Last time we started a series of posts on my retirement.
If you missed that and want to read it, check out I Retired!
Let’s pick up where we left off.
Business Results Lagging
Our business was “ok” but not great.
Then the perfect storm hit.
Our first quarter had been propped up by a seasonal selling event where customers had to buy from us. The second quarter had no such benefit. As such, our sales dropped dramatically.
Add to this that my boss was out of the office most of April and May, leaving me in charge completely. And this is when the floor fell out of the business.
Remember, I had asked him to let me run things. He did (he was gone) and everything went into the toilet.
That said, we had also launched a MAJOR product with doubtful consumer interest (which was decided before I arrived) and we had moved out of a good selling season.
As you may have guessed, our profitability dropped. We were still ahead of plan for the year but had given up most of the ground we made in the first quarter.
The Storm
When my boss returned to work in mid-May, he exploded on me like I have never seen in almost three decades of business. While he held himself out to be a very ethical, fair, and kind man, he did not treat me in any manner like that over an hour-and-a-half-meeting. I’ve worked for some cut-throat companies and executives in my day, many of whom would not claim to be ethically motivated in any way, and none of them talked to me the way he did. And yet he held himself out to be an ethical man.
He went into a tirade about the business and did it in a demeaning manner. Or at least he tried to be demeaning. I didn’t just take his diatribe — I gave it back to him. I told him honestly what I thought whenever he launched into a topic. Of course, he didn’t want to hear this as some of it had to do with him. And of course he couldn’t be responsible for poor business results — though he had been in charge all the previous years and that’s what we were trying to recover from.
My defense of my long-term plans and my people made him even madder. Ultimately he asked how I thought we were doing and what we should do. I said we had our challenges but we were still ahead on income and that we couldn’t fix a business this troubled overnight. We needed time. He said he wasn’t sure we had time and he didn’t believe in the plan.
He also asked me if this job was my life or not. Asked if I was committed to it.
This was a difficult question to answer because while I was committed to doing a good job, the company was certainly not my life. And I never said it was or pretended it was. My life outside of work was way more important than work.
I gave him some sort of half-hearted reply that made him even madder.
Counter-Point
Let’s pause a bit here for the other side of the story: my boss’s point of view.
He had hired a new manager and there were problems with the business. Of course these problems weren’t new and could have been caused by the bad product the company was forced to launch, but most people are not able (or willing) to take responsibility for the results they have generated. So it had to be my fault, right?
Ok, so even if it was my fault, the way to approach it is to sit down with an employee and decide together what can be done. What are the problems and what steps can we take to address them? It’s the two of us working as a team to fix the issues. Especially since we were still on our profit plan. This is how I’ve handled problems in the past, had other bosses handle problems with me, and what I would expect from any professional business person.
But he did not approach it like that. He took zero personal responsibility, blamed me, and acted more like a spoiled brat who had his candy taken away than the head of a company.
Made a Decision
It was this meeting, in mid-May, where I decided I was out of there. This was the last straw. The micro-managing, focusing on non-priorities, and making key decisions against my advice were cause enough, but this past episode put the situation over the top.
I didn’t know when I was leaving but I was leaving and it was going to be sooner rather than later. I had lost all respect for him and had more respect for myself than to stay around much longer. It especially burned me that he played Dr. Jekyll to the employees but was Mr. Hyde to me.
It was at this time that I began to seriously consider my retirement numbers. I looked at my income as well as developed monthly budgets for the next year and a half. I also projected out a few decades — listing expenses, income, when funds would become available, etc.
This is when I really realized that I had enough. In fact, I had more than enough. Time will tell but it looked like the income I already generated from assets would cover my retirement budget — without drawing from my assets. In a worst-case scenario, I could withdraw a minimal amount of savings each year but even then I could live for 100 years or more on what I had.
Personal Retirement Issues
At the same time I started wrestling with some non-work issues that moved me closer to retirement:
- I started considering the value of time. I was re-reading Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
(which I will review one day soon) and one of the major concepts is the amount of life you’re giving up for the money you make. The trade-off didn’t seem to be working in my favor. I realized I was rich in money but poor in time. - I felt like I was wasting my time at work. I had zero interest in the company and every time my boss launched into another meaningless rabbit trail about one thing or another I literally started thinking “I’m wasting my life right now.” I couldn’t stop yawning.
- I realized I have one year left with my daughter at home. When she leaves for college in the fall of 2017, she won’t be coming back for a long time. She’ll leave as a junior, wants to do an internship in the following summer, then head to her senior year. I have one year left with her and want to make the most of it.
- The same goes for my parents. I don’t know how long they are going to be up and healthy and I don’t want to miss whatever years we have left.
- I started thinking of my own health and how many years I have left. People my age, though it’s rare, have heart attacks, strokes, and the like. One of our 40-something neighbors has a brain tumor that’s been devastating. If I only had three years left, would I be ok spending them at work?
- I was having the “pit in my stomach” every morning. One reader commented here on a post that I should keep working as long as I didn’t have the pit in my stomach feeling. That comment made me realize that I did have it!
