New Year’s Resolution update time.  As the year has progressed, I was thinking about the New Year’s Resolutions of many people.  You know, lose weight/get in shape, be money smart, and/or be a better person (somehow).  We didn’t do that stuff actually, but I was thinking about the money resolution…

Over the years—OK, decades—we chose to live a little further below our means and save an extra say 25% of our income.  We did not deprive ourselves too much with the these savings.  Actually, we weren’t deprived at all. We were conscious of our spending and really paid attention to our wants, to be sure we really wanted the items.

This extra saving activity (yes, I think of this as an activity) resulted in reaching FI/RE fairly quickly.  Once we became FIREd our time became 100% our own, for ourselves—freedom.

This made me think about “savings rate.”  Yes, there are discussions and formulas available for calculating “your savings rate.”  I’m well educated and I can’t seem to solve, or actually figure out which formulate is correct, or even best.  But, I do know our “saving return.”

Sacrificing saving 25% (more), therefore returned 100%.

I’ve been reading a lot of FIRE articles everywhere lately.  It seems we are the news-worthy buzzwords to get views/readers.  It doesn’t matter if you are in your 20′, 30’s or 50’s, the thought of retiring “early” and the process involved is extremely intriguing.

We’ve all heard the advice to save 10% of your pay.  That seems like a long slog for FI people.  However, to many/most of our country, saving so much is unheard of, an impossibility, to the point where you can’t make the car payments, or pay the cell phone/internet bill, never considering the restaurant totals embedded in your bank account each month.

More and more financial planners are giving people the (stretch?) target of a 15% savings rate.  Some planners include the company match in that amount.  While other advisors may hope the match is an additional amount beyond the 10-15%.

Let’s say someone is awesome, they are saving 15% themselves, there’s a 5% company magic match, maybe future social security income and a future pension/employer plan of some sort…now you’re getting close to a total amount of 25%. That is off-the-chart crushing it.  Hopefully, this person’s lifestyle hasn’t risen drastically on the hedonic treadmill (I love typing “treadmill” as a runner, fitness person…) and they have room in their monthly cash flow to absorb this increased savings.

So, wouldn’t the above be great?

Here’s how we ended up taking it to the next level, almost instinctively.  We pushed to save an additional 25% of our income.  As a dual educated professional household (small house, 10 yr old used cars) we enjoyed ourselves just fine after we saved large chunks of income each month.

Within a few years of saving this “extra” amount, we started to look at our cash flow as a “live off one of the two income” strategies.  It turned out increasing our savings another 25% from a great 25% base savings rate, we hit close to 50% savings.  There was a point in 1999 where my company outsourced our department to an IT company.  That was a strange uncertainty for future employment and a little scary as an employee, but I was not stressed on the money side— we had savings and we could live on the one remaining income.  Amazingly, as this employer event was unfolding it was the exact timeframe we were stepping up our conscious savings rate with a vision of the future.  I believe most people envision the present, the “I can afford this much for my monthly XYZ payment.”

We knew based on decades of understanding our spending—it was worth spending the hour every month—what our lives cost.  We knew we had the money set aside for whatever.  We knew our cash flow like a well-run business machine.  We knew if we wanted to work for “playchecks” that we could.  Today we know there are so many variables out there, ahead of us, and that we have no idea what’s in store for our future.  But, we are planners, adjustors, and smart enough to know we don’t know.

After 20+ years of saving and then 10 more years of saving a great amount, we FIREd ourselves. 

We saved 25% more than a great rate (of 25%) to get 100% of our time returned to us.  I cannot think of a better return for your efforts.

I ask you, how could you change your life enjoyment vs spending?  Do you have to sacrifice items, or not?  Can you do everything, or even many of your desires and still have an early exit from the daily grind?  I can answer one question, will you be less stressed about money.  Yes, money will be different when you have it stockpiled, rather than worrying about how to send it out to people/companies.

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice.

So hopefully you read about my successful Job Design Change and realize the opportunity you may have to steer your own professional work ship.  Let me present an equally, or more amazing job change I performed.  Three sacred words for many: Work From Home, or two words: Work Remotely.

The year was about 2005.  It had been over a year since I narrowed my scope of responsibility but expanded it across global divisions.  I spent most of my day working with half a dozen deployment teams located on three continents, while at the same time I was starting to travel more around the country. 

Because of the ramp-up of international teams, I was adding more and more daily activities for Europe and Asia requiring earlier start and later end times for my day.  Note: I only lived 5 minutes from our offices.

Wednesdays:

I was feeling a little too time-consumed and remembered how I was truly ‘just an employee number’ to the company leadership so I thought I would do something for me.  I decided to start working from home on Wednesdays.  I didn’t ask anyone, I just stayed home one Wednesday and worked like normal. This is crazy now that I look back on it, but nobody questioned anything because of the traveling.

I worked on a huge hundred(?) million dollar 10-year project so there were hundreds of people working on this, all over the world, traveling weekly.  Obviously people were always out of the office, traveling across town, across the country, and around the world—my boss(es) included (they were often all consumed with the people/positions above them, pushing to climb the megacorp ladder, than worry about my @$$ in a seat). 

