$5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 6 “Searching for Bigfoot”

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

Year 6

So after enjoying funemployment, I started getting serious about looking for another job…and I was finding it difficult. I suspect this was because for the first time, I was asking for a six figure salary and I also didn’t have much of a network in Seattle outside of the people at my old job since we had moved out west only a year before.

Speaking of the people at my old job though, I was interested to hear that after I was laid off, basically everything fell apart at that company. When the lay off fog had cleared, the remaining employees were transferred (without their permission) to work for another ad agency…that used to be our competitor…I’d never heard of that shit before 🙂 . This new company apparently had troubles of their own and was sold to another company shortly after.

In my life, I came close to getting a new job…several times. I had a few interviews, one company actually agreed to my salary requirements and were talking to me about a promotion. They told me that they wanted to hire me and asked me to do a presentation for them as a final hiring formality…and then they ghosted me 🙂 .

To wrap this up here, I’ll give you a little glimpse into the future – it turns out that the next company to hire me (Company 6) included several people that used to work at the company that ghosted me, including one of the heads of Company 6. She worked at that ghosting company for 10 years and called the CEO “Voldemort” – to my face, during our first interaction, in an interview with Company 6. Sounds like a bullet dodged to me 🙂 .

• Dodging Bullets: Work Edition

However, I did not know all this at the time. Instead I was shocked and devastated that another company had wasted so much of my time, said they would hire me and then would not even respond to an email. But I picked myself up and kept trucking and then…THE SAME THING HAPPENED AGAIN.

I had interviews with a company that met my salary requirements, was told they wanted to hire me after I completed their interview loop and then instead of ghosting, I got an email saying “Actually we’re going in another direction” to which I replied asking what in the world happened (in a nice way) and never heard from them again. At this point I was feeling a bit down.

In addition to this job search drama, the days were getting shorter and darker (hello winter my old friend…). After weeks of multiple rounds of interviews with several companies, which caused me to have at least one interview every day, I had either been rejected from or ghosted by all of them.

I went from thinking I was going to be hired multiple times to having no prospects or interviews on the horizon. I felt a bit defeated. It had always been a fairly easy process for me to get jobs in the past, but doubt started to drip into my consciousness: Was I not good enough? Was I asking for too much money? Was I not cut out for the Seattle job market?

Instead of wallowing in these negative thoughts, I talked to a few friends about it and they helped pick me up emotionally, which I’m forever grateful for. During one of those discussions, a friend mentioned that they actually had to stop interviewing for an interesting position and thought it would be a great fit for me. She suggested that I take her place in the interview process and emailed the person she had been interviewing with to introduce me. The interviewer responded and set up an interview with me the next day.

Hilariously this was a company I had applied to through traditional means and heard nothing from 🙂 . Once again, who you know beats what you know – ridiculous and silly, but true in this industry. Anyway, I had that interview and really liked the guy who interviewed me (Spoiler: He would later become my awesome boss at my last job ever 😉 ).

I interviewed with the other leaders of the company a few days after talking to him and met with the client a few days later (after having an adventure on the bus to get there 🙂 ). And then barely a week later, I was sent a job offer – for $103,000 🙂 . I asked questions about the company benefits and then ecstatically signed the offer.

I was very excited about this offer for two reasons. The first was that this would be my first job that wasn’t in an ad agency! I had been trying to break out of that mold, but it’s hard when that’s all that your resume contains (outside of that dream job I had in NYC). This new position was in general marketing instead of advertising and treated the clients more like partners than customers.

The second reason I was excited was because this company was basically all remote! They also had an office at a WeWork if that was my preference (it was not 🙂 ). I would get to work from home for the first time, which seemed like it would fit my introverted personality a lot better than being in an office. So I dove into this new role and I LOOOOOOOVED it 🙂 !

As I mentioned, at this point I was writing this very blog (though it was private and unsearchable online) so I wrote a whole slew of posts about my new position. To sum it all up, at this point I loved my new job because of the work from home situation, my manager and my company. This was the first time I didn’t have Sunday Blues since starting my career and that knot that I constantly felt in my chest (aka stress) had started to unravel.

• I Love My New Job
• No Sunday Blues
• Unraveling The Knot

I felt like I had a company filled with genuinely kind people and a boss who actually cared about my wellbeing. This assumption about my boss was put to the test when my client started going off the deep end. Apparently she was known around the office as a nightmare 🙂 . When I was interviewed, I was told she was “difficult,” which didn’t phase me because literally all of my clients up to that point could be described the same way. However, she was vague and demanding in a way I hadn’t encountered before.

I would check with her every Monday to try and get ahead of the work we would have and properly plan my time for the week. She would always say there’s nothing coming up and then something would pop up randomly that she needed that very instant! She would email me throughout the night and on weekends and text if she didn’t get an immediate response – even if I was asleep (which is normal at midnight! Do I need to point this out?!).

I would provide exactly what she asked for and she would ignore that email, not even say thank you and instead ask where this other thing she never mentioned was. She always made me feel like a failure no matter what I did or how hard I worked – even though I was delivering everything we agreed upon and always within the wild timeline allotted.

