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Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

I’m Turning Down 2.7 Million Dollars

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That’s right, you read that head­line correctly.

By quit­ting my job, or in cor­po­rate office jar­gon “resign­ing my posi­tion”, I am turn­ing down the oppor­tu­ni­ty to earn at least 2.7 mil­lion dol­lars. (Based on my cur­rent salary and assum­ing I would­n’t get rais­es or promotions.)

That’s like get­ting a lot­tery tick­et, win­ning, say­ing no thanks, pour­ing lighter flu­id on it, and watch­ing it burn.

Why would I turn down so much money?

Strings Attached

me drill e1510841742870
My “I do not want to be here” face

I’m not win­ning the lot­tery. No one is get­ting me a ginor­mous check. Nope. I’d have to earn that mon­ey by work­ing anoth­er 33 years. I know, the thought is just pre­pos­ter­ous! Work­ing a cor­po­rate job to earn mon­ey?? CRAZY TALK!

But seri­ous­ly, 33 years is a lot of my life time to spend cooped up in a cold office being forced to do things and inter­act with peo­ple who I don’t want to do.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not averse to work, and work­ing hard. No one who got their Gold Award can say they don’t work hard at things.

What I’m not a fan of is doing things I’m not inter­est­ed in. Things I’m not pas­sion­ate about. Sor­ry, but fix­ing iPhones and ensur­ing meet­ings start prop­er­ly is not my life’s pur­pose. I’m here for more impor­tant things in life. (Although I have to say get­ting to play the hero and swoop­ing in to fix things when every­thing is going ter­ri­bly wrong is pret­ty great when I can get things back up and running.)

What’s Next

I start­ed this con­ver­sa­tion here in my 2017 Chau­tauqua recap post. Some of you asked fan­tas­tic ques­tions, so this is my fol­low-up post where I address those com­ments on a deep­er and more thor­ough lev­el than I want­ed to get into in the com­ment section.

My favorite devil(‘s advo­cate) Fer­vent Finance asked a few questions:

  1. Ok so num­ber one was more of a state­ment than a ques­tion. “Have a back­up plan if liv­ing with your BF doesn’t work. Noth­ing per­son­al, but shit hap­pens.” Shit does hap­pen. If said shit does hap­pen, I’ll prob­a­bly stay in Min­neapo­lis but will def­i­nite­ly move out. Depend­ing on when said hypo­thet­i­cal break up occurs, I’ll go back to 9–5 world or keep doing the earn­ing mon­ey on the inter­net thing.
  2. This is more like 4 ques­tions in one. “It seems like your rental has been in the red since you’ve bought it. When do you think you’ll be in the black? Due to its age do you think you’ll be able to get recur­ring cash inflows from that invest­ment? Would hir­ing a prop­er­ty man­ag­er be a good option or take too much of the prof­it?” Yeah the house need­ed a ton more work than I thought it would. Also all that work was more expen­sive than I thought it would be. Also, I screwed it up and need to redo some of that expen­sive work. So, the answer is, I have no idea when it will be in the black. I’m fore­cast­ing earn­ing over $19k from rental income next year, and spend­ing close to that amount, if not more, on fix­ing it up more. I hope I would actu­al­ly earn some­thing on it in 2019, but that depends on how some things in the house hold up. I don’t plan on hir­ing a prop­er­ty man­ag­er and will instead man­age it myself from afar. Aside from the big repairs, it’s actu­al­ly been pret­ty smooth sail­ing from a land­lord standpoint.
  3. How much cash do you plan to have on hand when you quit? No idea. It hon­est­ly depends on any num­ber of fac­tors. How much I get in my bonus this year, what else needs to be repaired on the house, how fast I find a ten­ant for the vacant unit, how long I stay at my day job, what I get from sell­ing off some of my belong­ings before I move, and more. I think I’ll have some­where around $15k on hand, but that’s an edu­cat­ed guess. Heavy on the guess, light on the edu­cat­ed part.

My friend Felic­i­ty (you know, the lady with the dog pho­to) asked me way more fun questions!

  1. clouds
    I want more views like this in the future!