Tue & Thu:

On Thursdays I’d slide into my desk and there were no “where were you yesterday” questions, no push back, no problems.  After a couple of months, I changed to Tuesday & Thursday from home.  Same result when I arrived at my desk the next day, no issues.  Around this time I started emailing my boss updates, important notices, successes/wins so they ALWAYS knew what was going on.  I made sure my boss was never stopped in the hallway (or any site hallway around the world) and be caught off guard with a problem/issue.  Remember: Job #1 is to make your boss’ job easier and job #2 is to make your boss look good.  (I had multiple great supportive, trusting bosses).

Mon, Wed & Fri…Mon – Fri:

Probably about 9 or 10 months since I originally started Weds, I changed to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from home.  Then, which is ultra mind-blowing to think about now, a couple of months later I just stopped going into the office much at all. 

So, now I’m not going into the office to work.  I’d bet some people thought I just spent full-time at another location because of a deployment, I didn’t know what my peers wondered, and didn’t care.  Most of them were mostly concerned about success and climbing the corp ladder like the bosses.  I loved my job and the level/pay I was at.  My work/life balance was exceptional and maybe some of this all had to do with saving (FU money) for years prior. 

Let me recap: within maybe 12 months I went from a cube to working from home without asking.  I maintained this schedule for about 10 years.  I had no less than FOUR different managers who never questioned my working location—or job function for that matter.  I guess when the new manager came into our team they just assumed my location-less life was approved.  (funny)

Bosses:

I worked smart.  I did a great positive job.  I stepped up and took on additional work.  I never caused employee problems.  I showed energy and passion on conference calls. My mid-year and yearly reviews ALWAYS started the same for years and years, “do not change anything you’re doing.” 

Side note: I do believe my pay raises may have suffered a little (bonus not at all).  I usually only received 75-80% of the maximum raise range.  The mean for the team was 50%.  I believe the less-than-max amount was because I wasn’t in person ass-kissing all the time.  But because we lived a smart savings lifestyle, and we didn’t need to climb the hedonic treadmill, I didn’t have to earn a lot more each year. 

Amazing:

Job was great, work/life balance was great, savings were great, marriage was great, FU money was flowing into our accounts amplifying all of the previous greatness listed. 

I close on a funny note—not the one where I couldn’t find my bosses new office for my yearly review—but the one where the department admin assistant emailed me and said

“it has been determined that you have not used your physical desk location in over 90 days [actually much, much longer] so you need to remove your personal items so it can be reassigned.” 

I was losing my sweet cube on the 4^th floor with a beautiful window view of 20+ miles of desert scenery

Ah, such is life, soon to be LifeInFIRE…

Find little ways to improve your job…your life.  As you get stronger financially and professionally you will begin to make some of your own rules.  Don’t take from others, but give in a different way.

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice.

I was talking with some ChooseFI friends at our meeting/meetup after an excellent presentation on targeting your Super Powers and trying to push the other life tasks to the side.  I shared how I did an unofficial Job Design change.

I worked at a mega corp for 18 years.  It was great.  The worst part was every 18-24 months there was some type of market constraint forcing the management to consolidate teams, departments, and divisions.  We peons were always aware during these times that someone in your 4-person cubicle would not be there at the end of the day.  FREAKY, crazy stuff—unless you have FU money.

I went through six or seven of these RIFs.  Once our whole department was outsourced to IT companies—yeah, that was strange.  I ended up being hired back into the mega corp  6 months later into a great position, and bridged my way back in as if I had never left.

What I learned from these activities are:

1. No matter how hard you work, how much effort you give to the company, you are truly just an employee number—a cost to the company leadership and
2. The work you perform/deliver must be valuable to your boss(es) to have a chance at corporate survival. 

This post is about being strong enough to do what you want—at work, elsewhere, etc.

My new position in 2004 was an IT Infrastructure architect and security leader for our huge division’s global deployment project (a “10-year” project).  My colleague had the same position for his division.

This was a great job with a lot of cool technology, lots of interesting travel, and working with very smart people who were hand-picked to work this important project.  After about a year in the job, I decided I liked the infrastructure aspect much more than security.  This became obvious to me as my peer seemed to love the security tasks. 

One day in a meeting, I told him, “I will take over your division’s infrastructure if you take over my security role and we can focus on our interests (strengths).”  He thought for a while and said he would “ask his director.”  I immediately said, “let’s try it first, in the meetings we share and see how it goes.”

My logic was simple; I thought if we just started working with each other’s divisional teams more and accomplishing the tasks, nobody would care.  It turned out that taking on his infrastructure was simple enough for me, the team members and stakeholders seemed to appreciate our expertise immediately compared to each doing both roles simultaneously.  (See item #2 above)

We continued in our new roles for the next decade more or less, doing what we loved.  Nobody EVER questioned why I worked in the other division and not on my security tasks because all the work was being completed, with both high quality and a positive attitude.

When I think back to how ridiculously bold it was to change my (newish) job role and work across divisions without asking anyone, especially in a mega corp, I realize I’ve done the same ‘being-different’ in so many aspects of my life. 

Maybe the goal to the success of each “life differences“ was to avoid a problem while delivering successfully.  Which of the graphics above seem the most logical to a boss?  I figured; deliver for the stakeholders so the bosses could only accept the success.

After this job change, I never had to “beg for forgiveness vs ask for permission” because success doesn’t require forgiveness.  I (we) just happened to be successful.  If we would have failed, then there would have been some serious scrambling.

My next post will be about another un-requested job change that worked out great…

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice.