$5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 8 “The Boring Part”

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”
6. $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 6 “Searching for Bigfoot”
7. $5K to Retirement In 9 Years: Year 7 “The Goldilocks Zone”

Year 8

Riveting title right 🙂 ? Well, I don’t want to lie to y’all and I think it properly represents what’s going on here. I guess I could count myself as lucky since I have usually heard about “the boring middle” of a goal. I didn’t have a boring middle – there was too much drama and change for that 😉 . Instead I had a bit of a boring second to last year of my journey.

On one hand I am very grateful for that because constant change and drama is exhausting 🙂 , but a drama-free year can also be a boring read. However, I think it’s important to talk about because it’s a pervasive part of the journey.

At one point it will get boring after you have dove in, read everything you can and come up with a bulletproof plan. Before the final countdown, there is a section where everything is on autopilot and you just have to…live your life 🙂 while your money keeps piling up.

I continued my trend from last year of trying to make my day-to-day life while I was working, as close to my dream retirement life as I could. I continued to explore new hobbies and generally just live my life as much as possible.

I tested out my retirement schedule on a vacation to Costa Rica and tried to find ways to stay motivated on this journey (in a word: Spreadsheets!) I also reflected on if this journey has been a sacrifice (Spoiler: Nope!) and the real reason I want to retire early (Warning: it’s a morbid one).

Financially, I started dabbling in fun little gamified apps to make a little extra cash while having fun, went to an annuity dinner to live tweet the experience, and reflected on my decision to own 100% stocks. I also did a deep dive on how I spent $125/month on groceries and how I saved 85% on a cavity filling.

Meanwhile, my job was becoming a bit of a turbulent monster 🙂 . It was nothing like I had experienced at my previous jobs, but it was more than I was used to at this company. Basically what happened is I was put on my first long-term, large project with other people since starting this job in Year 6.

Previously I had been very clear with my boss that I prefer to work alone and that I think larger teams lead to wasted time and work 🙂 . Well in this case, he said he needed my expertise and that there wasn’t another project in the wings (…I would happily take a paid vacation if you’re asking 😉 ).

Anyway, not only was it a large group project, but a long-term one. Another situation I do not prefer – I like projects that last 1-3 months at the most so I can keep moving on, learning and not get bored like I have in my previous jobs. Well this was going to be a year-long project. Blerg!

I tried my best to find any positives I could in this situation and sadly…I couldn’t. Having a larger team meant that most of my time was spent in meetings coordinating what we were GOING to do – and not actually doing it 🙂 . The actual work was done after hours, the only time I wasn’t in meetings. I was getting flashbacks to my ad agency days.

One of the reasons I loved this new marketing career of mine was that each individual person was an ad agency in our own right – no one was in a box and I didn’t have to wait for another person in some other role for me to complete my job. I just did it all 🙂 .

Well now I was back to bureaucratic hell. Days spent in meetings talking about other meetings, emailing about emails to other people. Just meta bullshit. I was here to actually get things done people! My frustration came to a head a few months into the project, which led me to write this post: Balancing Overthinking And Apathy At Work.

I was seeking help from y’all to try and find a way to get through this situation and both kick ass at my job and not let it negatively affect my mental health. That time in my work life also made me start thinking about how jobs suck because they’re never ending group projects and consider if there are downsides to working from home.

I let my growing frustration at my job out on this very blog 🙂 . Writing these posts helped me clarify my thoughts and understand my emotions. In addition to all that, this was a big year for the blog. I celebrated a year of public blogging, recorded my first podcast interview, decided if I should reveal my identity and even won an award!

This blog became a wonderful sanctuary from the madness that my job was becoming with this new project. Instead of venting to coworkers or my partner, I asked y’all about the things I was experiencing and got a whole range of responses based on your varied experiences, which I really appreciated (and still do to this day)! Y’all helped me get through ‘the boring part’ 🙂 .

Also during this year, in addition to taking a week-long vacation to Costa Rica, I spent several months in total, working from outside our Seattle apartment. We went to three waterfront Airbnb retreats with my Mom for a week at a time, and I even walked a half marathon on one of those islands (….we barely made it back before they closed the finish line, but that’s not the point 😉 ).

I also finally got off that horrible project! And all it took was asking my boss for a LinkedIn recommendation (after I had expressed interest in leaving the project and he did nothing about it…I guess the hint that I might be looking for another job was enough to change his mind 😉 ).

I've been trying to get off a horrible project for 6 months without success. Then I asked my boss for a LinkedIn recommendation…less than a week later I'm off the project… pic.twitter.com/dR668dMILz

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) May 3, 2019

I also started to get serious about my countdown to retirement and wrote monthly updates about what was going on in my life and how I was feeling, which you can find here:

1. 17 Months To Retirement: Apartment Drama
2. 16 Months To Retirement: Discovering Cracks In My Favorite Company
3. 15 Months To Retirement: Exploring The Many Different Types Of Stress
4. 14 Months To Retirement: Battling The Impatience Beast
5. 13 Months To Retirement: Prioritizing Loved Ones
6. 12 Months To Retirement: Recognition and Combating Self-Doubt
7. Should I Lock Myself Into Quitting My Job In 11 Months?
8. It’s Official! I’m Quitting My Job In 10 Months. Here’s The Plan!
9. 9 Months To Retirement: I’ve Achieved DGAF Status

The TL;DR version of the above links is that my company continued to deteriorate by promoting toxic colleagues, I experienced impatience with this retirement goal and found ways to distract myself from it.

I also had to decide if I was going to go forward with my original plan of pulling the trigger in October 2020 in order to book my retirement victory lap trip to Australia and New Zealand. As of 2019, I decided to go for it…but I bet you know the metaphorical fly in the ointment that’s coming in March 2020 🙂 .

Anyway, at the end of 2019 here’s where I stood financially:

Salary: $110,034

Spending: $17,896

Net Worth: $448,230

So what do you think will happen next? Will Young Purple collapse from boredom 😉 ? Will some Black Swan event sweep the globe and change our way of life as we know it? Who can say… Tune in next time to see what happens 🙂 . 

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