    What are you most excit­ed about for your new lifestyle? Oooo how will you do time man­age­ment in gen­er­al with­out a 9 to 5 lim­it­ing you? Hon­est­ly, I’m most excit­ed to see my boyfriend every day. Long dis­tance is not fun. Aside from him, I’m excit­ed about not hav­ing to go to an office job every day, get­ting to trav­el to events, and get­ting to explore a new side of myself with regards to cre­at­ing things. Those things include cre­at­ing stained glass mas­ter­pieces and help­ing oth­ers out in their lives. As for the time man­age­ment thing, that’s going to be tough, I’m not going to lie. I’m not very good at forc­ing myself to do things. (writ­ing posts, email­ing peo­ple back in a time­ly fash­ion, and work­ing out, to name a few). Thus, I plan on imple­ment­ing a daily/weekly sched­ule where I plan out my days. Oth­er­wise I fear I will waste my time and oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed. I’ve recent­ly start­ed using Todoist and I can tell you it’s already start­ed to help. I’ve also dis­cov­ered automat­ing what I can in my life is a huge bur­den off my shoul­ders and I will con­tin­ue to fig­ure out ways to improve that.

Read­er SteveC was inter­est­ed in hear­ing more about my plans to acquire rental prop­er­ties with­out a W2 income. It basi­cal­ly came down to three options:

  1. Buy a place with my W2 income, quit, put my stuff in a room, leave my res­i­dence as that address, and then move. A year lat­er I could get my stuff and rent the whole place out. I prob­a­bly won’t take this option as it requires all sorts of trick­ery and I’m not sure I’m up to deal­ing with all that. Plus, tax­es would be a pain.
  2. Quit my job and get a rental mort­gage. Obvi­ous­ly the rates would be high­er than a mort­gage that assumes I’m liv­ing there. I’ll be able to use my rental income from the house so that will help the banks feel bet­ter. This route is a bit more painful, though, as I would still be required to go through a bank for fund­ing and do the whole clos­ing process which is a pain. (As any­one who’s tried to buy a house knows.)
  3. Find hard mon­ey. Hard mon­ey is cashola from pri­vate lenders. The inter­est rate is again high­er, and there are some strings attached like what hap­pens to the prop­er­ty and who gets paid first if some­thing should hap­pen and I need to default. This is the option I will prob­a­bly take. I’m not a fan of super high inter­est rates, but the investors need a return on their mon­ey. I know sev­er­al places and peo­ple to inquire about this path and feel like I could line up investors easily.

FIRE­Crack­er would like to know what I’m going to do to cel­e­brate first! I will cel­e­brate by sleep­ing in that first Mon­day, and then start pack­ing up all my stuff for the big move. I know, not very inspir­ing but that’s life hah!

Read­er TJ would like to know what I’ve done to have peo­ple want to give me mon­ey. Hon­est­ly.…… I’m not sure I’ve done any­thing delib­er­ate­ly. It’s just kin­da hap­pened. I’ve been involved with the FI com­mu­ni­ty in some fash­ion for 5 years now. Peo­ple know me. Peo­ple know my skill set. They come to me. I had two offers of free­lance writ­ing at Fin­Con. I did­n’t go look­ing for that, but I’m def­i­nite­ly not opposed to it! One of them I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed to see what plays out. One of the times I was just tak­ing a quick charge break and some­one pulled me into a con­ver­sa­tion where an offer was made. I think going into this with the mind­set of not look­ing for it helps. I’m going into this with an abun­dance mind­set which makes me more relaxed and approach­able. There’s ALWAYS mon­ey to be made. There’s no need for a scarci­ty mindset.

