spoonman's Journal

[spoonman]

#038 04/25/2014 -- Final Days of Agony

These past few weeks have been hell for me at work. My wife has also had to deal with a lot of crap at work. Why am I feeling so much agony in these final days of corporate employment? After all, we’re only 4 months away from pulling the trigger. Well, to my great surprise, it appears that I still give a shit about work.

Back in entry #015, I wrote about a phenomenon I was hoping to experience at this point of our journey, a phenomenon I called ERE Senioritis. Basically, I thought that knowing I only have a few months left of work would precipitate an I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude that would allow me to feel less stress at work. I envisioned a situation where I would seriously take my foot off the pedal and just sort coast to the finish line. Well, that hasn’t been the case.

In the past several weeks I’ve witnessed and experienced incredibly aggressive tactics employed by our program managers in order to win more business. For instance, they want to execute a phase of the project that would normally take a year in just six weeks. Yup, just six weeks. That’s the sort of shit that gives rise to a bad day at work, as I discussed in entry #23. So, to my surprise, I’ve actually gotten stressed out by the situation, which has apparently overpowered whatever bit of ERE Senioritis I was hoping to have. I keep asking myself, how the fuck are we going to pull this off? Everyone else in the team is stressed out, but they are very good at masking it. I know they are stressed out because I’ve had side conversations with them, and they all know we’re going to generate something that is nowhere near complete. They are actually afraid of winning the next contract because we are rushing through the current one. The senior folks in the team have a “well, what can you do?” attitude that I find incredibly annoying. They’re just stupidly trying to meet the unrealistic demands of some high-up son of a bitch who only cares about moving earnings to the left.

The good news is that most of this drama will end in six weeks, after that I should be able to experience far less stress. I have to admit that I’ve thought about pulling the trigger after the completion of the stressful project in six weeks. I’ve resisted because we have a clear path forward to the finish line that I don’t want to ruin. We would be leaving a little too much money behind if we quit before our appointed time in August.

Another “positive” aspect of the situation is that we are not likely to succumb to One More Year syndrome, which I have to admit I have thought about sometimes. It’s not worth enduring another year of this shit just to enhance our sense of security.

So close, yet so far.

[sky]

Ask for a raise.

[spoonman]

Hah! I've definitely felt like I deserve a raise, but I haven't bothered with it because I plan on leaving in a few months. I recently got my annual 2.99% raise (yes, that hundreth of a percent will keep the company solvent), so the most I could get from them at this point would be an additional 2.99%.

I plan on breaking the news that I will leave the company maybe a month before I do. I can guarantee you, they will try to offer me all kinds of silly raises in order to keep me onboard. They will try their best to make me feel guilty, and I might, but I think at that point at least all stress will evaporate.

[sky]

Ask for a raise to put them in their place. Act offended if they don't bump you up 10%. Play games with the man. There will come a point when your boss thinks he needs you and you will at least make them nervous.

[1taskaday]

Hi Spoonman,Just a short note to say I love your journal and it motivates me to keep my head down and get on with my own plan.

December to mid-April was very stressful for me at work but I got through it and all is calm now.
I think what helped me is that (excuse the language), I really realised that I did not give a shit long-term what happens there, as I will be gone soon.
This freed me up amazingly, it was my ego protecting my reputation of being "an excellent worker and always getting the job done”.
But I have zero ambitions at that place and let someone else (or many as it seems) who have future ambitions lead the way and impress management.
Now I go in and do my own days work to the best of my ability, but I have too much respect for my sanity and health to wear myself out.

Now I just stand with the others looking into the "black holes",(surmountable problems, if anyone cared to put a bit of effort into solving them) shaking my head and sighing, never coming up with a solution or trying to solve anything. I am now "just like the rest “coasting along,-a mediocre employee with nobody to impress or nothing to prove.

Sometimes it is ourselves that take all the pressure on, as we feel we must "prove ourselves" and work harder than the rest.
Why? You are leaving soon, what’s the worst they can do to you? Fire you, so what, not the end of the world. Screw them all, you are getting out soon, do not worry about the "lifers”, they are playing their own game and have their own coping mechanisms-everybody does.

I hope this isn't anything but helpful as I think you and your DW are so lucky and will shortly be living a life that most people wouldn't even dare to dream about.

[spoonman]

...it was my ego protecting my reputation of being "an excellent worker and always getting the job done”.

