This will be a 2 part series. This post will cover my my musings and observations about stress and work/life balance. Since this is a personal finance blog after all, I’ll cover the particular numbers in my FI journey and share my progress toward a pending early retirement in a second post.
About 6 months ago, I came to three important realizations:
- I was burnt out at my job and needed to quit to save my sanity
- With $1.5M of net worth, I was FI and could potentially retire
- I desired a post-work life filled adventure outside the Corn Belt
The decision to quit an unbearable job was easy, but what then? What would I do with my life? As much as my wife and I loved sitting around in robes, sipping coffee, and laughing at Maury paternity tests on a Monday morning, I knew such slovenly novelties would wear thin quickly.
What about hobbies? Sure, I could pursue loads of them in retirement. But many of them are nature themed and incompatible with the Corn Belt.
That meant moving to a more desirable (and more expensive) location and the timing could not have been worse.
- Stocks were down 20%+ and freefalling into a bear market
- Inflation was up 8% and climbing
- Mortgages rates had doubled and were expected to keep rising
- And yet homes were still flying off the market at sky high prices
Time to ride out the downturn
With the stock market bottom unclear and a potential recession looming, it was a terrible time to make major financial decisions like moving or retiring 25 years earlier than the average American.
With house prices in Denver still sky high, I estimated I was ~$350K short of relocating without having tap into much of my investments.
$350K sounds like a big figure, but when you consider that my net worth at the Nov 2021 stock market high was 20% higher, my gap would have only been around $100K, a figure I could have saved saved up for in 2022 or would have been willing to borrow.
But as the crazy market stood in May 2022, my gap was $350K, and closing it would take some combination of the following:
- Stock market recovery
- Working longer to save and invest more
- Drop in mortgage rates
- Drop in home prices
All of the above were likely to progress over an unpredictable amount of time. The only responsible decision was to keep working until things recovered. With that, I decided to quit my job and join a different company to ride out this bear market mess.
Well, its been 6 months now. How has it gone?
Stress? What stress?
I am still in the job-hoppers honeymoon phase, and I know it won’t last forever, but damn it feels good. I don’t carry worries to the dinner table, I don’t work long hours, and I do not openly detest my boss. It still feels novel 6 months in.
How to account for my change in fortune? More humane bosses, more realistic goals, a more ethical company? All factors, sure, but . . . something more is at play here.
Although to a lesser degree, I’ve still met people at my new company that are stressed, overworked, and jaded. No surprise: they are all long-tenured company vets with good salaries and the respect of their peers. Why are they miserable, and I am not?
Simple. Eventually, the new car smell wears off, and you get sick of seeing the same old box of metal. Job hoppers trade in for a new model often enough to counteract this, whereas job stayers taunt the burnout gods by staying put.
I know now that the burnout I reached in my late 30s was as much my own human nature as it was my crappy job. This experience demonstrates that the human condition is one where we are never satisfied and where the grass is always greener on the other side.
For now, I feel fortunate to enjoy work and have near zero stress. I’ll probably be retired long before my stress cup overflows again, but if I choose to keep working, I’ll stay a part of the job hopper crowd and bounce again to keep work novel.
Looking a gift horse in the mouth
On the other hand, I find myself in a strange place. My new company and my new boss have apparently pegged me as a high potential employee. They have already started to talk about growth potential, promotions, becoming a people leader again, etc.
Most people would probably be pleased by the fast track career opportunities. Me? Not so much. At best, I am conflicted; at worst, I am annoyed about this attention. I’ve actively worked to step away from the spotlight, and somehow it caught me sneaking off-stage and wants to reward me anyway. Strange.
My goal since day one of this job was to be a middle performer – reliable enough to earn a fair raise and retain my job in a pending recession, but unremarkable enough to avoid being seen as the go-to-guy.
Promotions are meaningless to me at this point. $10K or $15K more a year won’t shortcut my path to being FI in Denver – only market recovery can do that. But a promotion has a high probability of creating more stress, more work, and more of the same bureaucratic bullshit that led me to quit my last job.
The hysterical thing about all of this positive attention is that I have held back my true potential these past 6 months. I honestly work an average of just about 32 hours most weeks. I am happy with this workload. Unless my boss assigns more work to me, I won’t assign more to myself by being an eager beaver.
To reinforce this, I have changed my behavior and tried to blend in with the average crowd. In meetings, I don’t speak half as much as I used to. I might wait an extra day or two to respond to emails I could otherwise respond to in mere minutes, just to reinforce the idea that I am not immediately available to react. If a process is broken, I let it stay broken, and let the chips and blame fall where it may.
There is an old world saying: don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It means you should accept gifts with gratitude and withhold criticism. My new job has truly been a fantastic change and I work for a good company with good leaders. Maybe I should accept this blessing and call it day. But I can’t help but look this gift horse in the mouth and keep it at arms length.
Perhaps this is where most people end up at the end of their careers – riding out for a few last checks and focused more on work/life balance than growth, prestige, and status. What makes my situation more unique is to be here after a ~15 year career as opposed to a ~40 year career.
I expect my leaders are in for a surprise when I turn my badge in a year or two from now. Until then, I plan to ride my manageable stress-free workload all the way to retirement in Colorado.
Work/life balance is a work in progress
Just how much work/life balance did this job move grant me? Well, in my estimation, I’ve enjoyed more work/life balance in the past 6 months than I probably did the last 2 years combined.
I’ve had time to record a second album of my guitar music (and am half way through composing a third album), start this blog, help my kids with school weekly, and read more books.
Certainty, in full retirement, I’d dedicate more time to some hobbies, such as creating content for this website, but I don’t currently feel a creative failure by any stretch. I have enough bandwidth, time, and creative energy outside work to make me happy, for now at least.
What is more challenging for me is putting a lid on my stress-free euphoria because it just makes my wife’s work stress that much more acute. The love of my life Mrs. FI is unfortunately in the opposite place. Her demanding job is extending her work hours and growing her stress. Its hard to celebrate my stress free life some days, when she doesn’t feel the same freedom.
And as close we are in marriage, this doesn’t quite translate when it comes to work. Attitude toward work is a very personal thing. For the most part, I’m powerless to help because I am not a part of her work life.
In the same way, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t help diminish my misery in my last job either. The only cure for me was quitting, and I have zero regrets about my decision. Whether Mrs FI. comes to the same resolution, only time will tell.
For now she endures and is going to re-evaulate if a promised role re-structuring next year ultimately brings the work/life balance she deserves and has been promised. If that promise is broken, she may become a job hopper like me or perhaps retire. It depends on how fast the market recovers. One thing is for sure, we get closer every month we work.
Stay tuned for part II, where I’ll run through the specific finances in my move calculated move to Denver. I will explore precisely how much I intend to save before I move or retire and how I am progressing toward that goal.