And final­ly, read­er John would like to know how I shift­ed my plans from sav­ing up lots of mon­ey to my cur­rent path. I orig­i­nal­ly start­ed out by think­ing I would work for 10 years, save up a bunch of mon­ey, and then be done. How­ev­er, as time has advanced that changed. I gained new skill sets like being a land­lord and start­ing a pod­cast. It showed me there was no need to stay with the first plan when I can earn mon­ey not at a tra­di­tion­al job. The cat­a­lyst was meet­ing and start­ing a rela­tion­ship with my boyfriend. If I did­n’t have a con­crete rea­son to quit, I’d prob­a­bly stick with work for a lit­tle bit longer and real­ly diver­si­fy my income streams. How­ev­er, I think I’ll be ok with his encour­age­ment and sup­port so I’m quit­ting ear­li­er than planned. There are many, MANY ways to achieve finan­cial inde­pen­dence. The path I’ve cho­sen now might be a bit more dif­fi­cult, but I ulti­mate­ly believe it will be more rewarding!

So there you have it. A fun Q&A shesh about the plans I’m going to car­ry out com­ing up here in the next year!

Got any oth­er ques­tions for me? Did I miss some­thing stu­pid­ly obvi­ous? Sound off in the com­ments below!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I’m so excit­ed about this new jour­ney! It’s always scary to step out, but you are in a great spot in life to do that. =) So look­ing for­ward to see­ing how it all unfolds.

    Reply

    • Thanks Ms Mon­tana! If any­thing, it turns into a mini-retire­ment. Good thing I know an expert at that!

      Reply

  2. Hey Gwen, you suc­cess­ful­ly got me to click over to the Chau­tauqua recap post to see the time­line for when you’re plan­ning to quit 😉

    That’s super excit­ing! I’ve done long dis­tance rela­tion­ships a cou­ple times and it is super frus­trat­ing, so I’m psy­ched for you to be able to get to live togeth­er and not have to deal with that any­more. Wish­ing you both the best!

    Reply

    • Thank you Andy! I can’t wait until we don’t have to dri­ve so far to see each oth­er. And get­ting to see each oth­er dur­ing the week! And and and so many excit­ing things to look for­ward to!

      Reply

  5. Yes, you’re turn­ing down 2.7 mil­lion but you’re acquir­ing the free­dom to pur­sue your pas­sions and a more mean­ing­ful and hap­py life. Sounds like a great trade-off to me.

    Reply

    • The very best of trade-offs. I’ll be able to do things that inter­est me and make me mon­ey. Win­ning! Thanks for the comment!

      Reply

  6. Hey. This is exciting. 

    Good luck. Keep using your head and you’ll be fine! 

    And if you need to you can always escape the cold for a bit 🙂

    Reply

  7. Cool, con­grats (if I under­stand cor­rect­ly). Are you leav­ing your job in the next month? Or is this some­thing in the future? I guess I was under­stand­ing that you were leav­ing in 7 years. Regard­less, con­grats if you are actu­al­ly leav­ing. God knows every­day I get clos­er and clos­er to jump­ing with­out a para­chute (anoth­er job). 

    Accord­ing to the Lab over on Mad Fientist’s site, my FI date is now 6 years and 11 months away, which means I’m at Sep­tem­ber 2024!

    Reply

    • Hey BK! I’ll be leav­ing my job in March. I left it that way since I think it’s an inter­est­ing frame of ref­er­ence. I will prob­a­bly leave it off when I quit my job. Thanks for asking!

      Reply

  8. Sounds great! So you will be free­lance writ­ing, mak­ing stained glass, and land­lord­ing? Awe­some! Just curi­ous as to what are you doing for health insurance?

    Reply

    • All of the above in addi­tion to a few oth­er things I have in mind 🙂 I’ve been look­ing at plans on the exchange. If I keep my income under $30k next year, I am look­ing at pay­ing around $250/mo for a sil­ver plan.

      Reply

    • Exact­ly! Find­ing a job if things don’t pan out will be pret­ty easy giv­en I have skil­lz and am a badass lady in IT 🙂

      Reply

  11. Good luck with every­thing! The path you’re tak­ing now sounds way more ful­fill­ing and fun then work­ing in a job you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want to do for the next 10 years 🙂

    Reply

    • Absolute­ly. Also looks like a lot more work than I’ve been doing but at least I’ll be hav­ing fun while doing so!

