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Fiery Millennials

Financial Independence from a millennial's point of view.

Quitting My Corporate Career

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I’m done.

I did it.

I quit my W‑2 cor­po­rate career job. I am now my own boss.

Background

When I was a fresh-faced young pro­fes­sion­al in 2014, I could­n’t imag­ine quit­ting my job. Iron­i­cal­ly enough, I was laser focused on amass­ing as much mon­ey as I could so I could retire by 35 and nev­er have to wor­ry about work­ing again. My friend left the com­pa­ny and I could­n’t fath­om leav­ing. Why would she want to leave? We were well paid, great ben­e­fits, and a pret­ty decent work­ing environment.

Then.… then I moved around both in and for the com­pa­ny. Dif­fer­ent loca­tions, dif­fer­ent divi­sions, dif­fer­ent jobs. I began to under­stand why some­one would want to leave. I did­n’t have the great­est of jobs in 2016. The pay increas­es when I did­n’t jump jobs were lack luster.

Then.… I met my amaz­ing boyfriend. We enjoyed a few bliss­ful months togeth­er until it became clear we would­n’t be able to con­tin­ue dri­ving 11 hours in a week­end to see each oth­er. Then we had to fig­ure out who should move, which is tough with two moti­vat­ed peo­ple with a bright future ahead of them at their respec­tive companies.

Long sto­ry short, we decid­ed I would move. My career, while going nice­ly, prob­a­bly was­n’t going to advance as quick­ly as his, and Min­neapo­lis is 10x bet­ter than where I was liv­ing. We decid­ed this in Novem­ber, and I saw no rea­son to keep it to myself (and I’m not sure I’d be able to keep that a secret!).

So I gave my lead­er­ship about 5 months’ notice I was leav­ing. At first they did­n’t think I was seri­ous but it was quick­ly appar­ent I was­n’t joking.

Don’t leave!regret

A job post­ing was cre­at­ed and put up for every­one to see, expla­na­tions to those I sup­port­ed were giv­en, poten­tial can­di­dates were inter­viewed, and my replace­ment was hired. I con­tin­ued to put in hard work as very impor­tant meet­ings were held.

I was also told many, many, many times it was­n’t too late and I could change my mind. Since I worked with the top lead­er­ship of the com­pa­ny, they weren’t idle plat­i­tudes. Those say­ing that had the pow­er to make it hap­pen, includ­ing such peo­ple as all the IT Direc­tors, the VP of IT, the CIO, and VP of HR.

It was incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to turn down the offers to stay. I respect the peo­ple I worked for. They were kind, intel­li­gent, and ded­i­cat­ed to the com­pa­ny. Turn­ing them down any time I start­ed a meet­ing for them was tough. They made some ridicu­lous­ly good argu­ments for me to stay, but I knew if I accept­ed one of their rea­sons to stay, three things would happen.

One, my rela­tion­ship would prob­a­bly end. 5+ hours dri­ve time or a $200 flight to see each oth­er is rough on a rela­tion­ship. Two, I’d prob­a­bly regret not leav­ing and I try to live my life with as lit­tle regret as pos­si­ble. Three, I’d prob­a­bly nev­er try to leave the com­pa­ny again. How could I when all the top lead­er­ship want­ed me to stay? Work­ing for such a great com­pa­ny made it super hard to leave now, and that would have only got­ten worse the longer I stayed.

Mit einem lachenden und weinendem auge

I worked my butt off until pret­ty much the last day. Ear­ly morn­ing meet­ings, train­ing my replace­ment, not duck­ing too much new work, and fin­ish­ing up my remain­ing projects filled my last days. I fig­ured out how to do a mail merge, so I export­ed every email address in my inbox, sort­ed out the unique address­es, and craft­ed semi-per­son­al­ized emails for rough­ly 250 people.

The respons­es I got were overwhelming.

I nev­er knew the impact I had made on peo­ple until it was time to leave.