That's precisely how I feel! That's essentially what it comes down to. I don't believe in the company or what we do any more, but it's really difficult for me not to keep protecting my reputation. I think I will eventually not care about my reputation either, I just hope it happens sooner rather than later. Protecting my reputation is almost like a reflex, it's something that's happening at root level and will take a while to get rid of.

Thank you for stopping by, you've articulated my concerns in a way that will help me cope with them!

[saving-10-years]

@spoonman, for me (being bull-headed) there was also right up until the end a feeling that this was my last opportunity to change things. I kept that up until right at the end. It was a feeling that I had invested so much in and got so far that to 'give up now' on the keeping things moving forward would be somehow a premature admission of defeat. It also perhaps was a case of not letting students down (rather than colleagues who can fend for themselves). I knew all the time that what @1taskaday suggests is the saner path but I never managed to get there.

Several colleagues expressed surprise that I was still doing all the little extras at the end, I guess that they would not if they were retiring. But I'm sort of glad that I did. No regrets and the end was clearly in sight by that time. I knew it would be only for * months (then weeks, then days). I'm still doing one of two things without pay. Just to neaten off the edges so that I can put it away and not think again about it. I would fret otherwise so, for me, this feels easier and happier.

What I found once it was obvious that I was going shortly (2 months or less) is that I was not asked to do new work. Or rarely. This helped a lot in feeling sane.

[spoonman]

@saving-10-years: Thanks for stopping by, I guess you and I have a similar temperament when it comes to making sure things are running smoothly (or at least ensuring we don't look bad). Thankfully, once I leave my job I won't fret about it much because I'll know I just won't be able to do anything about it. One thing that might bother me is the fate of my intellectual legacy at work and in the industry in general, I have some patents that are still sitting at the US patent office and I'm not sure how the company and I will end up handling that.

[saving-10-years]

@spoonman Its empowering to know that you _can't_ now do anything more. Just passed the four week mark and I am still interested but its in a more objective/less personal sense. I've moved on and with all your plans you'll do that with a vengance. Caring more about the new (future) stuff than the old (done) stuff. Won't be long now.

[spoonman]

#039 04/30/2014 -- April Dividend Income Update

Ahhh, the month of April. This will be among the most memorable income updates because we have exceeded $16,000 in forward annual dividend income! The manner in which we have surpassed the notional PNW green line will also be memorable because this is the first month ever where the income increase from “organic” dividend growth was greater than the increase from contributions to the portfolio!



As of the end of April, our forward annual dividend income stands at $16,185, confidently unlocking the PNW region of possibility space. This income, in conjunction with income from some retirement accounts (in the form of SEPPs, which will bring the total to over 20K/year), will enable us to pull the trigger in August.

This month the forward dividend income increased by $410. The awesome thing is that $247 came from companies that increased their dividends this month, such as IBM, Procter and Gamble, Exxon, Chevron, Wells Fargo, Apple, and Johnson and Johnson. Only $163 came from contributions that my wife and I made to the portfolio. Yup, the majority of our passive income increase this month was due to the mere fact that we’re owners of great businesses. I will never get tired of that!

This month we received $1217 in dividends. I reinvested some of that money, but the majority of it went to our Escape Fund. From this point forward we will channel our dividend income to our Escape Fund. We will also channel our savings toward the Escape Fund and other large expenses that will be coming our way.

Of course, we can keep on going plowing money into our portfolio and increasing our passive income, or we can keep on going and choose to become multi-millionaires, but we believe the time to live life on our own terms is now. We will be leaving money on the table in exchange for recovering our full lives. I just can’t wait to take a nap whenever the fuck I want.

FI beckons! The feeling is more palpable than ever.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Congratulations! That's a huge accomplishment.

[spoonman]

Thanks Gil!

There's a great deal of excitement in the air, especially with summer around the corner.

[spoonman]

#040 05/16/2014 -- Approaching the Finish Line

I just want to write a quick blurb about the current state of things. My wife and I are coping with our final days at work in our own unique ways.

I like to think of it in terms of number of months left until we pull the trigger, which happens to be 3...so a small number =). This month is a real pain for me because we have a major project at work that’s due at the end of the month. I can’t quite relax and coast to the finish line, it still feels very much like a grind.

My wife printed out three calendars, one for May, June, and July. She gets a little thrill each time she crosses off a day. As far as she’s concerned, she’ll be off the hook as soon as she hands in her resignation letter (sometime around August 1), so she’s just slowly working toward that goal.

I am not a big fan of her method because, psychologically speaking, her numbers are rather large. I mean, we’re talking about 60 days or so, I don’t wanna think about that number! =). (I sound like a spoiled brat, I know).

Now that summer is starting, we’re getting a strong pull to just hang loose and chill out. We’ve talked about calling it quits in June, but we’ve decided that it’ll be much better for us to grind it out a bit longer. We’ll have a solid Escape Fund and additional money to visit family and ease into our new budget.

Meanwhile, the dividends keep rolling in just fine. I get a thrill watching the dividend engine helping us fill the Escape Fund!

[C40]

I'm a day counter. For a while I had a whiteboard on my fridge with the number of work days left to FI. It was around 400 at the time. I'd wipe it off and write one less each work day.

I don't do that now, but I have an excel file I look at every once in a while. It has:
- The number of days of work to FI
- The number of days of work to my expected retirement
- The number of days left in my life (assuming a death age).

Right now I have 208 work days to FI, and 19,200 days left before I die (1% of the rest of my life.. 5% of the rest of my life working until I retire) Not so bad when you compare it like that. 60 is a tiny number!

[rube]

go go go go Spoonman!
I enjoy reading your updates. It is encouraging!

I'll also be very interested to read how you will do in the months and years after the next 60 days.

[spoonman]

@rube: thanks for stopping by! I'm glad you find this journal encouraging, it's good to feed each other's energy.

@C40: That's a cool way to look at it. Someone pointed me to this other way of framing one's time on this earth: http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html

I think it's incredibly sobering.

[spoonman]

#041 05/23/2014 -- The Importance of Frugality

After we quit our jobs, we won’t have access to a good double income that we can tap into on whim, at least not initially. We are generally very frugal, we live far below our means and don’t overindulge. Yes, every so often we go out to a concert or buy expensive movie tickets, but rarely do we spend $100 on a dinner.

However, declaring ourselves to be FI will require a strict dedication to frugality that we have not really practiced to date. I mean, I do try to reuse a Ziploc bag as much as I can, and my wife knows how to get optimal mileage out of a napkin. But we will have to pay closer attention to our budget after we leave our jobs. I very much look forward to that because I think it will be a fun challenge, sort of like the excitement we get from using the emergency flashlight during the annual 10 minute blackout. I think that we will get to use certain frugal muscles that we haven’t given ourselves the chance to use yet. I very much look forward to using the YNAB system because it will make it all feel more like a videogame.

In any case, frugality will play a much more important role for us than it has so far. Frugality is one of the cornerstones in the pursuit of FI, which has been stated and restated countless times by everyone in the community. But that lesson will only truly hit home after we leave our jobs. It’s been a while since either of us lived the student lifestyle of being perpetually broke. The way I look at it, the new lifestyle will make every dollar of disposable income that much more delicious to use. It’ll feel like my college days when I spent weeks and months building the courage to make the leap and buy a $50 videogame or a $12 music album. Or like the time when I was in high school, when it took me six months to save $15 to buy a videogame. By the time I had saved the $15 (mostly by finding money stuck inside our couch), the game had gone down to $9.99, so I felt like a high roller when I walked out of the store with $5 left in my pocket!

[spoonman]

#042 05/30/2014 -- Sick and Pissed Off

I just got back from a business trip to the east coast (Washington, DC, to be exact). I hate business travel, especially to the east coast. Basically it all boils down to the following list of indignities: sleep deprivation, dehydration, rubbing shoulders with smelly people, dealing with bad climate, a tremendous amount of stress, more sleep deprivation, getting out of touch with reality back home, etc etc. This trip was the climax to a month full of fear and loathing.

After dealing with the above items, namely getting caught in the rain multiple times and dealing with a sharp temperature drop, I flew back to LA with a bad cold. This morning I felt like total shit because of the cold and knowledge that I had to submit myself to so many indignities.

But why have I chosen to submit myself to these indignities? Well, part of it is to make money, of course, but really it boils down to giving the project and team one final push. There are tens of millions of dollars on the line in potential business, so when the team turns to me for help, it’s difficult to say no. As I mentioned in earlier entries, it’s generally difficult for me to not operate at full capacity in these final days of agony. I could have told management “sorry, I’ve got family in town, I can’t go with you guys”, but that would have been a significant setback to the program.

