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Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

Meet Me in St. Louis

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busch pano

No time to bury the lede — I’m mov­ing to St. Louis!

Reac­tions from friends and fam­i­ly have var­ied when I tell them I got a new job and am mov­ing yet again.

Anony­mous fam­i­ly mem­ber: “Good grief! Anoth­er job change? You haven’t been at this one for 6 months! .…whichev­er, I wish the best for you”
Friend #1: “No kid­ding! Where to this time? You’re the most portable per­son I know!”
Friend #2: “You’re mov­ing again? You move more than any­one I know.”
Friend #3: “Her cat has moved more than the aver­age American!”

Sens­ing a theme in the reac­tions so far? It turns out tak­ing risks and try­ing to make a bet­ter life for myself looks like a ton of moves. In the last 2 years, I will have changed address­es 6 times. 6 times! That is a ton of mov­ing. Good thing I’m prac­ti­cal­ly a pro at it now. As much as it’s cool to know exact­ly how to pack my stuff in a mov­ing truck, I’m actu­al­ly real­ly tired of mov­ing around and chang­ing jobs. I just want to set­tle down at a place and stay there for a few decades.

After grad­u­at­ing from col­lege and set­tling into my first com­pa­ny, I was rather unhap­py. I had had grand plans for my life and they did­n’t include being in a small Mid­west­ern town. I chafed at the restric­tions of cheap food, cheap drinks, and cheap rent. Woe was me! I thought the answer was quit­ting my job and mov­ing to Min­neapo­lis to be with my then-boyfriend. I loved Min­neapo­lis, but not hav­ing a job and a fail­ing rela­tion­ship made liv­ing there stressful.

Obvi­ous­ly, the best path for­ward for me was to move to an even big­ger, more expen­sive city on the East Coast. I had final­ly made it. I was liv­ing my dream.

But if I was liv­ing my dream, why was I still unhap­py? Why was I still strug­gling to find a date? There are so many more edu­cat­ed white-col­lar kin­da guys who can appre­ci­ate what I have to offer! Why was I home­sick and miss­ing my fam­i­ly? Why did I think the dream looked like pay­ing 60% of my expens­es in rent and not being able to save a lot of money?

I wrote about the job search­ing process and how much it sucked. Not get­ting the job at the fan­cy tech com­pa­ny real­ly made me sit back and eval­u­ate pret­ty much every facet of my life. How­ev­er.… it turns out I did­n’t get that job so I could get this new job in St. Louis!

Goin’ back to St. Louis

Allow me to wax poet­i­cal­ly on the won­ders of St. Louis for a brief moment. St. Louis is my idea of a big city. I grew up a few hours away from St. Louis and vis­it­ed about once a year. My first mem­o­ry of St. Louis is vis­it­ing with my Girl Scout troop when I was 9 or 10. We went up into the Arch and explored the Gal­le­ria mall. It was huge AND they had a dELiA*s!

I’ve writ­ten about being a St. Louis Car­di­nals fan before, so I’ll keep that short. I’m a proud 3rd gen­er­a­tion Car­di­nals fan, so I will absolute­ly love being close to my favorite team again. I’ll be work­ing in down­town St. Louis, a quick walk from Busch Sta­di­um. I don’t think I’ll get sea­son tick­ets but I will be there to see more than a few games!

I have a few friends from “real life” that live in the area. I am thrilled at the idea of get­ting to rekin­dle and/or deep­en those friend­ships by get­ting to hang out in per­son again! Tech­nol­o­gy is won­der­ful, but it does­n’t hold a can­dle to talk­ing and hang­ing out in real life.

My fam­i­ly will be a short dri­ve away from me, so I’m hap­py I’ll get to be around for more things like birth­day par­ties and hol­i­days. Those have been in short sup­ply for the last few years.

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Me, age 13 at the St. Louis Sci­ence Center

Leaving Washington, DC

On the one hand, I am thrilled to death to leave the holy-Moth­er-of-Pearl EXPENSIVE DMV area. My rent sucks up a ton of mon­ey each month. I also don’t need to wor­ry about get­ting my car inspect­ed before get­ting a dri­ver’s license and Vir­ginia plates. On the oth­er hand, I’ve made a ton of con­nec­tions to peo­ple here that I’ll be sad I can’t just hang out with them on a ran­dom Tues­day. Won­der­ful peo­ple are not a rea­son to stay in an area though, as they tend to move around as well.

I am very excit­ed to leave my cur­rent com­pa­ny. The envi­ron­ment isn’t very con­ducive to excelling at a career (espe­cial­ly when they’re lay­ing off a ton of peo­ple and rumors swirl my team will be next). I am prob­a­bly equal­ly as excit­ed to start work­ing for the new com­pa­ny. They are sta­ble and will be around for a long time. The peo­ple seem great and the awe­some ben­e­fits will be the icing on the cake. I’m actu­al­ly going to be get­ting a slight raise at the new job, which will be super nice to have in con­junc­tion with a dras­ti­cal­ly low­er cost of liv­ing area.

So when does all this fun start? SOON! The new job has a ten­ta­tive start date of Decem­ber 9th, which is now less than 4 weeks away. I need to give notice at my cur­rent job, give writ­ten notice of my intent to vacate my apart­ment ear­ly (and eat the 2 months’ rent break­age fee!), get box­es, start pack­ing my stuff (and giv­ing away some of it), arrange mov­ing logis­tics and find a place to live in St. Louis. If any­one has any leads on an apart­ment near down­town like in the CWE or Tow­er Park area, let me know!

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Meet Me in St. Louis!

