up recruiting company – and she had a role for me.

The story of my career seems like a strange mix of “I gotta get mine” and imposter syndrome 🙂  and my first professional phone call with this friend in over a year showed that to a tee. She told me about this new role she had for me – and that it was a promotion from my current position, and I said pointblank, “Oh – I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

Despite literally proving by doing that I could complete the work of that higher position (as I did in Year 2), I was hesitant to go after the actual title and associated salary. Simply ridiculous 🙂 . She convinced me that based on my experience, I was totally ready for it and that I should interview for the position. So I did.

This is one of the interviews I was doing before being let go in Year 2. I had a final interview with them after I had been laid off and worried that somehow that fact would change their minds about me – but it didn’t. A few days later, they sent me a contract and hired me! And it was a new job that included ANOTHER promotion and ANOTHER raise to $65,000! My stint at Company 3 had begun 🙂 .

At the same time, our lease was almost up at the musical shoebox apartment so my partner and I started looking for our next place to live. We came up with the following wish list for our new apartment:

• Walking distance to work
• No roommates
• Newer building
• Outdoor space

That was our dream list where our perfect place would hit all the marks. The outdoor space request was a Partner addition – he wanted to have a balcony or something so we could be outside without fully leaving the apartment.

And I wanted to walk to work because Company 2 had been across town diagonally from our apartment and NYC subways are not built to go diagonally. I had to get on 3 trains for 5-15 minutes each, which meant goodbye to my beloved reading time because the few times I tried reading on my commute, I missed my stop 🙂 .

There was not enough time to get immersed in anything so I just stared out into the dark underground abyss for 90 minutes each day. Luckily since then, subways have added cell service and Wifi. If those things had been available in Year 2 my commute would have been a little less depressing 🙂 . Anyway, my new agency (Company 3) was downtown so we had a lot of options for walkable apartments in the area.

When I showed our wish list to brokers they said that for our budget (around $3,000/month total), we would have to get a studio to meet this criteria because 1 bedrooms were in the $4K+ range. And this was in 2014…I don’t want to look up how much that’s increased 🙂 . So after weeks of looking at lackluster offerings, we had a full day of viewings scheduled with a broker that we really liked.

He first showed us an apartment in the Financial District with a view of the Hudson and the fucking Statue Of Liberty! It also had a roof deck and was by the 1 train. We were blown away by the natural light and the view. We wanted that apartment 🙂 .

Unfortunately, it was a weekend and the banks near us in the financial district were closed, so we had to go further to find a bank to give us a fancy cashier’s check to show we had the money to put down for the apartment deposit.

We finally got the cashier’s check, returned to the leasing office and were told that a couple RIGHT IN FRONT OF US had taken the apartment. I was pretty disappointed, but that’s how ridiculous Manhattan real estate can be – even when you’re renting. So then we went to the final viewing of the day with our broker and I learned why the universe didn’t give us that apartment 🙂 .

This new place we saw was in a gorgeous building across from the Brooklyn Bridge and also in the Financial District. Instead of being by one train, it was by a huge hub that could get to anywhere easily (Fulton St Station for you locals 😉 ). The building had a gym, a game room as well as a roof deck, and this one was gorgeous with 360 views of the Bridge, the Freedom Tower, the Empire State Building, downtown Brooklyn and all of uptown Manhattan. It was a lovely place that was better located than the last one with a better roof and a newer building.

We leapt at the chance to rent the apartment and didn’t make the same mistake we had earlier in the day – we went straight to the leasing office and signed for our new apartment without even having a new check (we agreed to do that the next day when the banks opened).

We had found a place that met all of our criteria: a studio for $2,675/month total that was walking distance to my new job, had amazing outdoor space and was in a new building. So we left our musical shoebox apartment when the lease was up, and I vowed to never have a roommate (besides my partner 😉 ) again. Shit was looking up!

But of course…that good luck couldn’t last forever 🙂 . We had moved into our new place and I was loving it, but I had been working at Company 3 for almost three weeks and had yet to meet the client for the account I was supposed to be running. And obviously, that’s super sketchy 🙂 . I had been loving walking from our new place to my office every day and even came home some days to cook myself lunch, but in the back of my mind I knew something was wrong.

Well, my instincts were correct. On that third week, I was taken aside and told that despite the client signing off on hiring me, they had decided to leave the agency. The client I had been hired for was gone and as a result, I was being laid off…after getting an apartment where I could specifically walk to this job.

I called my partner to give him the news and he took it well. I did not 🙂 . After getting this expensive apartment, I was out of a job again and this time it was not when I wanted to be. I was disheartened and decided to take the summer off from job searching.

On the life front, my partner and I were doing surprisingly well living in a small studio together. I originally semi-joked that us living together in an NYC studio would inevitably lead to our break up, but it didn’t. We were completely fine in the small space and we rarely even used the additional chill out spots and amenities offered by the building to get some alone time. Shock of shocks 🙂 .

Anyway, after a few months of fun, I decided to get back into the job search – slowly. I didn’t want to stumble into a strange situation again and I had enough of an emergency fund that I didn’t need to take the first thing offered to me to pay my rent.

So I sent a few resumes around and an email to a networking contact basically just saying “Can you believe this shit?!” about what happened at Company 3, and she responded with something shocking “Want to come work at my agency?”…I didn’t know it could be that easy. I guess so if you’re high up enough – who knew?!

Anyway, as I mentioned, I was in no rush and this also seemed like some unofficial under-the-table dealings, so I literally didn’t care about negotiations for this position. I didn’t care what they thought or if I would be offered a job and that was a first for me 🙂 . My contact connected me with HR at this new agency and they explained that they had a contract position open basically for what I did at Company 2 for a maximum salary of $52,000.

I countered that I was looking for $65,000 (what I made at Company 3) and also would only take the contract position if we changed my title so it didn’t look like I’d lost my last title promotion (despite working there 3 weeks 😉 ) and IT FUCKING WORKED!!!

I negotiated a 25% salary increase over their maximum amount like it was nothing! Not giving a fuck really does help in life. I’ve written multiple posts about the power of DGAF, but this was my first taste of it and it was amazing. Anyway, after those negotiations, I interviewed and got the job 🙂 .

Unfortunately, the office wasn’t within easy walking distance, but luckily it was a 15 minute straight shot on one train, which wasn’t bad. This new agency had an amazing space with lots of light (I slowly learned throughout my career that the amount of light I can get while toiling away on my computer for 10-12 hours a day matters a lot for my mood 🙂 ), and some lovely people. In fact, of any company I’ve ever worked for, I made the most friends there, at Company 4. I even hung out with two of my ex-colleagues from that agency a few months ago.

Things were going well, which is of course the moment when an upset happens 🙂 . My old boss from Company 3 (the one I was with for 3 weeks…) reached out saying she had a new client and wanted to hire me back (aww that’s nice 🙂 ). However, I was still wary of a company that could do such shady things in the first place.

So instead of accepting, I casually mentioned to the woman who hired me at Company 4 that Company 3 wanted me back and that I was thinking about it since Company 4 had me under a contract position that would expire in a few months. Well, a few hours later, I had a full-time job offer from Company 4 that kept my $65,000 salary, added benefits, solidified my promotion title and added responsibilities to have my workload align with my new title. It pays to play the game 🙂 .

Outside of work, this is the point when my partner introduced me to the idea of FIRE (financial independence, retire early) and I was…resistant to the idea (to put it lightly 😉 ). On a Greyhound bus from Manhattan to Upstate NY, he showed me the math behind early retirement.

Sadly, I wasn’t very open to the idea. I didn’t know if I wanted to retire early. I incorrectly thought I would have to give up luxuries that I enjoyed to do it and I wasn’t fully convinced retiring super early could even work. Further, My Mom retired at 55 after not investing in stocks until she was 40. For that reason, retiring by 55 was my general goal and it seemed so far away I didn’t feel the need to think about it in my 20s. I was already saving a little in my 401k and had an emergency fund – wasn’t that enough?!

In addition to not seeing a reason to speed up my timeline from retiring at 55 to retiring in my 30s, I also thought that the reason I was generally unhappy working was simply because I hadn’t found that “Dream Job” everyone had talked about. I thought it must be out there and that when I found it, I would be totally content working for another 40 years. So I put aside that silly sounding FIRE idea – for years 🙂 . I had a good job, a nice living situation and for the first time in my adult life, I felt like I was on the right track.

Well, of course, that good job of mine was about to go bye-bye 🙂 . A few months after I became a full-time employee, my job encountered two major issues. One was that a client I absolutely loved and worked well with was replaced by a man (I point this out because it was an all woman team until that point). And this dude frankly could not do his job.

It was a particularly weird situation because his colleagues all around him bent over backwards to make it look like that was not the case. He missed deadlines, ignored our calls, and generally had no idea what was going on while his coworkers tried to hide these facts and pick up the slack while making him feel like he was doing a great job. It was so strange 🙂 . And just like that, working on my account went from enjoyable to torturous.

The other major issue was that the culture had changed within our agency. Morale was down (I would later learn this was because people were being way underpaid and overworked…), the higher ups were acting weirdly shady and my teammates started working against each other instead of with each other.

It was a really weird culture change that added another element of suck to a situation that was becoming less and less ideal. As I’ve said before, nothing lasts forever and even good situations inevitably change since “Change is the only constant” (which I stole from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus).

So at this time, I was reaching an emotional turning point. During previous years of my career when I was unhappy I would have tried to escape that feeling through control of my body or environment. And some things worked, such as finding a less hectic living situation and getting more sleep, while others obviously didn’t, such as starving myself skinny or exercising 8 hours a day.

But now I had continued to climb the corporate ladder, I had job hopped multiple times, and I was finally making enough money that surviving in NYC wasn’t always at the forefront of my mind and yet…I still wasn’t happy. So I latched onto this “Dream Job” idea – that must be what I was missing, that Unicorn position! That was the only hole in my new, sweet life and the only source of major unhappiness I could pinpoint.

So I once again started looking for a job exit plan, but this time, I started doing so internally. I volunteered for everything I could get my hands on – a pro-bono project managing a random new baby pajama brand (yes really), helping a medical device company and befriending a new executive that was brought in to advise on my main account.

I grew some balls and for the first time I felt empowered to speak up and say that I didn’t want to keep working with this garbage client – I wanted to try something different. And I wasn’t going to quit to force this change. I was going to ask to move within the agency. I came to this decision when I was about to board my first cruise ever.

I drafted a long email to my head boss, the one that hired me, explaining my position and that I would like to try something new within the agency. I had my Mom read the email many times to make sure it balanced having a firm, but grateful tone. And after tweaking the wording a million times, I finally pressed send and set sail on the open sea.

So the future of my career was a bit in limbo, but I had an apartment I liked and enough money to enjoy living in NYC. I had a plan to fix my career and no money worries about doing so. Things were looking up!

Below is where I netted out money-wise that year. I’m excited to share that we finally have some detail for these numbers! This is the point when I started actually tracking where my money was going and writing about it on this blog so get excited for more links that include detailed breakdowns in these posts:

Salary: $65,000

Spending: $28,365.52

Net Worth: $53,352

401K
Contributions (2011-2014): $22,533.99
Gains: $2,002.73

IRA
Contributions: $11,000
Gains: $456.63

Emergency Fund Cash
$17,358.68

So what do you think will happen next? Will Young Purple be able to move within her company? Will she have to find another job? Will she be lost at sea and eaten by the Kraken? Find out next time 😉 . 

Here’s the next post in this series: $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 4 “Catching A Unicorn“