Peo­ple came out of the wood work to say good­bye and I was com­plete­ly over­come. I could­n’t read more than a few respons­es before I’d get over­whelmed and take a break from read­ing them. Say­ing good­bye to the peo­ple I sup­port­ed was so hard. I will tru­ly miss work­ing for them. In a way, I wish I’d still hat­ed my job. Leav­ing when you’re full of right­eous anger and indig­na­tion at being mis­treat­ed is far eas­i­er than leav­ing a job where peo­ple like hav­ing you around and you’re doing good work.

A few of the peo­ple I sup­port­ed either are native Ger­man speak­ers or speak Ger­man well. I asked one of them if the Ger­man lan­guage had a say­ing for the mael­strom of emo­tions I was expe­ri­enc­ing. I was pret­ty much every emo­tion at the same time.

Turns out, they do have a say­ing for that. Good olé Ger­man. “Mit einem lachen­den und weinen­dem auge”. It means: no wor­ries for the rest of your days. Wait. Shoot. That’s Haku­na Matata.

It means “With a laugh­ing and cry­ing eye”. On one hand you’re opti­mistic about the future, but on the oth­er hand you’re also a lit­tle melan­choly about the change. The Ger­mans nailed it.

I nev­er expect­ed to be so sad to leave. I thought I’d just waltz out of the office and go on my mer­ry way.

Nope. Turns out I’ll miss a lot of things and peo­ple from the office.

Let’s Do All The Things!

I’m a chron­ic over­achiev­er, so it’s not enough for me to do just one thing at a time. Nope, not me. In addi­tion to quit­ting my job, I am also doing the following:

-run­ning online endeav­ors like my blog, pod­cast, and dig­i­tal down­load Etsy shop Mas­ter­mind (with help from my amaz­ing co-host J for the last two!)
‑mov­ing to a new state
‑mov­ing in with my boyfriend
‑try­ing to find renters
‑hir­ing a prop­er­ty manager
‑sell­ing my pos­ses­sions online
‑get­ting the back stairs replaced
‑misc repairs for the rental

I’m sure there’s more in there that I’ve been doing, but I’ve been over­whelmed late­ly and those are the big things I can think of at the moment.

Mov­ing

I need­ed to find some­one to take over my unit in the rental prop­er­ty before I left. I found some­one but they need­ed the space asap. I saw no rea­son to linger so I agreed to have the lease start April 1st.

Yikes.

Then I’m mov­ing in with my boyfriend in a dif­fer­ent city in a dif­fer­ent state. We’re very much look­ing for­ward to this, but rear­rang­ing an entire house of stuff to accom­mo­date some­one else’s stuff and fig­ure out how to live togeth­er is an expe­ri­ence. Even pos­i­tive change can be stress­ful. We love each oth­er and are ded­i­cat­ed to mak­ing this work but phew! So much to fig­ure out. Where will this thing go? Do we need 3 toolk­its? What time do we want to get up? What time do we want to go to bed? Do we want to set up a shared Google cal­en­dar so we don’t have to ask for our sched­ules all the time? Who is buy­ing food? How much should each per­son con­tribute towards the bills?

So. many. questions!

Ren­o­va­tions

I also decid­ed to get some things fixed around the house before I left. Minor lit­tle things like putting the sof­fit and gut­ter back on the house where they fell off, com­plete­ly tear­ing off the back stair­case and rebuild­ing it, and any oth­er minor lit­tle things that pop up like toi­lets that don’t work and leak­ing sinks. It also turns out there was only one key to the front door which I had to go make copies of.

Landlord‑y things

I tried to find some­one to fill the last open unit, but I’m not sure that will work. So, I have talked to a prop­er­ty man­ag­er and will be sign­ing a con­tract on Mon­day. They are going to do pret­ty much every­thing for me which sounds amaz­inggggg after last week. They will charge 8% of the rent month­ly and 50% of the first mon­th’s rent to find a new ten­ant. Pret­ty stan­dard stuff.

This also means that I’m busy com­ing up with copies of the lease, as many keys as pos­si­ble, and try­ing to neat­ly hand off things before I move 5+ hours away. There are only so many hours in a day.

