You’re Promoted! Thanks, But I’m Quitting…

Man was Friday an exciting, stressful, adrenaline fueled sort of day. It definitely added another notch in the career belt for “crazy things that happen at work.” If you didn’t catch what happened on Twitter this past week, here’s the short version of what happened.

If you’ve been following the blog for a little while, you’ll know that my GM “Bill” put me on a development track to get recommended for “the next available” team lead spot. While some positions came and went without me being promoted to them, true to his word, Bill did recommend me for a new team lead position. On Friday he announced to me and my current boss that I would be leaving his team because I was being promoted to the Subsurface Characterization Team Lead for Texas Delaware Basin. Essentially, I got promoted to my boss’s position just a different part of the basin. What neither of them knew was that I wouldn’t be an employee here after August 2nd. Whoops… That led to some soul searching as to what would I do, and the “not as awkward as you would think” conversations I had when I ultimately declined the promotion.

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Lifestyle Change Update

As our Lifestyle Change unfolds, we have been making some wholesale downsizing changes around our household. We found over 5 car loads of items to donate, we’ve sold multiple items, given away too many items to count, and have taken advantage of our “heavy trash” day to get rid of items we couldn’t give away or sell. Beyond being a little embarrassed by how much stuff we have accumulated in the last 5 years, we figured we were doing well with downsizing.

Then I did a podcast interview with Denis and Katie at Chain of Wealth. During that interview when I was talking about trimming our excess spending by looking at things as “a want or a need”, Katie mentioned that she liked to think about an item in terms of, “Do I want this badly enough to have to pack it and move it?” Mrs. SSC heard that and took it to heart because we’ll be moving in another month and we will be downsizing from our current house. Now that we potentially, have a new house, we know how much space we will have and what things can or can’t move with us.

Here are updates from the past few weeks on how our lives are going with the Lifestyle Change.

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Chain of Wealth Podcast Interview!

Today, I’m featuring our podcast interview with Chain of Wealth. If you haven’t heard of them, you should check out their site. It is run by Denis and Katie and they set it up to document Katie’s debt payoff story while inspiring other folks to tackle their own PF issues. They blog about Katie’s debt payoff story and other personal finance related topics and they put out podcast interviews with other inspiring people on Mondays and Thursdays. Currently, their podcast has 58 episodes and includes names like Erin from Broke Millenial, Tanja from Our Next Life, Billy from Wealth Well Done, and Matt Lane from Optimize Your Life just to name a few.

This week, we were featured on the podcast in an interview that you can check out here. It was a lot of fun getting to chat with Denis and Katie about us, our new upcoming Lifestyle Change, the Fully Funded Lifestyle Concept, and more.

Give it a listen and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did making it.

 

Thanks again to Denis and Katie at Chain of Wealth for featuring us!

Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC): Origin Story

Our journey down the path to Financial Independence Early Retirement (FIRE) began with the usual suspects, unhappiness at work and a doggedly busy schedule. While Mrs. SSC was convinced that we could do it, I wasn’t so on board with the idea. This was because the few examples I saw were too extreme and so I resisted. It took years for me to come around to the fact that our plan didn’t have to be like anyone else’s.

What didn’t take that long to come around to, was the concept of a Fully Funded Lifestyle Change, or FFLC as we call it. What’s different about that concept is that it isn’t focused on FIRE, it’s focused on making the best lives for ourselves now. In short, we wanted to be able to abandon the fast paced, hectic days filled with long hours away from the kids. What we didn’t want to do was abandon the safety and security of not worrying about money, bills, and more that we had grown accustomed to. So, we made a plan that when we hit a certain number in savings, brokerage accounts, and 401k’s we would jettison our hectic lifestyle here and relocate to a better lifestyle somewhere else. The better lifestyle for us meant more time with family and freedom of schedule, even if it came with a greatly reduced income. This was the basis for our Fully Funded Lifestyle Change concept.

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The “Year of the Career” Rolls On!

From a career standpoint, this year has been pretty amazing for me and Mrs. SSC. I am being trained for a leadership role at my company, I earned 1.5x my bonus target of 25% and I received a little larger sized Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) reward as well. I feel like I rocked it last year! Mrs. SSC also has had a great year making the cut to a finalist for a tenure track geophysicist position at a well respected university. Last week she found out that they want to offer her the position! Woohoo!!! Details are being worked out such as startup funds and all of that sort of thing, but this train just left the station heading out of Texas. All aboard!

But wait… Didn’t I just say that I was being groomed for a leadership role at work? With all of those bonuses and stock being thrown at me what the heck am I going to do? My career is just taking off into that golden realm of “peak earnings” where I get to cash in on building up 10 years of experience and can strategize instead of problem solve. Am I just going to walk away from all of that? Well, here’s how that’s all going to go down.

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The Freedom to Make Fully Funded Lifestyle “Choices”

There has been a lot going on in the SSC household this year, with me getting positioned to move into a leadership role at work and Mrs. SSC making it to a finalist position for a new job at another university. These changes may or may not shake up our latest Canyon Lake plan, depending on which one comes to fruition, but it reminded us that we’ve positioned ourselves to be able to fully evaluate and take advantage of these opportunities when they come up. We have the freedom of choice in whatever opportunities show up. We keep talking about a Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC), rather than Financial Independent Retire Early (FIRE) because we feel like we will most likely do something when we early retire. Like most bloggers that reach FIRE, few actually “retire”, but instead transition into having the freedom to work at the schedule, lifestyle, and type of work that they want to do, rather than be stuck in a 40+ hr a week job.