- One of my good friends told me the story of another friend who retired at 50. He loved it. When people ask him “But what do you do all day?” his answer is “Whatever I want. What do you do?” I wanted that to be my answer.
- I started reading FIRE (financial independence retire early) blogs. And there are a TON of them. People who have retired earlier and with much less than what I had. I envied their freedom.
- I asked myself what am I working for? Just to get “more”? For what reason? I already had enough. I ran into this quote at Financial Samurai that summed up my thoughts exactly: “A lot of extremely wealthy people are workaholics and don’t take much more than six weeks off a year because they can’t. Their success demands they work around the clock, which is quite frankly, a paradox of success. I’d much rather be a nobody with modest financial means and max freedom.”
(which I will review one day soon) and one of the major concepts is the amount of life you’re giving up for the money you make. The trade-off didn’t seem to be working in my favor. I realized I was rich in money but poor in time.So it was settled. I wanted to retire as soon as possible, but the question was when to do it.
To find out what happens next, see My Retirement Story, Part 3.
Wow, that’s a tough situation, but in my estimation you made the right choice. The fact that you were running the numbers on your retirement was indicator enough that the time was right to leave. Whenever I catch myself checking my 401k balance too often or daydreaming of early retirement it’s usually a good sign that I am ready for a change.
It’s tough working for someone that’s a jerk, but impossible to work for someone that you don’t respect. I’ve worked in many bad situations, but as soon as I lose respect for my direct manager, I know it won’t be long before I am out of there!
You are so right.
I’ve been in other bad spots as well, but not this bad. I’ve also been in spots where I had no choice but to take it (as I looked for another job) because my family needed the income.
This time I had a choice. 🙂
Wow… what a story.
All your retirement issues you listed are good ones to keep in mind. Life is to fragile in the balance and anything can happen. People in your life are way more important in spending time with them because you never know where they will be in the future. Working for a individual that make your life difficult all for what… an extra little cash in hand?
I saw a quote on line in “People don’t quit companies, they quit because of there bosses” and this soooooo fits your situation.
The environment you describe is not worth it to me. Personal fulfillment, creativity and challenges in problem solving is what keeps me going at work. It is just nice that I get paid to do what I do and my employer respects that. Is it enough? Well I would say in order for me to make more money I would need to take on responsibilities that I took on once and it just about put me over the edge and killed me. I guess I learned early on that it was not worth it to me. I make myself happy and the quest for more money early in my career was ruining my happiness.
Congratulations on your retirement.
Thanks, I appreciate it.
As I reflect back, it was the business issues that drove me to seriously consider retirement but the personal ones that really made me go for it.
Thanks for sharing. As a regional CFO of a large company who has P&L responsibility, I can relate. We’ve been doing a turn-around on our region for a few years since I joined and it’s hard to be under the microscope. Luckily our C suite has been supportive.
Your quote from the last post about people “Joining companies and leaving managers.” has been soaking in over the past few days. It makes me think more closely about the way I manage my team.
Do you think you’ll get the “itch” to do something else like start your own business or go back into the workforce in a limited way? Or is it too soon to know?
Knowing your goal setting tendencies, it seems like retirement would be hard.
We shall see on the “itch”. I already have contacts asking me to help them do this or that.
I’m thinking that down the road (a year or so?) I may like to teach or work a bit. And of course I have this blog and I would like to develop it. Maybe 10-20 hours a week to keep up the challenge. But we’ll see.
Retirement is still so new for me that I’m fighting tendencies to really do much and trying to allow it to soak in a bit.
I am guessing that you did what I did. I said “Enough”. When you realize that you CAN retire because you have “enough” saved and “enough” income resources and you had “enough” of being a slave and missing the really important things in your life. You do not need a million dollars to retire. Once you give up your job and find that the job was costing you much more than you were earning. Deduct the cost of transportation, clothes, meals, and the stress to your health from your salary and you will find you made a lot less than you thought per hour. Then factor in the time on the job, frustrations, and loss of YOUR time with family.
Once retired, you need to cover your basic bills. Hopefully you own your home, car, etc and have NO DEBT. Those basic bills can be reduced and the money you free up from the work costs lowers your income needs. You are healthier because now you get those 8 hours of sleep daily, have less stress, spend time doing what ever YOU want. NOW you can take those exercise classes or courses you were interested in, you are on your OWN schedule.
I am happy you found the rabbit hole and escaped.
You’ve been reading Your Money or Your Life too, huh? 😉
I have well over $1 million and have no debt, but your points are still valid — it takes a lot less to retire than most people think it does.
I’ll be sharing my budget in a future post as well as giving updates every quarter or half year so we all can track together what I estimated versus what I actually spend. Should be interesting!
Thank you for your congrats. I appreciate them.
Congrats again ESI. The key point for me was when your boss asked you if this job was your life. And because you had FU money (or close enough to it) your body language and your answer indicated that it wasn’t. That probably infuriated him as you mentioned since people like that want their managers to be totally dependent on the job.
Your list is wonderful and the family reasons really drove the decision home. The reasons given about your parents give me pause as they live half a world away and are in their early 70’s now- that may be one of the drivers for me to hang things up in the coming years. Time will tell.
In the mean time I try and spoil them on nice vacations (Bali this year) whenever they come over to see their granddaughter…
I look forward to reading how you handled your separation and potential for severance. So far you have responded with utmost professionalism and straightforwardness.
This boss reminds me of a person who built a small successful ($20M business) who was looking for a CEO to run the company. I interviewed with him but over time found that he re-negs on his promises, doesn’t support his people but then blames them for decisions he forces them to take, and micromanages. I thought to myself “If I work for this guy, I’ll probably end up wanting to kill him or actually doing it and I don’t need that bad karma.” It was an easy decision to walk away from that.
-Mike
That’s funny (the last part)!
I think you’re in a spot where you could retire anytime you like. So work or not work — it’s a great choice to have.
I hear you on the parents issues. We have taken my parents on two cruises and absolutely loved those times and the memories they created. Looking forward to doing more now that we have the time.
The severance issue will be addressed on the next post, but I’m working on a larger post about it on a bigger site which I’ll share with the readers here when it’s posted.
In my experience, micromanagement is often driven by one’s own insecurities. Seems no different here. Micro managers also do not take criticism well – regardless the form and it only reinforces the insecurities they have in themselves.
You handled it perfectly and you are fortunate enough to have “F-you” money as Jlcollins refers to it. This is exactly why many of us strive for financial independence.
You hit the nail on the head — insecurities. I’ve had several others tell me the same thing after knowing my former boss.
ESI,
Thank you for sharing your story. I also retired on August 1, 2016. Today is day 17 of my early retirement. I don’t even know if I made a right decision to leave my career behind but can tell you that I enjoy this lifestyle. I no longer have to attend long and wasteful meetings and no longer have to attend BS performance reviews with managers who don’t even understand the business. I don’t have to deal with stupid products I have been dealing with and don’t have to deal with jerks at work. I am mentally healthy now.
As a newbie retiree without debt, I am only concerned about our retirement finance and if we can survive during the financial storms like 2009 and 2010. I am not sure if we will see another financial meltdown in our life but need to prepare for it. It is easier to survive during the bull markets but is extremely hard to do so during the bear markets.
You just need to hit the button.
Congrats! We are on this journey together!
You can always go back to work if you want, but something tells me you won’t want to. 🙂
ESI, so happy for you!
Thanks for sharing this final chapter of your worklife, I got a pit in my stomach reading about your pit in your stomach. My thought is that the boss could ‘feel’ his lack of power over you. Not something boss’s are accustomed to, as dominance (stick/carrot) is the only tool they have.
In addition, boss ‘ego’ problems unfortunately wind up band-aided over by damaging subordinate egos. Am feeling you completely on your rejection of that 90-minute meeting, and it must have frustrated him greatly that you didn’t react as he wanted you to. Thank you so much for sharing the impact of your lifetime of Earning/Saving/Investing, and the freedom it provided you in that moment. Your story is amazing, and I can’t wait for Part 3!
Thanks! I appreciate your comments and are thankful to have you here!
We can’t retire any time in the next 5 years really, but I do try to max out my time with friends and family along the way despite still having the online emails to manage, the blog to write for, and the pet sitting to do. I agree with all of your points though…in short, life is too short and too much of an unknown to ever spend a significant portion of it unhappy. 🙂
You’re too busy to retire!!! 🙂
You’re still pretty young so there’s plenty of time left for you. I’m sure you’ll beat me to it by 10 years or more!
Seems like you had a lousy boss who didn’t want to take any responsibility or work with you in a constructive manner to solve problems. Glad you decided to get out of the toxic situation.
quite inspiring – thanks for sharing the details.
i have been contemplating early retirement (my target was 40, but then i shifted it to 45). your story gives me the added courage to make sure i don’t shift it again. amen!
Is it bad that at 34 years old I have the same feelings/ dreams that you have? Life is really meant to be enjoyed and I also believe that the amount of life that I’m giving up for the money that I make is just not worth it. I have a wonderful life outside of the 40 hours that I spend at work. And I wish that I could make those outside of work hours the majority.
I don’t think it’s bad.
But you should begin to work on an escape plan asap. The sooner you get started the sooner you’ll have enough to retire.
Congrats! I always felt that you have already had more than enough to retire for a fair amount of time (I read retire early blogs, too), now just enjoy your life and thrive with your personal and professional projects. You won’t regret your decision a bit, that I am sure.
Thanks! 🙂
P.S. Can you also share a few of your favorite FIRE blogs (by e-mail or via a blog post)?
I don’t say I have a favorite.
Each is good in their own way.
The part I like best is that they tell personal stories, plans, etc. It’s very interesting.
I generally distrust what people feel they need to repeat about themselves. Any place I’ve worked where they’ve talked too much about how good they were was always awful.