      Reply

  13. I ear­ly retired 2 years ago. This year I got an offer to go back to a sim­i­lar cor­po­rate posi­tion for a for­mer com­peti­tor. The pay was more than one mil­lion per year, a lot more than I ever made. I only thought about it for about 5 sec­onds. Then I smiled and said sor­ry, not inter­est­ed. This life is just too good!

    Reply

    • Holy moly! I’d say I might con­sid­er it, but I work with peo­ple who earn that kin­da dough and I don’t want their jobs haha. Good choice!

      Reply

  15. You’ll be just fine. Your best asset is between your ears, and you’ll be in 9–5 won­der­land once you’re in MPLS, assum­ing you have to pull that fire alarm. As for the rental, you’re doing it right. Get a few years of pure rent with min­i­mal main­te­nance and you’ll be like DAMN! This pas­sive income ROCKS! Remem­ber to check in with John once you get up here so your tax­es are opti­mized too.

    Reply

    • John is one of the first peo­ple I’m going to check in with upon my arrival. I’ll need the help for sure this year. There are a ton of com­pa­nies in Min­neapo­lis should I need to go back. Plus I know some pret­ty great peo­ple who live in the area to help me out 🙂

      Reply

  16. Haha, when I saw the head­line I thought you got a pret­ty sweet offer to buy the blog or some­thing. That’s a great way to put the deci­sion to retire ear­ly. Sure you won’t end up with as much mon­ey as you would if you keep work­ing indef­i­nite­ly but you will have much more of the most impor­tant resource. Time!

    Reply

    • Not sure I’d be able to turn down an offer like that as long as I had some con­trol over what hap­pened after­wards. But hey I doubt that’s a prob­lem I’ll have to face in the future so no use fret­ting over it!

      Reply

  19. Wow con­grats on the plan! That sounds so excit­ing. I know you must have put a lot of thought into this deci­sion, but the action of actu­al­ly mak­ing it is so brave and inspir­ing! Best of luck with your next moves! 🙂

    Reply

    • Thanks Ms. FAF! I’ve put a lot more thought into this than I thought pos­si­ble… and there’s more think­ing to be done! Lots to con­sid­er for sure.

      Reply

  20. Read you for a while but nev­er com­ment­ed before. You’re quit­ting your job to move 5 hours away with some­one you’ve dat­ed for 6ish months, becom­ing unem­ployed and an absen­tee land­lord on your prop­er­ty that’s los­ing mon­ey in the process? With min­i­mal sav­ings and no idea where to get health­care from? You might have low expens­es now, what about in your 30’s and 40’s? 

    Real­i­ty check, it’s unlike­ly any­one would lend you mon­ey to pur­chase addi­tion­al prop­er­ty with no income to sup­port it. Why would they? You skills as a land­lord include a cou­ple years and a ton of rook­ie mis­takes — using the “low­est cost” non insured painter, buy­ing in a ques­tion­able area and the kind of ten­ants that would lead to, etc. Need­ing to pack heat in order to feel safe is a poor way to live to me.

    I’m into the FI mes­sage to not always keep up with Jones and save, but there is a line some­where when you cross into counter pro­duc­tive and dam­ag­ing. Because of FI you seemed to have thrown in the tow­el on you career before it even start­ed. I think that’s unfor­tu­nate — you’re too young to be this jad­ed about find­ing mean­ing­ful work!

    I believe your pop­u­lar­i­ty with­in the FI cir­cle, and all of your read­ers that applaud your every move has gone to head and you’re just being irre­spon­si­ble now. Quit­ting a job now is a great way to sab­o­tage actu­al­ly becom­ing FI in you late 30’s/early 40’s. 

    I know this post is a stark coun­ter­point, and I wish you the best and hope I’m ulti­mate­ly wrong. But as some­one that’s a bit old­er than you (36) who’s attempt­ing to FI in his ear­ly 40’s, I know the things I’m real­ly wor­ried about now (health insur­ance!!) was an after­thought at your age, like you are. Go on healthcare.gov right now and see what Bronze plans cost!

    Tak­ing long career breaks with­out rea­son, while los­ing (or at least not build­ing) skills, makes it hard to get rehired. You real­ly hate work­ing that much you would­n’t con­sid­er get­ting a job in the new city with the boyfriend?

