$5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 5 “A Seattle Bait & Switch”

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

Year 5

So the countdown to leaving NYC, my job and our awesome apartment, had begun! I was curious how difficult it would be to get a job across the country in a city where I had no connections (since I’ve gotten most of my jobs through networking), and it was indeed difficult. Companies seemed to not want to interview me as soon as I said I wasn’t in the area. I get that meeting face to face can be key to an interview, but video chat exists people 🙂 !

Anyway, since I had no network to rely on, I was applying to places through job postings AKA the old fashioned way 😉 and shockingly, for the first time in my career, I got a reply from applying to a job through an online portal! They were totally understanding that I hadn’t moved to Seattle yet and set up a series of interviews over video chat and mentioned that they would fly me out for a final interview if all went well.

So I did this gauntlet of interviews – one after the other. They took about 3 hours total. Since we lived in a studio, I had to kick my partner out of our space for that time – luckily we lived near a lot of cool stuff so he wasn’t bored sitting on our stoop or anything 🙂 . When this interview marathon finished, I was shocked again because: They hired me over Skype!!!

So one thing was a done deal at least: I had a job when I got to Seattle and it was at the same level I had before, but I negotiated them up to paying me $85,000 a year!! I started doing calculations and realized that between this salary increase and the lower cost of living in Seattle, that I might be able to cut my retirement timeline from 10 years…to 5!

• Cutting 10 Years to 5

So my future job was all worked out! Now I bet you’re wondering what was happening during the last months at my current job – you know that dream job I was literally worried sick to give up? Well, that job ceased to exist of course 🙂 . The high level shadiness I mentioned in my previous post had unfortunately bled into our little work paradise.

My badass boss was asked to take over our entire ad agency and become The President. I say asked, but it wasn’t really a request – it was a demand. She had been very clear with me and everyone else that she did not want to run another agency, but they needed her and she decided to step up in that moment (Spoiler: She quit that horrible situation less than a year later).

Obviously she can’t do two jobs at once, so the mini-agency we were building within this company was pushed to the way-side. If I hadn’t given my notice, I likely would have been laid off like many people were around me. Wow. Bullet dodged with another lovely reminder that nothing lasts forever.

• Why Pursue Financial Independence? Because Nothing Lasts Forever

So my previous company was crumbling around me and also hilariously had decided to move a 10 minute walk from my apartment one month before I left – typical 🙂 .

Anyway, while the office moved I was busy finding low cost ways to move across the country. We got rid of a lot of our stuff, packed up everything else and shipped it to Seattle (address TBD).

• How We Moved Across The Country For $3,045

We had to find an apartment before telling the moving truck where to go after it arrived on the opposite coast. The race was on! We did all of the above, had several goodbye parties with our friends and said Ciao to the city we’d called home for all of our adult lives.

Once again, random friendships prove to be awesome 🙂 . That same receptionist turned recruiter friend that I visited on my OG trip to Seattle, asked us to stay with her for a week while we found our own place. She picked us up at the airport and she greeted us with a giant glittery banner welcoming us to Seattle. It was so sweet and warmed my heart 🙂 .

She then went above and beyond trying to help us find an apartment. We were driving all over the place looking at listings, but none of them were living up to what I was looking for. Luckily, after some sleuthing on my part, we found something promising that was walking distance to both our workplaces.

Because I am almost too punctual and neurotic, we arrived at the apartment viewing early – so early that they hadn’t opened the doors yet. So we wandered down the street and found a lovely Mexican restaurant (which would soon become our “Shaw’s Bar” of Seattle), ordered a margarita, got a text from the broker that they could open early for us, chugged said margarita and sprinted up the hill to the apartment (Heads up: Seattle is very hilly – like SF hilly. I had no idea and it was a brutal trek 🙂 ).

We got to see the apartment before anyone else and talk to the broker one-on-one. He casually mentioned that the unit above the one we were there to see was also available and asked if we wanted to see it. We said sure out of curiosity. The first apartment we saw was a ground floor unit with a lot of windows. The second apartment was the top floor of this small building with a view of Downtown, Mt. Rainier and The Space Needle.

I was entranced and I (worriedly) asked how much more this apartment was than the other one and the answer was: an extra $50/month….WHAT?!? We immediately said “We’ll take it!” and snatched up the apartment before anyone else had even seen it.

We rented this one bedroom for $1,597.75 total per month for the next 5 years. They raised the rent a little bit a few times including increasing it $5/month at one point to which we responded…why even bother 🙂 ? When we left in 2020 we were paying $1693.94/month. Not bad 🙂 .

So we had our apartment and a place to tell the movers to bring our stuff! We moved out of my friend’s guest room, moved our stuff into our new apartment, and started to settle into Seattle life. This new job, which I’ll call Company 5, told me I should take all the time I needed to settle into my new life, so I had a full week to get everything ready before starting my new job. Hearing something like that was unheard of in my NYC jobs, so I was curious to see if jobs in Seattle really were that different.

