There’s one thing that’s going to take a while to get out of my head.
Beep.
Me robotically: “Thank you for calling….”
Multiply that by about 60 additional calls back to back all day, Monday to Friday. That’s enough beeping to give someone a complex. Not to mention having to spell out your complicated last name to each angry client who wants a record of who they spoke to.
In all seriousness, I’m extremely happy to announce that I quit my job and have left my position in the financial services industry and can now be a present face to our blog! I’m looking forward to working full-time on our business and side hustles while giving us the flexibility and freedom to live the life we want. John’s job is extremely flexible, so this is going to be an exciting experience for us.
Want an update? Check out this post: Replacing My Income In 2 Months
Table of Contents
Why I Wanted to Leave
There are many reasons why I quit my job- my coveted position in the financial services industry. The job itself was stressful, demanding, and mentally exhausting! The kind of job where you come home every day and don’t have the energy to do anything else but sit mindlessly on the couch watching tv. When I went into the role, I was excited to work with clients in an effort to impact their financial future.
However, I quickly realized that we were not treated with the respect that our college degrees, and Series 7 and 63 licenses deserved – by the clients or the company. We were encouraged to churn and burn. The number of calls we took was more important than the quality of them. We studied so hard to talk about finance and investing but weren’t afforded the time to do so.
Can you imagine having your bathroom breaks tracked? We were only allowed to take these breaks at certain times during the day. Our schedule was extremely micromanaged. Managers would check our adherence metrics to see what we were doing at each second of every day. If they found that we were not on a call for one reason or another, we were taken into a room and berated.
I’m sure you can imagine with this level of micromanagement that scheduling any flex time or time off was impossible. Time off around holidays was on a lottery basis, and if you called out on these days, you’d get two strikes. I wasted time every day commuting as well. We live about 25 minutes from this company, but it routinely took me an hour each way.
Additionally, the corporate life just wasn’t for me. As an introverted person, the focus on networking and appearances made me extremely anxious all the time. I was turned down for multiple promotions even though I had more experience than others, just because I wasn’t outgoing.
Not to mention, this was thrown in my face during weekly performance reviews. This was our manager’s designated time to tell us to take more calls, to get more involved, and in my case, to speak up and network more. Now, I was networking much more than I felt like I could handle. So, on many occasions, I had to tell my manager that I’ve always been the way I am and I’m not going to change.
Now some may say that I had to know what I was getting into when I accepted the job. That’s actually not the case. The company is highly praised….except when you work in this department. They need people to answer the phones, so they mislead candidates on what the job is actually like. It isn’t until you start that you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into.
During my time at this company, I did my best to adhere to their unrealistic expectations and was asked to coach new hires. It’s the most unsettling thing to have to portray a positive attitude about a position when all that you want to say is…
RUN AWAY!!!!
The anxiety, stress, and depressing situation overtook my life and I had enough. I was sick of dreading each Monday to Friday.
What I Learned From My Employer
Even though I had a terrible experience overall working for my previous employer, there were a few things that I am grateful I could take away from my time there.
I learned how to invest and manage our money from the perspective of a low cost and long-term philosophy. Because of this, we will never need a financial advisor. I learned more about finance and investing in my year and 7 month tenure there than I did throughout both my undergraduate and MBA degrees.
I also learned that happiness and mental health is more important than money. It’s essential to do everything you can to advance your financial goals. However, when it gets to the point that you hate the majority of your week, it’s time to make a drastic change.
This job allowed me to learn what I don’t want my life to be. I want freedom and flexibility, and it made me appreciate the FIRE movement that much more.
What Went into Preparing for the Decision
To say that this was a loaded decision would be an understatement. I worked there for a year and seven months, and John and I were talking about this for a full year of that. It wasn’t something we could just jump into blindly. To make this a possibility, we looked at the following before I quit my job:
- Setting goals for our emergency fund, debt payoff, sinking funds, and retirement accounts.
- Eliminating unnecessary expenses from our budget, and seeing what we could do to lower the necessary ones. We were able to lower our Verizon FIOS bill by $50 per month and our home security system bill by half!
- Analyzing how our benefits would change when switching from mine to John’s. We wanted to make sure we knew what the options were for health insurance and HSAs, life insurance, etc. beforehand.
- Traveling is something that is important to us, so we researched additional ways that we could continue to travel hack with points and miles with little cash involved.
- Something inevitable for every couple who lives together to manage is responsibilities around the house. It was difficult for both of us to have time before, especially with me being gone most of the time, so we set up clear tasks between the two of us now that we both have flexible schedules.
- Finally, we made a strategic plan for our blog and freelancing, so that I could jump in right away!
How I Could Afford to Make the Jump
I attribute the blessing of being able to make this jump on two things, the first being John’s job. He works in a stable job as a Software Engineer with a great salary and benefits that we are extremely grateful for. Not to mention, the flexibility his company allows is paramount. Read more about John’s journey to increasing his salary here.
The second factor that allowed me to quit my job is the good habits we instilled in our lives early on.
We have built up a solid emergency fund, worked on paying down our debt, began investing early on and lived well below our means while rejecting lifestyle creep. Instead of focusing on material things, we saved as much as we could.
At this point, we have saved enough to be at CoastFI. We could never have done that by 25 years old without the FIRE community, hard work, and dedication to give ourselves the life we want.
What This Means for Our Financial Goals
As stated above, our good financial habits are the only reason we have been able to make this jump. There will always be the feeling of “do I have enough?” or “should I wait a little longer?” At the end of the day, we put our happiness above all else. Even though we made the right decision, it doesn’t mean that it won’t affect our financial goals.
In a perfect world, saving less right now will only be a temporary situation and we will be able to build back up to where we were previously. We are aiming for our side hustle and blog to bring in more money, with the goal of it eventually replacing my old income.
We used to live off of approximately 60% of John’s salary and save the rest (including side hustles). Obviously, with me leaving my job, this savings rate takes a major hit. However, we are still going to save every penny possible. This lifestyle change does not make us forget our FIRE goals.
We looked at how quitting my job would affect our savings with our FIRE Calculator.
What I’m Going to Do With My Time
Since I quit my job, I plan on keeping myself busy with my newfound freedom. I will be making a daily to-do list so that I can prioritize my tasks throughout the week.
- Most importantly, I will be focusing on improving my health – sitting at a desk all day and being too tired at night to exercise and eat well was not a good lifestyle to lead. I will enjoy the decrease in stress and anxiety levels!
- I will be working hard on expanding the blog. We have so many ideas and so much content that we want to implement, and now I have the time to do so. I will be able to attend many informative webinars and study the valuable blogging courses we have purchased.
- I will work on growing our side hustle of business consulting.
- We will continue travel hacking, but now we have more flexibility. It will be interesting to see what additional deals we can grab now that we can leave whatever day of the week we want. We don’t have to worry about getting time off approved or maximizing it over weekends and holidays.
- Finally, our yellow lab, Simba, will be getting much more attention 🙂
No Back-Up Plan
Because I quit my job, you may wonder what our back-up plan is. We don’t like to think that working on our blog and side hustles won’t work out. We are prepared to do everything in our power to make this a permanent change. For the time being, we are perfectly ok with not knowing if or when I will go back to corporate life.
Sitting here in our home office on a Monday morning, it doesn’t feel real! Yesterday I kept getting those Sunday blues I am so accustomed to, and I had to keep reminding myself that I could push them away.
As I make this transition, you’re going to be seeing a lot more happening at How To FIRE. I’m looking forward to interacting with everyone more on the blog, and attending ChooseFI Philadelphia meet-ups now that I don’t have to deal with the chains of holding a position at a financial firm. You’ll also be seeing John and I at FinCon 2019 in Washington D.C.!
Have you or a loved one ever been in a similar situation? Let us know in the comments
Samantha Hawrylack is a personal finance expert and full-time entrepreneur with a passion for writing and SEO. She holds a Bachelor’s in Finance and Master’s in Business Administration and previously worked for Vanguard, where she held Series 7 and 63 licenses. Her work has been featured in publications like Grow, MSN, CNBC, Ladders, Rocket Mortgage, Quicken Loans, Clever Girl Finance, Credit Donkey, Crediful, Investing Answers, Well Kept Wallet, AllCards, Mama and Money, and Concreit, among others. She writes in personal finance, real estate, credit, entrepreneurship, credit card, student loan, mortgage, personal loan, insurance, debt management, business, productivity, and career niches.
Kim @ The Frugal Engineers
Tuesday 30th of July 2019
Congratulations on the big change! I bet it feels good to finally flex some of your financial freedom. Looking forward to seeing how your blog grows and evolves.
Sam @ How To FIRE
Wednesday 31st of July 2019
Hi Kim!
Thanks for the support and for checking out our blog :) It feels AMAZING - I'm so grateful for the position we're in.
Sid
Friday 19th of July 2019
Hi Sam and John,
Congratulations on leaving your job. By your description, it sounds like an unproductive environment and, at the very least, it certainly was not an environment that helped your career thrive and grow. I was in a very similar place to the one you describe made a similar decision about 3.5 years ago and, like you, debated whether it was the right choice for months before and after. In hindsight, it was definitely the best decision and my career has advanced much more quickly than it would have had I not left that situation. I wish you the best of luck and hope to see you at another local meetup soon!
Sam @ How To FIRE
Tuesday 23rd of July 2019
Hi Sid,
Thank you so much! It definitely was not an environment that I could develop myself in. I'm hoping that this decision turns into a great career move with our side hustles.
I'm so happy to hear that you made a similar career move, and it turned out positively for you.
Best of luck to you as well! I'm sure we'll see you at another meetup soon :)
Kathryn
Thursday 18th of July 2019
That is so exciting! What a big transition. So great you don't have to stay stuck in a soul-sucking job just for a paycheck though! I feel like that is what FI is all about!! Also used your FIRE calculator which you linked to here and it is AWESOME!!! Definitely gonna bookmark that page!
Sam @ How To FIRE
Tuesday 23rd of July 2019
Thank you, Kathryn!! We definitely couldn't have made this decision possible without everything/everyone in the FI Community.
So glad you liked the calculator. We're hoping to create more very soon :)
Keesha
Wednesday 17th of July 2019
Congratulations on your escape from Corporate America! I’m so happy that you were able to stick by your plan so you could leave your job on your terms! It’s great you learned early that the corporate environment was not for you. I’m glad that you took advantage of your time at your job to enhance your knowledge on financial topics! It’s awesome when you can apply skills you learned in Corporate America to running your own business! Simba seems thrilled that you’ll be working from home full-time now, so it’s a win-win for all! 😊 Best of luck to you on this next chapter of your life!
Sam @ How To FIRE
Tuesday 23rd of July 2019
Hi Keesha,
Thank you so much! Simba is definitely a happy pup :) I'm very fortunate to have been able to plan my exit and learn more about myself in the process. I'll implement the financial lessons I've learned throughout my life.
Best of luck to you as well!
Rebecca @ Boss Single Mama
Wednesday 17th of July 2019
This is my first time reading your blog but I'm glad I found it! It sounds like you really thought quitting your job through and you've got a solid plan in place for growing your side hustles and blog. Congrats!
Sam @ How To FIRE
Tuesday 23rd of July 2019
Hi Rebecca,
Thanks for checking out our blog and for the support! We definitely put a lot of thought into the decision. I'm excited to work on growing our other income sources :)