$5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 4 “Catching A Unicorn”

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

We’ve finally reached the point in this story when I started writing this very blog so I’ll be including links to some of those posts to extrapolate on the things I mention here in case you want more information. Please note that like all skills, I improved my writing with time…a lot of time 🙂 – so basically don’t judge me for how not awesome my early posts were. It’s a learning process 😉 . Now, let’s get into it!

YEAR 4

When we were finally able to access the internet after completing my first (and last 🙂 ) cruise, I had a response in my inbox about my future at my current company. My head boss said she was willing to look into my request and see who could be hired to fill my role so I could move to another one, but that she was giving no guarantees. And I thought that was fair 🙂 .

If they could find a replacement for my role and I found a position that turned out to not be ideal I knew that I once again had an emergency fund and that I’d never had a problem finding a new job before…for a lot more money to boot 😉 . I had a backup plan!

So I returned to work. My head boss was looking for a replacement and I mentioned that I had been getting to know a new executive that was brought into the agency to give her expertise on many things, including my main account. She rolled in and was a breath of fresh air. She didn’t talk bullshit and was just “real” when explaining the problems within a company. No jargon or platitudes. Just truth. She struck a cord with me.

In one of our many casual talks she told me that the light was going out of my eyes more and more every time I saw her…which prompted one of my rare honest moments at a job. I told her that was accurate and why. The challenges I had in my new client situation were obviously less than ideal.

And in this moment of candidness, she told me about a project she was working on. She wanted to start a mini-agency within our company that focused on a specific industry niche…and my eyes widened. I wanted to do that! I wanted to build something new with this badass woman!

So we hatched a plan to get me on her new project and it was such annoying political theater (I am now convinced all jobs are). There were a lot of backroom dealings that culminated in her being like “Purple and [Head Boss], can you come into this room for a second?”

Previously head boss had said things like “Oh I think Purple would want X” to this new Badass woman, which she relayed to me and I confirmed were untrue statements. So said Badass just brought me into the room with the head boss and asked in front of her what I wanted. I said that I wanted to work with The Badass – full stop. We avoided playing telephone 🙂 and I added the Badass’ project to my workload while my head boss started looking for my replacement.

Semi-accidentally, these work changes aligned with a trip I took to Europe. Just in case my plans didn’t work out and I had to quit I wanted to use every minute of my paid leave – all 2 weeks of it (thanks America 🙂 ). I was going to hang out with my European friends that I had met while living in Italy during my Junior year of college. I was going to visit England, Scotland, Austria, Sweden and Norway – and we succeeded…barely (but that’s a story for another time 🙂 ). It was amazing to see my friends again (shockingly we’re still friends to this day), and to see countries that I hadn’t visited before (Austria, Sweden and Norway).

When I returned, I was surprised to discover: They had found my replacement! So I trained her and then moved to this new position, where I was helping The Badass build something completely new. Up until this point, I had been cultivating a list of what my dream job would include and this one hit ALL of my criteria. That list included:

• Regular hours – After taking the position I actually had time to think of more than just working myself to the bone. I started having time to contemplate what makes me happy…
• Autonomy – I was treated like an adult that did not need to be babysat and could make my own choices…Wow 🙂
• A Great Boss – “The Badass” title was not a ruse. She’s an amazing boss and human and we’re still friends today….
• No Clients – Yes I know this is a weird request for someone in client service, but I realized that with my seriously introverted tendencies (and possible anxiety disorder…) that clients were my least favorite part of my job and that I would enjoy my job more without them
• No Bullshit – The Badass definitely delivered on this. She was a straight talker when I met her and that did not change at all once I started working for her. She didn’t believe in face-time or kissing ass – just doing your job well, which I’m always down for!

So I settled into what I discovered was my Unicorn Job and it was the best job I’ve ever had – by far! I loved it. I had a purpose, had eliminated all the negatives of my previous job and after a few months was shocked to discover: It still wasn’t enough.

I still didn’t want to get up and fight my way onto the subway every morning for 40 years. My hypothesis was incorrect. This was the most perfect job I could imagine for myself and it still wasn’t enough to make me want to work for decades like I had predicted. I had to find another path to happiness.

I started trying to remember when I was last happy and was shocked to realize it was when I was really, really young and in Montessori school. Before there was pressure to get the best high school grades to get into a ‘good’ college, before the self-imposed pressure to be the best of the best in college and before the adulthood pressure to ‘make it’ (whatever any of that meant). And the deeper I dug into these thoughts the more I realized…no one knows what the fuck this stuff means!

