I Hated My Job

In May of 2012, I was $70,000 in debt because of my astronomical spending in college. I had just finished up school in the spring with a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance, and was working at a financial services company in the technology department thanks to my two years of studying Aerospace Engineering before finance. Frankly, I was miserable in my job. I was making $14/hr as a help desk support person. It felt as though I went to school for nothing. I will never forget my very first day on the job when one of my new co-workers said to me, “The most difficult part about this job, is not dying of boredom.” I thought he was joking, but I quickly found out that he was correct.

At first it wasn’t so bad. The job wasn’t difficult. Just help people with basic issues on a website, and if there was a real problem with the site then let the development team know. Needless to say, there was a lot of down time. So what? That sounds fantastic right? Wrong. Honestly, there is only so much surfing the internet that I can do without getting extremely bored. It only took a few weeks before I couldn’t take it anymore and had to start learning something again, and doing something that made me feel productive. The thought of doing that job for the next 40+ years of my life caused me a ton of stress and depression. It was completely baffling to me that some of my co-workers could stand doing so much unproductive crap.

I decided that I wasn’t going to be bored anymore and started working like a madman to up my technology skills whenever there was down time. I made friends with our database administrator and got my own database to play around in. After I felt comfortable with my database skills, I went online to Codecademy and went through every programming path that they had at the time. From there I started using those skills to build tools that I would like using from the financial education that I had. It was also at this time that I found Mr. Money Mustache. August of 2012 was when I learned that early retirement was a real possibility for normal people. I am so thankful that I found this site while my income was still so low.

Early Retirement Is Possible

I learned the true value of my money and that I owed it to myself to keep as much of it as I possibly could. Quickly, I became obsessed with this idea of retiring while I was still young enough to enjoy it. I read every Mr. Money Mustache post in a week. One of my all time favorites is The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement. The main takeway is that your savings rate, regardless of your income, is what determines how long until you can retire. Make sure you read over this post. It may just change your life as well.

Over the next few months, my thought process started changing. I started to enjoy becoming more frugal. What I didn’t expect was that my work life would also start to change. A byproduct of the frugality was that more of my free time was also spent doing things to enhance my skills. I started studying for a professional exam, building websites and systems in my free time, and I even started exercising again. All of these factors together gave me the confidence and energy to start branching out at work as well, where I started taking on more projects. This is what led to my first pay raise that year where I jumped up to $48,000/yr.

Telling Family and Friends

After my big pay raise, I started to become even more of a believer in this whole minimalist/early retirement/financial freedom stuff that I had been reading from the anti-consumerism portion of the personal finance community. Just ask my wife, I wouldn’t shut up about Mr. Money Mustache while we were dating. In retrospect, I’m lucky that I found somebody as amazing as her that she understood it considering we had only been dating a few months at the time. What I found was that a lot of people just did not understand or think that it was possible

Whenever I told people that I was going to retire in my 30’s, I get one of three reactions:

1. Concern (70%) – About 70% of people that I told were legitimately concerned for me. The instantly had visions of me living in a van down by the river. Although I’m not the type to take such drastic measures, sometimes living in a van temporarily could be a great financial investment. I politely explained to them the numbers behind things and reiterated that I want to spend more time experience life rather than paying for stuff. The responses were a combination of disbelief and understanding, but still concern for me.
2. Laughter (20%) – About 20% of people literally laughed because they either thought it was a joke, thought I was crazy, or thought I had won the lottery.
3. Applause (10%) – Surprisingly about 10% of people not only understood it, but thought it was an awesome idea. Some people had already started down such roads, but others wanted to jump on board. I made sure to point these people towards my favorite blogs.

What Is Early Retirement?

After finding out that the majority of people who I told about this new phenomenon just didn’t understand, I started to rethink it myself. Was it really possible? I looked over the numbers and yes it was! Did I really want to deprive myself of the material things in life? Well not necessarily, but if it was a decision between that and working decades longer than planned, then my decision was easy. The one question that I really got stuck with though was, “What will you do?” This was the question which I just was not ready for.

It took some time, but I figured out what I really wanted out of retirement. I also discovered, that what I wanted wasn’t really retirement at all. What I wanted was financial freedom or financial independence. I wanted time to spend with the people I love doing the things that I love. If I had to say what this new chapter of life were to look like, it would involve these things.

1. Letting the sun be my alarm clock every day
2. Visit with my family more, especially those out of state
3. Volunteer more in my local community
4. Build things with my hands (especially an Aquaponics garden)
5. Stay home full-time with my kids if we decide to have them
6. Hike every national park in the United States
7. Travel to every continent at least once
8. Reduce my carbon footprint
9. Inspire people
10. Make real connections with interesting people

I Will Never Retire

Not a single item on my list, except the first one maybe, involves doing nothing. Actually, every single one of these items will take up a significant amount of time and effort. That is exactly the point though. Without financial independence, I do not know if I will have the time to accomplish all of these things. So my new goal, was never to retire, but to become financially free. I want to be free to pursue the things that I find worthwhile in life, rather than spend all of my time doing the things that are allowing my boss to do these things.

“I wanted time to spend with the people I love doing the things that I love.”

I encourage you to now do the same thing. Start to think about not what you will do in retirement, but what you will do in your financially independent future. Ask yourself not how you will escape from work, but how you will escape to work that is meaningful to you. When you wake up in 30 years, do you want to say that you sat at a desk for your life? Do you want to say that you sat on your butt for your life? Or do you want to be able to say that you did something meaningful with your life? I know that for me, I do not want to be a desk slave forever, but I also do not want to be a useless log forever either. Getting Rich Young is an example of one thing that I want to continue working on regardless of the money because it is one way that I can start working on #9 and #10 above.

Make A Commitment

Share this post with a friend and make a commitment to yourself today to achieve financial freedom. Start living a life of meaningful work. Spend your time in a way that you will be proud of. This is your story after all.