I think I did a decent job at all the things I had to do, but I know a few things slipped through the cracks. My unit won’t be as clean as I want it when I move out. I need to order blinds online and have them shipped to the house because a cer­tain home improve­ment store wast­ed half an hour of my time while I wait­ed for some­one who knew how to cut blinds. No one showed so I left very angry.

I also did­n’t get as much packed before I left as I want­ed, but I don’t have that much stuff so it’s not that big of a deal.

What’s next?

The first thing on my to-do list is get unpacked! My sis­ter and her fam­i­ly will be in town the first week­end I’m here so I want to get our house look­ing as nice as human­ly pos­si­ble. I have a LOT of stuff so we’ll see how that goes.

I will also be trav­el­ing to New York for a mon­ey retreat the first week of May. If you live in NYC/surrounding area and want to meet up, let me know! I will be free the 4th-7th so hit me up! I need to find all the good gluten-free restau­rants and tea shops 🙂

The end of May I will be head­ed the oppo­site direc­tion to Seat­tle for Camp Mus­tache 2018! I am super pumped J and I get to hang out with 50 amaz­ing peo­ple for the week­end. We’ll record at least one pod­cast episode, drink some tasty drinks, learn things, and have fun hang­ing out with like-mind­ed people.

After Camp Mus­tache, I’m head­ed to LA to enjoy some time with my boyfriend and favorite break­fast-monikered friends in the sun! We will like­ly orga­nize a meet­up there as well, so stayed tuned.

After LA, I’m not going any­where for a long time! I want to explore all the things my new home has to offer when it’s not bit­ter­ly cold and snowy outside.

Phase one of my career is over, and the next adven­ture has begun! Wish me luck!

Thanks for read­ing! Are you in NYC, Seat­tle, or LA? Let’s meet up! If you recent­ly quit your job, leave a com­ment below with some advice!

Reader Interactions

Comments

    • I fig­ured if I’m going to make changes, might as well do them all­l­ll at once! Thanks for com­ment­ing Caroline!

      Reply

  3. Wel­come to Min­neso­ta, Gwen!! Did you like your warm wel­come of 7 inch­es of snow? 🙂

    Hope the mov­ing in process has been going well for you. Con­grat­u­la­tions on offi­cial­ly quit­ting your cor­po­rate career! I appre­ci­ate you being so hon­est about the feel­ings you’ve gone through dur­ing this transition. 

    I com­plete­ly under­stand the chal­lenges of mov­ing in with some­one. Tom and I faced them too — we joke that we got in the most fights in our rela­tion­ship dur­ing the first month of us liv­ing togeth­er. It takes time to learn one anoth­er’s habits, how you like to dec­o­rate, etc. Also, I high­ly rec­om­mend shar­ing Google cal­en­dars! Tom and I do it and it’s LIFE CHANGING.

    Reply

    • Thanks Krys­tel! I think I would rather have sun and 50 degree weath­er, but I can’t get greedy… I think the cal­en­dars would be a great option, rather than ask­ing each oth­er 10 times a night what does _______ night look like?

      Reply

  4. Obvi­ous­ly you need to cre­ate a shared cal­en­dar in google. Make sure you have a per­son­al cal­en­dar though so you can plan sur­pris­es for your SO.

    Also can I stow away in your lug­gage for all these upcom­ing trips?

    You’re an inspi­ra­tion, and I’ll def­i­nite­ly be keep­ing an eye on this blog more in the future now that your not just a Skype mes­sage away. We’ll all miss you at . I’ll keep mes­sag­ing you on hang­outs every time my 401(k) con­fus­es me, or the S&P drops.

    I’ll plan a trip up to the new pad some­time soon! I wish you the best of luck and hope you enjoy as much time as pos­si­ble with your boyfriend.

    Reply

    • What kind of mil­len­ni­al cou­ple would we be if we did­n’t have a shared cal­en­dar?? Major fail­ures, that’s what. If you can fit in my book­bag, you’re more than wel­come to come along! Mes­sage me any­time — you’ve got my deets 🙂 Def­i­nite­ly come up and vis­it! Bring the babies too!