I’m also look­ing for­ward to hang­ing out with the FIRE com­mu­ni­ty in St. Louis! I already know a few peo­ple there and am look­ing for­ward to meet­ing more awe­some peo­ple. When I moved to DC, I joked it was because I did­n’t want to trav­el to Fin­Con lat­er in the year. Now, we can say I’m mov­ing to St. Louis because I don’t want to trav­el to the Finan­cial Free­dom Sum­mit ha! It’s being held in May and I am appre­cia­tive of the fact I won’t have to fly there and/or fig­ure out accom­mo­da­tions now.

I’m very excit­ed about this next chap­ter in life and I’m deter­mined to make the most of this oppor­tu­ni­ty. I’m look­ing for­ward to set­tling down for a long time and mak­ing a great life in St. Louis!

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Comments

  1. Gwen, this makes my heart so hap­py for you. I know your love of the Car­di­nals and your Mid­west roots will make it quick­ly feel like home. And a much more sta­ble job future (and ben­nies) is tru­ly icing on the deli­cious cake! CONGRATULATIONS
    Josh recent­ly post­ed…Week­end in Key WestMy Profile

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  4. Gwen, this is great news! Con­grat­u­la­tions! I am also very envi­ous of you right now—I went to col­lege in St. Louis (yay Wash U!) and I loved it. I haven’t been back since I grad­u­at­ed, but I miss it a lot. I real­ly miss all the fun free things to do there—the art muse­um, the zoo, For­est Park in general—as well as cer­tain local restau­rants I used to fre­quent (Jil­ly’s cup­cakes is amazing!). 

    I’ll be inter­est­ed to hear what the finan­cial aspects of liv­ing there are like. I was­n’t pay­ing my own liv­ing expens­es when I was there, so I real­ly would like to know. I hope you’ll post about it (I’m sure you will as a finance blog­ger, LOL). Plus, I’m look­ing to set­tle down some­where too. I’ll be a licensed CPA in a year or two so I need to find a place to stay long-term and build up my account­ing practice. 🙂

    Reply

  5. I have looked into get­ting sea­son tick­ets to the base­ball team I liked, too. With third par­ty sites like Stub­hub and Seat­geek, I don’t real­ly see a rea­son to buy them. At least for the team I like, you can usu­al­ly find real­ly good seats with com­pa­ra­ble prices to sea­son tick­et prices.

    Reply

    • Yeah that’s fair. I need to fig­ure out every day game expe­ri­ence and my splurge lev­els. I have my favorite sec­tion, but it’s more expen­sive and I’m not sure I’ll want to do that every time I go.

      Reply

      • One of my ran­do side hus­tles is buy­ing sea­son tick­ets (go Nuggets!) and sell­ing most of the games. I still go to 10+ games a sea­son and turn a prof­it. Might be an option for your Cardinals.

        Reply

  6. Anoth­er bonus??? Now you’ll get to see the WOWs on their return trip because I believe that we will be stop­ping through there. I mean, I’m sure that’s why you ulti­mate­ly decid­ed on mov­ing there in the first place ;o).
    Mrs.Wow recent­ly post­ed…3 Thoughts from 3 MonthsMy Profile

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  7. Woh, big news! Con­grats on the change. Under­stand­ing what makes you hap­py in life is an ever-chang­ing thing, and I admire your abil­i­ty to roll with it and make major life changes. Hav­ing moved across coun­try exact­ly once and with months to plan it, the idea of doing it i a month sounds crazy haha. Mov­ing out of an expen­sive city to some­where you’re already famil­iar with must soft­en that a bunch though!
    Adam @ Minafi recent­ly post­ed…Why I Don’t Care About Free Stock Trades (And You Shouldn’t Either)My Profile

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  13. Con­grats! True to mil­len­ni­al form 🙂

    Curi­ous though, do you feel bad about your boss­es and col­leagues who’ve had to train you and now have to find some­one new each time?

    Reply

    • Not real­ly. It’s the nature of run­ning a busi­ness. Peo­ple come and go. I do feel bad I’m incon­ve­nienc­ing the peo­ple I sup­port, a lit­tle. On the oth­er hand, I’ve also giv­en them some tru­ly great work in return for train­ing me, so I think it’s pret­ty even in the end.

      Reply

  14. So so proud and exit­ed for you, Gwen!!! Look­ing for­ward to hear­ing about your new adven­tures. I know those of us on the home front are glad you aren’t so far away. Love you!

    Reply

  18. There are a bunch of fun free things to do in St. Louis. How­ev­er, most of them hap­pen in the sum­mer, when we come out of hiber­na­tion. You’ll just have to stay longer than four months in order to enjoy it all!

    Reply

    • My short­est stint in an area has been 9 months so I think I can safe­ly say I’ll be in St Louis for the sum­mer. I hope to be in St Louis for many sum­mers to come!

      Reply

  19. Con­grats on the move! But you are an employer’s worst night­mare and you give mil­len­ni­als a bad name. Try to stick things out for a year and give life a chance. Why are you always quit­ting things and break­ing up with peo­ple? Is there some­thing else that’s going on in your life that explains your insta­bil­i­ty at 30 years old? You’re not 23 years old anymore!

    Reply

    • Iron­i­cal­ly, I was much more sta­ble at 23. I was at my first com­pa­ny for 5 years. As to all the switch­ing now, it’s because I can. I’m no good to employ­ers if I’m stressed out and depressed as fuck. Why stick with some­thing if it makes you mis­er­able? My aunt got stuck with a ter­ri­ble hus­band for 40 years. I’m going to keep doing my own thing and find what makes me hap­py. Thanks for the com­ment, Karen.

      Reply

  20. Did you decide to direct­ly work for the feds after all? Or are you con­tract­ing again? Con­grats on the new opportunity.

    Reply

    • I am direct­ly employed by the orga­ni­za­tion I work for. No more con­trac­tor life for me!

      Reply

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