After working with her for 8 months, I started feeling my old stress indicators within my body. I was jumpy. I got a fear response every time I received a phone or email notification. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was drinking heavily on the weekends to try and forget what the next week would bring. All of this was familiar. I had felt all of these things in Manhattan. And one of the reasons I had moved to Seattle was to get away from the kind of toxic work environment that is more or less accepted in NYC.

• Day In The Life Of A Worker Bee

So after enduring this for almost a year, I sat my boss down and told him that this wasn’t working for me. Luckily our contract with this client was also winding down and I said that I would prefer to not work with her again if it was renewed. He told me that employee health is of “tantamount importance” and that we will fire any client who jeopardized that. I asked if we could really fire her because she was friends with our CEO. He said “Yes – absolutely.” He promised we would not be renewing her contract based on her behavior.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. Even after my boss got the CEO to agree to not renew her contract, that CEO spoke with this client alone and agreed to do more work – half a million dollars of work. He went back on his word because of dollar signs. I felt a little betrayed, but told myself to wait and see what happened. Even if none of this changed anything I would have tried. I would have spoken up for myself.

After the CEO went rogue, my boss and I got on the phone and he explained the new project and how it would be different. I told him that while it sounded a little different, I still did not want to work with her. When he asked why, I gave him all the reasons based on her behavior (which a different project won’t change!)

He tried telling me that she appeared to be a changed woman (riiiight….) and that this should be different. I stood my ground and said that while I hope that’s true, I would prefer not to work directly with her. He asked if I would be willing to still do the work, but not interact with her. I conceded to that.

The work was actually interesting and helped me grow – it was just the actual client that was the issue. So I waited to see what being behind the scenes actually meant. Would I still have to deal with her wild requests or would that be tempered by a buffer person and a more planned out deliverable list? Would I still have to deal with her cryptic emails and erratic feedback? I waited to see.

It turns out the answer to all of that was no. My boss gave the entire project to someone else instead. I offered my background knowledge to her and the new employee went off on her own. I had no interaction with my old client and no responsibilities on the project. I got exactly what I wanted and all I had to do was be honest and finally have a boss who listened. What a novel concept 🙂 .

• A Boss Who Listens

At the same time all of this work drama was happening, my money was on autopilot. I had maxed my 401K in 4 months (BALLER!) and started trying to reframe my thoughts on hoarding money by digging into the weird financial brackets within the US (apparently we became Upper Middle Class at this time) and ruminating on my history of thoughts on money.

I also had several strange back and forth thoughts about bonus’ and our human brain’s weird reactions to finances. This is a saga I detailed in 2017 as it was happening. Basically, I discovered that what I thought was a discretionary bonus in my contract was actually guaranteed and I was surprised with my lack of excitement after discovering this fact.

Then I actually received the bonus and it was even bigger than I anticipated, which excited me. And THEN I wasn’t happy with a different bonus I got even though a bonus literally means the company thought I was going above and beyond my job description – AKA human brains are weird 🙂 .

Other than my brain’s dumb reactions, I had a brief foray into the world of Bank Bonuses when I made $500 for 10 Minutes of Work and then never did that again 🙂 . During all this financial dabbling and exploration, my net worth continued to grow from $150,000 on my 10,000th day of life (any Howl’s Moving Castle fans out there? 😉 ) to $175,000 to my 2017 goal of $200,000. You can check out those links to see how I felt at the time about each milestone, but if you want a one word summary of my feelings it would be: Disbelief 🙂 .

While my net worth was on a rampage, my emotions surrounding early retirement vacillated along with my work drama. I went from declaring I was extending my retirement timeline to 2022 because I didn’t hate my job for once, to realizing that even if I don’t invest another dime, that early retirement was inevitable and then reflecting on how my thoughts have changed about retirement in the last 5 years (complete with an embarrassing email I sent my Mom denouncing the idea in 2012).

On the home front, my apartment situation was still going well even though I was working from home 99% of the time. I was also making more friends and overall had more energy to hang with them because I wasn’t wasting time getting ready, pre-packing lunch, and commuting to a job (who knew that took so much out of me?!)

I also started eating keto since it was so easy while cooking from home and ended up healthily losing 50lbs doing so. I also started doing new experiments with my spending, such as attempting an uber frugal month, realizing I didn’t love going out like I used to (*cough* old much? *cough*), trying the frugal mini-travel activity of camping and buying a Kindle for 50% off (which was a horrible idea) 🙂 .

It was a busy year, but by the end, I had moved away from a difficult client to the great position I would (SPOILER ALERT) have for the next 3 years. On the home front everything was great – I loved working from home, my partner and I were doing well in Seattle and we were making friends and exploring our new environment. Retirement was on autopilot and at that point inevitable. Now it was just a waiting game 🙂 .

After that wild year here’s where I netted out money wise:

Salary: $103,037

Spending: $18,436.60

Net Worth: $234,822

So what will happen next? Will Young Purple’s life continue to be sunshine and rainbows or will a dark cloud settle over Seattle? Tune in next time to find out 😉

Here’s the next post in this series: $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 7 “The Goldilocks Zone”