      Reply

  5. “After LA, I’m not going any­where for a long time!”

    …does this mean that you won’t be hang­ing out with us at Camp FI Mid­west in August?????

    Reply

    • No wor­ries, I will be at Camp FI MW! A long time to not trav­el for me is a few months, hah!

      Reply

  6. This is so excit­ing!!! It’ll be hard and scary, but fun at the same time. 

    And then you get to come to the sun and beach in LA with us.… What could pos­si­bly be better?

    Reply

  7. Con­grats, Gwen! It’s got­ta be a whirl­wind of emo­tions, but the excite­ment must be off the charts. As some­body who day­dreams about doing what you’re doing all the time, I’ll be read­ing along with eager anticipation.
    PS — Wel­come to the land of super cool mon­ey bloggers! 😉

    Reply

    • I’m at 1000% per­cent excite­ment! I’ve been long­ing for this day for years and it’s final­ly here. You’ll have to come to a meet­up some­time so we can actu­al­ly meet!

      Reply

  8. Wel­come to the awe­some­ness place to live! I can only assume this means many more local MN mee­tups! Good luck on this new stage. 😀

    …ps don’t for­get to come back after all the adventuring!

    Reply

    • So many more local Mee­tups. Get your tongs ready, we’re going to BBQ when it stops snowing!

      Reply

  9. Ven­tur­ing into the unknown is always a lit­tle scary and excit­ing. Good luck on your new phase in life! I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing about all the great things you’ll do from here on out.

    Reply

  10. Con­grats upon con­grats for you tak­ing the plunge! I was just think­ing of how much work sucked today and now I can at least live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through you. 🙂 

    When Mr. Picky Pinch­er and I moved in togeth­er, we split gro­ceries by cost. “I’ll get the chick­en if you get the bacon.” It was­n’t a per­fect split, but we made it work.

    Reply

    • Liv­ing vic­ar­i­ous­ly through me looks like not going out­side for 5 days straight and not putting jeans or fan­cy work pants on. #glo­ri­ous

      Reply

  11. My last day at my job was exact­ly 5 busi­ness days before yours, and I felt ALL the feels that last week. I was also com­plete­ly over­whelmed by the sup­port (I’d been with my com­pa­ny for near­ly 21 years, also in vis­i­ble lead­er­ship posi­tions) and the ridicu­lous­ly kind things peo­ple said. It filled me with grat­i­tude! I for­ward­ed the most mean­ing­ful ones to my per­son­al email so I can read them again when I want a good cry (I TOTALLY get that Ger­man phrase!). It took sev­er­al days to over­came the emo­tion­al toll it took on me to leave. I did­n’t antic­i­pate that. At. All. I sim­ply can’t imag­ine going through that AND mov­ing to anoth­er state AND mov­ing in with some­one for the first time! Lots of change!

    Min­neso­ta wel­comes you though! The snow was just to make sure you were *pos­i­tive* you want­ed to do this. You’re extra com­mit­ted now! 😉

    Reply

    • Con­grat­u­la­tions on leav­ing your job! Hope you did­n’t have too many embar­rass­ing moments as you said good­bye.… I also for­ward­ed a ton of emails to my per­son­al email so I would have both the emails and address­es for peo­ple. Thanks for the wel­come to Minnesota!

      Reply

  12. Awe­some sauce!! Huge con­grats. You will always look back on this as a big deal and the best thing you did! You’re gonna have lots of emo­tions and maybe even some sec­ond guess­ing, but just move forward!

    Reply

  14. Wel­come to Win­ter Hell on Earth! BOOOO!!! I hope with your arrival this crap melts fast. Tired of it.
    Back to YOU. Kudos, Gwen. You made it hap­pen. Glad to have you join us in Min­ny — we’ll be ready with a pitch­er of margs and pranks for Erik.

    Reply

    • It’s in the 50’s lat­er this week.… does that count? I’ll be ready to receive both options!

      Reply

  15. Wow, talk about hav­ing your hands full! Those are all excit­ing changes though and I’m sure they will all work out for the best. 

    Leav­ing a job you’ve held for awhile can be a chal­lenge, espe­cial­ly when you’re leav­ing on good terms. I did this a cou­ple of years ago and even though I knew it was the right move (I’d been offered a new job), it was still hard to say good­bye to col­leagues and clients I’d grown close with. No regrets though, it was the right time. 

    Good luck get­ting set­tled and cre­at­ing new rou­tines with your boyfriend.

    Reply

    • Thank you Sarah! It was hard, but I think this will be the best thing I’ve ever done for myself.

      Reply

  16. WOOHOO — Con­grat­u­la­tions!!! After read­ing your blogs you def­i­nite­ly seem to be head­ing in the right direc­tion. I’m a GenX’er who’s about 20 years late to the FI scene but I’m full steam on the path to FI now. I have a lot of catch­ing up to do. I’m in NYC and would love to find out more about the mon­ey retreat and def­i­nite­ly meet­ing up with you and oth­er FI’ers in NYC.

    Reply

    • Hi Robert! The mon­ey retreat is for ladies only and sold out super fast, I’m afraid. I’m def­i­nite­ly down for a meet­up in NYC though!

      Reply

  17. Con­grats on leav­ing the cor­po­rate world! I’m so excit­ed for what’s ahead for you and look for­ward to fol­low­ing your jour­ney. I’m still stuck in neg­a­tive net worth but your sto­ry def­i­nite­ly inspires me to look into ear­ly retire­ment! Until then, hope you won’t mind if I just live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through you. 🙂

    Reply

    • Thank you for the kind and wise words Angela. It’s been an inter­est­ing first week togeth­er for sure!

      Reply

  19. Instead of clean­ing your vacat­ing apart­ment your­self, HIRE a pro­fes­sion­al to do it for you. Pre­tend you’re the ten­ant that skipped and eval­u­ate the job the clean­ing ser­vice does. Work with your man­age­ment com­pa­ny to find the clean­ing service–or better–use the man­age­ment com­pa­ny to do this as a test for how well they’ll han­dle turn­ing your units in the future.

    Reply

    • It took me about 20 min­utes to flip the unit. No big­gie this time around. If some­one leaves behind crap again and it takes me days, then I’ll have peo­ple come in and do it for me.

      Reply

  21. Con­grats Gwen! LA sounds fuu­u­u­un! Oh I think my hus­band might go to some Google mus­tache meet up, not sure if it’s related/same as the camp though. Are you nev­er ner­vous meet­ing peo­ple from the online world? >_<

    Reply

    • At the begin­ning, I was kin­da ner­vous. I mean, it’s a big deal to just walk up to a group of strangers and say hey. But what helps me is know­ing I know at least one per­son there ahead of time to use as a base to get com­fort­able and then branch out. They’re like my safe­ty blanket 🙂

      Reply

  22. I love this so much! While I know it won’t be easy, I know that you, out of any­one I know, will make it work. And not just make it work, you will crush the chal­lenge. Look­ing for­ward to hear­ing about your entre­pre­neur endeav­ors and can’t wait to see you in June. Woot woot! Back­street’s back alright!!

    Reply

    • Every­bodyyyyy.….. get ready for Gwen to hit up LA! Ok it does­n’t quite go along with the music but the inten­tion is there. See you soon!

      Reply

  24. Well done, Gwen, and con­grats! All the best and I look for­ward to read­ing about your FI life!

    P.S. I may be leav­ing my job soon (to anoth­er job, unfortunately–not to awe­some­ness like you) and this post was a great expla­na­tion of all of the feel­ings I antic­i­pate. Looks like I need to brush up on my German…

    Reply

  25. Con­grat­u­la­tions on being your own boss. It’s a lit­tle scary (ok, a lot) at first, but it also is very excit­ing. Every­thing rests on your shoul­ders. Work hard and you will be a big success! 🙂

    Reply

  26. Con­grat­u­la­tions for quit­ting. I’m sure you will grow and be more suc­cess­ful than ever. I also real­ly enjoy lis­ten­ing to the FIRE drill pod­cast on my way to work. Very inspiring.

    Reply

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