…and they are 🙂 . My new job was amazing. I didn’t know if it was Seattle people or culture or what, but the environment was WAY more relaxed and less high strung than NYC. People seemed super nice and the work was manageable (aka there wasn’t a lot of it compared to what I was used to, but what I was used to required constant late nights and this job only required occasional ones). My coworkers were lovely and similar to when I had my dream job, I didn’t really mind going to work.

I loved walking to work with my partner – he was working out of a co-working space a block away from my office so we would walk to and from work together. It was super cute 🙂 . We were getting settled in Seattle and I started making friends through work, so I was ready to turn my focus to my favorite new nerdy hobby: FINANCE!

I had been using the budget app YNAB for almost a year and was tracking my spending in Seattle to see how it compared to the months I had tracked in NYC. I suspected my costs would be lower without me doing anything, and that was exactly what happened 🙂 .

As you’ll see in the coming years, my costs dropped from about $35,000 in NYC to $18,000 in Seattle. My spending slowly decreased to that level after all the moving and travel costs were eliminated from my budget.

I made a few effortless changes, such as reducing my rent from $1,337.50 each a month for ½ a 400 sq ft studio to $846.97 for ½ a top floor, corner 700 sq ft 1 bedroom that was walking distance to work with gorgeous views and southwest facing windows. I also obviously found this new job that I loved where I made almost $20,000 more than I was making in NYC.

And then I did make some intentional changes. I changed my phone plan from a $90/month plan with AT&T to a $15/month Republic Wireless plan. I also taught myself how to travel hack and got my fancy Mom on board with it.

• Celebrating 5 Years With Republic Wireless: A Comprehensive Review

I travel hacked my way to free tickets across the country to go home for the holidays, as well as First Class seats to Vietnam and Thailand for me and Mom. We were living it up for basically free 🙂 . I also overcame my obsession with gadgets, expensive vacations and restaurants to maximize my happiness and hit a $100,000 net worth for the first time!

• How I Saved $27,007.38 with Travel Hacking in 2016
• $100,000 in Assets

So I’d been living it up and building a new life in Seattle for almost a year when inevitable change started sweeping through 🙂 . My job (once again) started getting a little weird. I became more aware of the politics, the dynamics and machinations of the higher ups, and watched my favorite people I worked with be replaced with others randomly. At the same time, I kept getting more and more work handed to me.

My workload finally became too NYC 24/7 for my liking, so I raised my hand asking for help and was met with silence wrapped in a “We’re all in this together! Be a positive person! Don’t be a whiner,” which sounded like some MLM-esque bullshit to me. It was also a serious red flag. I was once again a year into a job and it had changed so much that I couldn’t recognize it…So I quickly became over it 🙂 .

What I didn’t know until later was that the reason people were being weird and stressed and moving things around and giving me a lot more work, was because for the first time in a decade, the agency was on the verge of losing their main account – the one I worked on. The higher ups were panicking at the possibility and trying everything to prevent it. Well, in the end, despite their efforts: It didn’t work.

The agency’s main client moved the work we did to another agency (which has an even weirder story down the line that I’ll get back to if I can). And as a result, our agency had to let a lot of people go. And I was one of them 🙂 . This was the second time that a lay off aligned perfectly with me wanting to leave anyway. My boss had taken me aside and told me I was being let go and my reaction was literally to say “That’s cool.” to which she replied “No it’s NOT.”…Ok 🙂 ? Like damn lady, let’s get some levity in here 😉 .

So I left that meeting and went to HR where I was told I would receive one week of severance pay (cool!), but I soon discovered it had a huge catch. They slid a piece of paper across the table towards me and like everything I’m asked to sign – I read all of it.

It said that to receive a week of severance pay I had to sign a gag order and I could never say anything negative about Company 5, their holding company or anyone that has ever worked there – and if I did, Company 5 could sue me. My jaw dropped when I read it.

• Integrity > Money

I asked the HR head who was asking me to sign this if it could be edited. She said no so I told her I wouldn’t sign it. She looked surprised. Even though I was early on my FIRE journey I wasn’t about to sign my integrity away for a few thousand dollars. Also the thought that they would dangle money in front of someone who had just been laid off sickened me.

And it wasn’t even that I was planning to say anything particularly negative about the company. I was just going to tell the truth: the good and bad. But after that shit I told everyone who would listen to stay away from that company 🙂 .

Another weird part of this interaction was that I was friends with the other people in HR, asked about this gag order and they had no idea what I was talking about. Apparently it’s something only the head of HR knew about and dealt with. Super shady. Anyway, I’m extremely glad that I was in the position to say no to ‘free’ money and once again walk away if a situation was not to my liking. What a saga 🙂 .

So I moved across the country, found a wonderful job and then…that job went up in smoke at the perfect moment 🙂 . I may have been in a new city, but I already felt at home and was excited to take a few months off before jumping back into the rat race. I applied to a few new jobs each week, collected unemployment and ended up traveling all over the US visiting my friends for 4 glorious months. Let’s see where I netted out after all that:

Salary: $85,000

Spending: $22,518.67

Net Worth: $137,612

So Young Purple is once again funemployed. What kind of shenanigans will she get up to? Will she find another job or have to start working in the salt mines? Tune in next time to see what happens 😉 . 

Here’s the next post in this series: $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 6 “Searching for Bigfoot”