What we realized is that we won’t be leaving the workforce totally, we’re just transitioning into something else. Mrs. SSC has been more hesitant about this transition than I am which is what ultimately led to our Canyon Lake plan. She had the “misfortune” of getting her dream job a couple of years before we were planning to hit FIRE and enact our FFLC plan. Now that she’s been in that job a few years and away from megacorp, she isn’t scouring the PF blogosphere looking for “ways to early retire” from a job and lifestyle that she hates. We’ve been able to transition into a good comfortable lifestyle with both of us working jobs we love. Most bloggers, us included, talk about “retire to” something, or “find your ikigai” so you have purpose post career. What if your career is fun and you don’t necessarily want to retire from it?

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Stick to the Plan or Chase Adventure?

Last week I wrote about my skip a level meeting where I was told I was going to be recommended for the next geoscience leadership position. It was exciting news and I am happy to be recognized for that recommendation, but I’m not the only one in the house with upcoming career decisions. Last Fall Mrs. SSC saw a job posting at a large University that, on paper, looks like it would be a great fit for her and our lifestyle. She didn’t think that she would be a strong candidate, but like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play, so she turned in her application. Months go by, and she gets a call that she has made the short list of applicants! Currently, she passed that round of interviews and has moved on as one of the finalists! Congrats to Mrs. SSC!!
The only real issue is that this new career move would drastically alter our current Canyon Lake plan, as the position is in a different state. Yep, if everything turns out roses and rainbows, such as Mrs. SSC gets an offer, likes the University, and more importantly the job and time requirements of the position, we could potentially be relocating as early as this Fall. Yipe! There are still a lot of things to consider if everything aligns in that way, and here’s what we think could be the good and bad of that position.

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I’m Getting Pulled up the Corporate Ladder…

Yesterday, I found out that I am being recommended for the next Geoscience leadership position that becomes available. My reaction was pretty mixed, sort of like a dog that chases cars, and then finally catches one. “Hooray! Wait… Now what do I do with this?” Not that I’ve been chasing a management spot because I’ve told my managers I wanted to stay technical rather than go into a leadership position. I put the caveat that if it was a small team lead type of position, sure, but having 8+ direct reports sounds pretty horrid. I’m fine with staying on the technical side, but I have always thought that being a team lead could be fun. Like Mrs. SSC and I discussed, “Well, now that I’m in the twilight of my career, if I become team lead and it sucks ass, I only have a couple of years to deal with it, lol.”

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Our 2017 Spending: What a Dumpster Fire!

Man, what a year 2017 was, what a year indeed. We thought it had gone fairly well. Our new Lifestyle Change schedule was amazing, we bought the land to build our house on when we pull the plug in 2019, or 2020, and I got to go to my first ever FinCon! Plus, I got to the end of the year and had extra vacation and thought, “Man, it felt like I’ve already taken a lot of vacation!” There were lots of good feelings all around.

Then we tallied up our total spending for the year, and womp, womp, the rain clouds moved in and shut down our parade. While we had been having a great year from a lifestyle perspective, our spending had been going on a tear, kind of like the stock market.

Our 2017 Spending…

We both sensed it in January when we replaced our dishwasher and it cost an additional $300 in plumbing fixes that were discovered during installation. Mrs. SSC prophetically said, “I hope this isn’t “the year of spending…”” Well, it was. Where did our spending get derailed, how close were we to our FFLC (Fully Funded Lifestyle Change) budget, and how bad was it? Well, it wasn’t pretty that’s for sure.

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“Tanks” for the Memories: Justifying Large Expenditures

My Father-in-Law (Bob) celebrated his 70th birthday earlier this year and since we see it as a milestone birthday, so we wanted to do something special for him. We thought about a lot of different things we could get him, but he has pretty much anything that he needs or wants. So then we thought about some experiences we could look into for him. He has had some back and neck issues the last few years, so even those adventures would be limited for what we could do. Then, Mrs. SSC came across a website that we thought would not only offer a great present but also an excellent place to make memories. (not an affiliate link by the way, I wish, lol)

It’s Tank time! German Leopard we drove and I rode on in the turret.

Bob has been a pretty big WWII history buff and has read a lot about that time period so we thought this could incorporate that passion of his as well. What did we stumble across that would fulfill this passion, while providing a great gift and awesome memories? Ox Ranch, a place where you can literally drive a tank on one of their designed tank courses. They have over 18,000 acres, most dedicated to exotic animal hunting, but a large part is also dedicated to tanks and machine guns, because, Texas. They also offer you the chance to shoot the tank if you want to spend that kind of coin, we didn’t. Plus, there are options to shoot almost any type of WWII machine gun if you choose. We offered if he was interested, but Bob didn’t take us up on any of those options, whew… We had an excellent time and even got an upgrade on the tank we got to experience due to a delay caused by the History Channel shooting on location that day. Woohoo for little wins!! Even though we try to be frugal in a lot of areas in our life, this was one thing that we could justify paying for a memory making experience.

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