    For all the oth­er com­menters applaud­ing this, would you be as approv­ing for a brother/sister/child mak­ing the same move?

    Reply

    • Hi CF. Thanks for your will­ing­ness to pro­vide an alter­na­tive view. I’m not going to make this a super long com­ment but felt it was worth addressing.
      ‑By the time I quit in March, we’ll be approach­ing our one year. Only been 6 months now, but not in 4 months.
      ‑Out of state land­lord is dif­fer­ent than absen­tee. Absen­tee implies I’m not involved and I plan to be involved even if I’m 5 hours away.
      ‑Yes I’ve made mis­takes but I have learned from them and will not repeat them. The house will not always be in the red.
      ‑I have sev­er­al expe­ri­enced investors will­ing to lend me mon­ey. It might cost more than a tra­di­tion­al mort­gage although the dif­fer­ence in 30 years is negligible.
      ‑I have looked into health­care. It will cost ~$250/mo for a sil­ver plan with sub­si­dies on the exchange if I keep my income below $30k. Hav­ing RE expens­es actu­al­ly helps this as I won’t have to include my rental income. 

      While your alter­nate view­point is appre­ci­at­ed, your tone is not. This is not a hasty deci­sion. The best thing about being in IT and mov­ing to MN is the boom­ing tech scene there. Jobs will be easy to come across. Please make an effort to read my posts close­ly as I address many of your points already. Have a great day.

      Reply

  21. Thanks Gwen!

    I hate the term “hard mon­ey lenders”, it makes my legs tin­gling like their being bro­ken by a base­ball bat or a golf club! Hahaha

    There is a local FFREIA group in my city that has a many pri­vate lender mem­bers. Hope­ful­ly over time I’ll build some rela­tion­ships and have a lender I trust. I def­i­nite­ly see the val­ue they can bring to an investor, espe­cial­ly in your unique sit­u­a­tion (which I’m super jeal­ous of!!). 

    Your expe­ri­ence with the pri­vate lender would be yet anoth­er great post!

    Thanks again!!!

    Reply

    • Ooh I should look into that and see if there’s a local group I could join. Awe­some suggestion!

      Reply

  22. I only made it to earn­ing my Sil­ver Award — I hope that won’t thwart my finan­cial inde­pen­dence plans! 🙂
    It is won­der­ful to see you pur­sue this new direc­tion in life, espe­cial­ly with­out hav­ing a giant cash reserve. I told myself last week I could con­sid­er quit­ting my 9–5 once I have $50K in cash set aside (a few years away for sure) but maybe I should reeval­u­ate how much it would real­ly take to try some­thing new. Can’t wait to see your adven­ture unfold!

    Reply

    • The fact you made it past Brown­ies means you’re going to go far in life! I just want to point I would­n’t be doing this with­out the sup­port pro­vid­ed by my boyfriend. I could do it by myself, but it would be a very lean exis­tence and I would­n’t be com­fort­able doing so (hav­ing a built in cheer­leader and a sound­ing board is price­less!) Oth­er­wise I’d wait until I had a big­ger cash cush­ion and more net­work­ing done.

      Reply

    • Thanks DM! I view it as going from some­thing I want to do well at to doing some­thing I want to excel at. I have no rea­son to try right now and every rea­son to try my hard­est in the future.

      Reply

  24. Con­grats on this huge deci­sion Gwen! Sounds like you have some leads for poten­tial income, which is great. I’m sure you’ll be fine (despite what some oth­er com­ments may say) and will use the time to find/expand your passions.

    On the BF front, I’ve done long dis­tance and com­plete­ly under­stand. It sucks and it’s hard. Being there is going to make all the difference. 

    Keep us updat­ed on every­thing. I can’t wait to hear about every­thing you’ll be doing with your new­found freedom!

    Wish­ing you best of luck and a big year end bonus! 🙂

    Reply

    • I’ve def­i­nite­ly tak­en advice from oth­ers and over­lapped my two phas­es. It makes for some short nights and long days now but I have no doubt it’s worth it. Thanks for all your support!

      Reply

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