It’s been almost 3 years since I quit my job, and as time continues passing, people have started giving me stranger and stranger reactions to the subject. This was especially notable last week visiting family when, over breakfast with my parents, my Dad mentioned I must be doing pretty good to still have money, and my Mom wondered if I would have to pay it all back someday. Ha! Readers here might know from previous years how this all played out, but I figured it would be worth summarizing (and who the heck reads all this crap, anyway?)
At the end of the day, and with absolutely no judgement toward those who can’t do this, it has all boiled down to earning a high salary as a software developer but choosing to live as if I were earning far less. That’s ultimately it. Mind you, I probably averaged around $80k per year as a developer, and never quite earned 6 figures, but I lived on $40-50k. This is glossing over a whole host of tax-advantaged strategizing, and I scored some serious dollars from employer 401k match programs, but this happened year after year over about 5 years, and if you consider that my savings rate reached about 50%, it means that every year worked technically afforded a year without the need to work (although…those taxes….)
That being said, software development is one of the best paying fields that doesn’t require a master’s degree, so it’s not a typically situation (although it’s certain not uncommon). Also working in my favor, though, was not having any children or dependent parents, and also being fortunate enough to not have any serious medical issues. This played a huge role in reaching “escape velocity” early on, where I had about $2k extra every month and was putting all of it into my 401k. I didn’t have any big ticket items I absolutely needed, and didn’t have any major requisite expenses otherwise, such as car repairs, and I also had a large emergency fund (largely fueled by fear, but that’s a story for another day). It freaked me out at first, but once it was clear things were okay, I went full speed ahead.
Granted, I had some problems with harboring a spirit of poverty, and that wasn’t good. In retrospect, a lot of things in the earliest years were also fueled by fear, which was equally not good. But I did move in to my friend’s house to save more money on rent, which helped take the savings up a notch, and getting on fire about things built up a good little nest egg that got the ball rolling, so it wasn’t all bad. I did eventually relax, and let a little lifestyle inflation creep in, but only to the point that I continued to maintain a 50% savings rate even after each pay raise.
The real challenge, about which I have no solutions, is when your income barely affords your expenses. It’s become an increasingly dire systemic issue across the country, and it’s worrying, but it’s also not completely clear to me why it is happening, although people naturally want to blame the easy punching bags. Macroeconomics is not a strong suite of mine. But that being said, people often grow up hearing that you should save 10%, so even when they are earning well above what they need for a comfortable life, they simply begin spending 90% of every pay raise, and never really get ahead. I had a fire under my ass and a strong hatred of work culture, so reading all the strategies became addicting.
So…I don’t know. I’ve changed my mind a lot since all of that began, but the general principles work insanely well, although, let’s be honest, they work better in a bull market than a bear, ha! A certain amount of luck and good circumstances should absolutely not be ignored here. If you have the ability to create a large spread between your spending an your income, it’s incredible what a few years can accomplish, and it’s not because I’m rich, or some sort of genius investor, or some hotshot programmer, or anything like that, it’s just circumstances combined with drive and education. And I’m a tremendously boring index investor, too. It’s my general contention that when wealth isn’t directly a result of circumstances, it has more to do with wise behavior than any sort of intelligence or savvy investing, and so trying to understand what wise behavior is in the context of money has become the motivation behind the few remaining financial elements of this blog. I’m not sure I would consider myself wise in this, either, but I’ve learned from many mistakes, and I like to think I’ve found some ways of thinking about money and value that help money work in my favor, but I’m also not Captain Frugal, either. It’s easy to make mistakes in the thousands when your income is in the high tens of thousands. Never mistake that for intelligence!
What’s interesting, too, is that taking all of this time off has taught me a critical skill: how to let go of money. Granted, I have never once gotten the impression that God was putting me through this to “take it all away” and “drain” me, or otherwise traumatize me with the threat of poverty, even though, yes, I’ve probably spent about 2/3 of everything I had saved up. In fact, just the other day, I came to terms with the fact that I may not get through the Big Fancy certification, and if I don’t, that means I’ll probably have to spend another $1,500-$2,000, which is scary, and embarrassing. But it’s like…so what? The money is there, and I think God has grace for all of this time, even though I beat myself up over not getting more done. This money was provided, just for these times, and if I were “brilliant” enough to be acing these certifications left and right, then how would I expect to be humble enough to let God’s hand do it’s work? That’s when I had to realize, in ways far more real than before, that this was never about me, in the broader sense. It’s not to excuse me from doing the work, or working hard, but to say…yeah, you are not the smartest at all of this, nor have you managed your money or your time perfectly, but I’ve called you anyway, and you’re either going to answer and trust in that call or you’re not.
And…I know I’ve known this for a long time, but it’s more real than ever…since when was a person’s “calling” all about their own glory? Mistakes have been made. LOTS of mistakes. And that’s okay.
So anyway…yes, Mom and Dad, the money is there. Praise God the money is there, but I think he’s had me on easy mode, too. The worst thing I could have done was not answer the call. It’s not even the supposed “threat” of punishment we sometimes naturally fear from God, it’s more that I would hate to look back on God’s call and have to accept that I turned down the opportunity to be a part of this plan. And hey, two trips to Nepal and 5 certifications have been exciting, no? [Unfortunately, making it back to Nepal didn’t happen this year, though. I’m still sad about that]