I will definitely not miss business travel. But despite my anger, I can’t help but feel that I will betray my colleagues when I announce that I plan to leave the company. They have no clue I plan to leave, so it will come as a shock to everyone. They have been grooming me for one of the top slots in the technocracy, especially after all of my recent contributions. They are holding me in very high regard and I will just walk away from it all.

The problem with the people I work with is that they don’t know how to say NO. The company (and our customers) are relentlessly asking for more in return for less. People are more stretched thin than ever, and it doesn’t seem like it will ever get better. This isn’t just an observation of mine, they themselves keep making these assertions. They have little regard for their own health because they don’t dare to turn down new business. Everyone in the industry is bleeding to death fighting for scraps of ever-decreasing size.

I will certainly feel like an ungrateful brat when I make my announcement, but I simply cannot participate in this madness any longer.

[C40]

A friendly reminder: (Listen to the intro and then skip to 5:55)

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/4/6/a/46ab91a ... 70feeaa1ea

... sleep deprivation, dehydration,

Those do NOT have to happen when traveling!

... I could have told management “sorry, I’ve got family in town, I can’t go with you guys”, but that would have been a significant setback to the program....

.....
The problem with the people I work with is that they don’t know how to say NO. The company (and our customers) are relentlessly asking for more in return for less. People are more stretched thin than ever, and it doesn’t seem like it will ever get better. This isn’t just an observation of mine, they themselves keep making these assertions. They have little regard for their own health because they don’t dare to turn down new business. .....

It sounds like you're looking at this from a strange perspective - you've put yourself in a trap. (This doesn't fit 100% into one of the traps he describes, but if you haven't yet, you should read Harry Browne's "How I found Freedom in an Unfree World").

You've already assumed that you have to do XYZ, and that not doing it is a setback. If you're already working reasonably hard, you don't have to do it. Saying yes is EXTRA help, and the project benefit/success is due to this. It is NOT automatic! When you took this job or got your latest promotion, did you agree to working like this? Are you getting a huge bonus when your company is successful? (is your extra effort worth it?)

If a lot of other people who work for your company are always saying yes and doing extra, that's their problem. You may actually do the company and your co-workers a great favor by saying no every once in a while (and helping snap them back to thinking reasonably about work intensity)

I will definitely not miss business travel. But despite my anger, I can’t help but feel that I will betray my colleagues when I announce that I plan to leave the company. They have no clue I plan to leave, so it will come as a shock to everyone. They have been grooming me for one of the top slots in the technocracy, especially after all of my recent contributions. They are holding me in very high regard and I will just walk away from it all.

When you took your job or got your last promotion, was your pay contingent upon not only you doing your current job, but also accepting some specific job in the future? Or working there for X years? If not, you don't owe them anything and they don't owe you anything.

[spoonman]

Thanks for stopping by, C40. I really appreciate the advice.

Dehydration can certainly be avoided, but in a lengthy flight you have to get up multiple times to visit the lavatory, which can be a real pain when you have a window seat. On the outbound flight I pestered the people next to me and managed to stay hydrated. On the return flight I had an aisle seat and had no problem.

Sleep deprivation is almost guaranteed when going from the west coast to the east coast, especially when you have to meet people early in the morning. During these trips I often have to get up at 6am, which translates to 3am pacific time, and sometimes I have to get up even earlier than that.

I wasn't actually asked to attend this particular meeting, it was a requirement. I've known people that have ducked out of going to meetings they are expected to attend, and I can see how people with different personalities than mine would have not given a damn about ducking out, but I'm simply not built that way. I suppose that's the trap that I've put myself in: I just can't help working hard even knowing that I only have 10 weeks of work left. In other words, if I'm already part of a project and there are certain expectations, then I feel compelled to do my best. If I have someone from another project asking me for help, then I easily turn them down (I've been doing that quite a bit recently).

I've heard of Harry Browne's book, I'll look into it. Tim Ferris' advice, on the other hand, is rather generic.

Aside from a couple of tiny bonuses, I am not gonna directly see the benefits of winning that new contract. Money is hardly my motivation, what continues to matter to me is maintaining my reputation. Once I walk away from the job I won't care though.

When you took your job or got your last promotion, was your pay contingent upon not only you doing your current job, but also accepting some specific job in the future? Or working there for X years? If not, you don't owe them anything and they don't owe you anything.

No to all questions, so I suppose I don't owe them anything. I will try to remember than when I make the announcement.