These last few years, as I connected with the people I knew in college or high school, they explained what they had been up to and I had no idea what they were talking about. I’m sure it was all very impressive and that they had worked really hard to achieve it, but I literally COULD NOT TELL that was the case. And that helped me realize…this is all bullshit. The corporate world is bullshit.

None of it matters – the titles, the corner offices I once coveted, the supposed ‘power’ people hold while also having to spend their evenings and weekends in an office instead of with their loved ones, and their vacations attached to their phones. FUCK all of it!

I came to the surprising realization that it makes absolutely no sense. I had bought into this mirage that your work is your purpose in life and your identity and that that is a good thing. However, I have since discovered that’s basically propaganda (Check out the awesome books Laziness Does Not Exist and Work Won’t Love You Back to learn more about that if you’d like.)

So I decided to look elsewhere for happiness. I had looked for it at work and came up empty even while riding a (supposedly magical) Unicorn. I made a two pronged plan of escape. The first prong involved going up to my partner with my (imaginary) tail between my legs and asking “What was that FIRE thing you mentioned again?”

Luckily, he didn’t gloat too much 🙂 . He re-sent me the blogs and links he had given me two years ago, but instead of ignoring them, I dove in with an open mind. I read ravenously and in about a month, consumed everything FIRE/retirement/investing related that I could get my hands on. And I came up with a plan!

I read and then re-read JL Collins’ Stock Series (which he’s since made into the book The Simple Path To Wealth) until I understood investing and felt comfortable doing it myself (DIY baby!). I even looked over the tax code to try and understand how things like capital gains are taxed differently and to make sure I was accounting for paying them in my financial plan.

This OG plan was based on my income and spending at the time and showed that I could retire in 10 years at the age of 35. That’s way sooner than 55 and sounded doable 🙂 . In order to keep myself on track and accountable, I started writing this very blog on January 1, 2015. The blog was private at that time so it was basically an online journal. However, all those posts are currently live on this site (I apologize again in advance for their quality 😉 ).

The second prong of the plan was inspired by a post the Mad FIentist wrote called Happiness Through Subtraction. It inspired me to live my life as close to how I wanted to in retirement NOW – to not wait to live the life I want. To that end I started traveling like a fiend and using all my vacation time. I went to Fiji with my Mom and we had a lovely time in Business Class. Hilariously a week after we returned, I learned about travel hacking and that I could have gotten that flight for free instead of thousands of dollars – oh well 🙂 .

I then used my new travel hacking knowledge to get an $11.26 flight home to Atlanta to see my Mom later in the year. That’s almost the amount I paid to get to airport via public transit in NYC. I also went on a long road trip and drove from San Francisco to San Diego on the gorgeous Route 1 while eating everything along the way. I had a lovely time 🙂 .

While I was loving my new job and going on all these trips, my partner and I started seriously discussing leaving NYC. The rent was astronomical and I knew that Manhattan was not where I wanted to be longterm. I found the city draining to just exist in and constantly felt like because I was spending all this money on rent that I should be out DOING something instead of collapsing face first on the bed like I had after every work day over the last few years.

My energy levels were way higher with my current unicorn job, but I still didn’t feel like I did enough in the city to justify my high rent. I saw NYC as a great place to visit, but not somewhere I wanted to keep living. So my partner and I came up with a spreadsheet to help rank where we should move next: 

Pure nerdery! At this time all the cities above were basically neck and neck…until I went to Seattle for the first time to visit that receptionist turned recruiter friend. And on that trip I fell in love with Seattle! I basically came back begging that that’s where we would move and shockingly my partner agreed 🙂 . He’d never even been to the west coast besides San Diego, which is the polar opposite of Seattle. However, we had decided. It was time to move!

When our lease was up a few months later, we would move to Seattle. Now I just had to tell my boss at the best job I’d ever had, that I was leaving – YIKES! Originally I was going to give 3 months notice (since it was just her and me running this new company), but one morning in the elevator, she randomly mentioned Seattle (and she never had before).

I took it as a sign and pulled her aside 4 months before I was planning to leave. (TMI WARNING) I was so nervous, I’d thrown up the night before thinking about this possible interaction, but after I told her I was leaving, she just walked around the conference table and hugged me. And in that moment, I knew I’d made the right choice. It was going to be scary, but worth it.

So that’s it! We’re all set to move to Seattle and I’ve given notice at my job once again, but am finally on my way to pursuing financial independence. Let’s see where my money shook out:

Salary: $68,000

Spending: $29,344.92

Net Worth: $89,450

So what’s going to happen next? Will Young Purple and her partner find peace and prosperity in Seattle? Will she find a new job? Will she be eaten by Bigfoot? Tune in next time to find out 😉 . 

Here’s the next post in this series: $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 5 “A Seattle Bait & Switch“