3000 Days

“Maybe a whole generation will wake up and realize that collecting points on your Discover card doesn’t make you rich.” - Dave Ramsey. [TIME]

« The Beginning Before The Beginning | »

After completing my degree in English Literature, I moved to Seattle with:

• 4 boxes of books
• 2 suitcases of belongings
• $2,000 in cash
• $25,000 of student loan debt
• $4,000 of credit card debt

The credit card debt was the result of a poorly funded but successful attempt at university. I had an ongoing battle trying to pay down the debt with work study and other part-time income, but there always seemed to be something else that would come up. Once, I had to place an entire semester of tuition on my discover card. Another time, I opened a Goodyear credit account just to pay for about $1000 of car repairs.

That isn’t to say that all the expenses I charged were necessities. There were plenty of movies and dinners, a computer or two–and then, of course, my two years in Bratislava, Slovakia–all of which is a bit irrelevant. When I arrived in Seattle, I did so decidedly in the red, and I had no plans to change that. I was preparing for a year-long stay in Seattle to get resident tuition at Eastern Washington University for their MFA program in Creative Writing: a near guarantee of poverty. Coming to Seattle in 1996, there were a lot of job opportunities that I didn’t know about. It was the start of the dot com gold rush, and everyone who could string together a few tags of HTML was a hot commodity.

I landed my first job in Seattle in about two weeks. There was an opening in customer service at Coinstar, and the pay was astronomical at $25,000.

Putting that in perspective, the prior two years I had spent in Eastern Europe, I earned about $2000 each year. While at university, I doubt there was a year I earned more than $8000. In relative terms, I was rich. I could do things like go out to dinner or buy a TV or fly back home to Philadelphia on a whim. It’s easy to allow your lifestyle to inflate when the money and credit are readily available. It wasn’t as though I was going out to fine restaurants or flying first class. My lack of financial skill was more like death by a thousand cuts.

I tried to be responsible that first year. I paid off most the $4,000 of credit card debt, but there always seemed to be a about a thousand bucks I couldn’t shake. I contributed 10% to my 401(k) plan, but that only came to about $2,500. I didn’t touch my student loans; I even made an arrangement to pay a little less than the interest in some weird limbo between forbearance and repayment. I think they were being nice to me since I was an English Major and therefore the financial equivalent of disabled.

That first year, I was still $26,000 in debt, but I had something that I never really had prior to that– an asset. My cash savings until that year had just been for delayed short term spending. What i had in that 401(k) was my first real long term asset. That $2,500 turned out to be the first step in my plan,
though at the time I simply participated in the 401(k) because I had read that doing so was probably a good idea.

By the end of the first year, I had been promoted to an IT position within the company. It was a win for both Coinstar and myself. In less than a year I had earned a great promotion, and Coinstar bought itself a Server Administrator for $28,500 a year. In a year, my lifestyle had inflated considerably. I no longer had a roommate, and I was living on my own in a posh little basement apartment off of Greenlake. I bought a bed instead of sleeping on a futon on the floor, and I had talked myself into postponing the MFA for another year.

Financial Scorecard for 1996-97
Income $25,000 to $28,500	Retirement Savings $0 to $2500	Net Worth -$26000 to -$24000

« The Beginning Before The Beginning | »

Photo: Dean Forbes

Over at Soul Shelter Tim Clark has an interesting entry on Opting out of the Deferred Life Plan. He points out that driving oneself through an unpleasant career to achieve independence might not be the best possible way to get to the life you are looking for.

The problem, of course, is that those who achieve financial security through drive rather than passion often discover the hollowness of victory. To use a self-help cliché, the success ladder they struggled so hard to climb was leaning against the wrong building.

I’m pushing 40, reasonably educated, driven and… eager to retire. Well, not retire per se, but to stop grinding away at my job and find something that I love. Many people spend their lives trying to accomplish just that. I think I can get it done in 3000 days.

3000 days.

It seems like a long time to me. Frankly, it is a long time.

If someone is going to set a goal for themselves, shouldn’t they be more ambitious than to set out on a timeline of more than 8 years? My goal, and what I plan to write about over the next year, is how I will trade my cog-like cubicle lifestyle at a Fortune 500 company, for something more satisfying.

I want to trade my career for a calling.

This is normally a straightforward affair–I’ve witnessed some friends go through it:

• Have a crisis
• Go out to purchase a copy of What Color Is Your Parachute?
• Feel a swell of motivation
• Quit the job that is weighing you down
• Spend months sweating out your finances hoping that your vocation turns up soon, because that COBRA deadline looms.

I lack the strength of character necessary for that sort of commitment to the cause. I like getting a good night of sleep. In short, I like to at least have the illusion of security; who doesn’t? To that end, there is a careful plan that in those 3000 days will provide savings for a reasonable retirement at 59 and provide a cushion that will facilitate a ‘Vocation Search’ of 2-4 years.

I suppose one important thing to realize is that this did not start as a careful plan. About two years ago, I recognized an opportunity to make a change for the better, and started planning around this fortunate confluence of events that will permit me the financial freedom to leave my current 9-5 position and find something for myself that is really extraordinary.

Yeah so, “Good lord, another personal finance blogger?” In part, that’s true, but it’s more than money. Money is just a tool, a means to buy the time required to reflect on what it is you really want to get out of life.

It isn’t unreasonable to ask for 3000 days in exchange.

Photo: The Pack