On Quitting
lindaeliasen.com
lindaeliasen.com
Tight-knit groups wrap themselves inside a bubble of conformance. The group's very existence is based on a shared worldview about itself - that it is correct. To leave is to question a choice made by everyone else. To stand out in a crowd is physically painful - it is called the pain of independence (Susan Cain).
For the privileged, jobs are not about the salary; money is aplenty. It is purpose we're after. What shall you do with yourself when, for the first time in your life, you actually get to choose how to spend your time? There was always the parents, the schools, and the workplaces to give a rhythm to our life and purpose to our days. It is scary the first time we confront it - when we quit an institution without knowing where next to anchor.
Next time it'll get easier.
I'm happy the author is not giving up, we in first world societies actually have the luxury to pursue our passions, we have wellfare systems that provide much higher living standards than the majority of the worlds population. Given the relatively low risks of pursuing what you love and the fact that you only get one pass around at life, I feel everyone should live this way
Maybe just abruptly quitting was the only way she could see to resolve a knot of dependencies that seemed impenetrable. If she has the resources to attack the knot from that angle, then there is no shame in it.
Good for her.
Or maybe I'm just empathetic since I walk away from my full time job tomorrow...
It doesn't change the fact that if you're not putting money aside for emergencies & retirement you are living above your means.
Sometimes it's OK to live above your means. I'd willingly go into major debt for my children. But not acknowledging you're doing so while you're doing it will cause problems.
I'm the sole breadwinner with a wife and two kids, and we pack away 20% out of every paycheck. We own our home and both cars.
Do we live a garish lifestyle? Certainly not, but we travel a lot and adhere to our budget (thank goodness for remote jobs).
Whether that is possible depends a lot on where you live - from what I can tell, outside of a few major cities there are plenty of places in the US where you can buy a house for <$200k in the US, good luck with that anywhere in Canada.
Given that it takes money to move, no, you do not always have a choice in where to live.
I lived in Chicago on a $800/mo salary for a year and a half. Yes eight hundred dollars a month, in the city of Chicago. I had no money, but I made it work, then I moved back home to small town Iowa and make a lot more now, and live a better life. Nobody made me do either of those things.
It takes money move, to or from any city. It's nice that you were able to make it work, and yes, it means others could as well but you wold look like a little less of an asshole if you would consider not everyone is in the same situation as you were.
Were you single
Did you have kids
Did you have any medical conditions that needed care
Did you use to have a better job before
That's just a few things that are part of everyday, normal life that can make the cost of moving and living on very little somewhat difficult.
> Nobody makes you buy a million dollar house
I don't remember saying anything close to that.
No.
> Did you have kids
Yes.
> Did you have any medical conditions that needed care
Not that I know of.
> Did you use to have a better job before
I moved to the city with a $100 loan from my step-father so I could afford gas to do the 4 hour drive taking nothing with me but what I could fit in my car, which took a 3rd of that $800/mo just to pay.
You know how I moved? I asked a friend, he came and helped me and packed his truck with what I couldn't fit in my car.
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
> Did you have any medical conditions that needed care > Not that I know of.
Others do, it's often sort of important to handle them. It can also limit the cities you can live in.
> Were you single > No.
Right here I start thinking your now being disingenuous, second income?
> car, which took a 3rd of that $800/mo
So you lived in Chicago on 528 a month and saved enough to move. You are leaving things out. This was either 40 years ago, you were getting significant social assistance or something.
Lets go ahead and throw out another perfectly, though unfortunate, normal situation. You had parents to even move back in with.
Now then, I don't live in a particularly expensive city. The 'million dollar house' you want to keep throwing around as if everyone has is almost 10 times the cost of where I live. Yet I can still see that not every one is in the exact same situation I am in. Moving to another city would not be something I could do on a whim, though I've had to cover medical expenses this year that are more than what your supposed monthly income was.
I mentioned it once. You're the one who keeps bringing it back up.
> Right here I start thinking your now being disingenuous, second income?
No second income. My fiance has never, and will never pay anything for me.
> So you lived in Chicago on 528 a month and saved enough to move. You are leaving things out. This was either 40 years ago, you were getting significant social assistance or something.
Oh sorry, I left out the $600/mo the startup I worked for paid the owner of the spare bedroom I lived in. My bad. $1400/mo. And 40 years ago? I'm 30, I moved from Chicago in March of this year.
Were your SO and kids not living with you? I cant imagine putting 3+ people into a spare bedroom. If you guys did do that, its impressive but its certainly not within the realm of normal in the US. If you didn't have them with you, than saying you had 1400 a month to support yourself, your SO, and your kid/s is not an accurate accounting of your living expenses for Chicago
It's dumb to devolve this argument down to "But what if you have cancer and 7 dogs and 3 kids, how would you move?"
Because the average person reading hacker news with a tech job in the valley does not have 7 dogs and 3 kids and cancer. We can feel sorry for that person, but I am pretty sure we can blame all 200k software developers living in SF as having 7 dogs 3 kids and cancer.
Hard to imagine that housing prices have gone up 10x in that time.
http://www.macleans.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Rabidoux_h...
In their index, housing prices were about 100 in 2000 and about 180 in 2013, so houses were about 80% more expensive in 2013 versus 2000. That is in real terms. You'd expect it to be more like 103% more expensive in nominal terms (assuming 2%/year inflation).
Here's a good source for recent housing prices in Canada:
http://crea.ca/content/national-average-price-map
It shows that the average sale price in Canada was $433k in August 2015. But there's tremendous variation within Canada. Vancouver was around $900k; PEI was $158k. It looks like Saskatchewan was around $253k, so a bit over half the national average, with Regina and Saskatoon being more expensive in the $310-320k range.
About 15 years ago you would have expected prices to be about half that in Saskatchewan, or maybe $125k. So no, house prices have not gone up 10x in the last 15 years and $20-30k were not typical house prices in Saskatchewan at the time.
Is that including retirement savings or not?
I do not. I make just over $70k a year now (a lot more than a few years ago) and before we had kids, we cut back so that my wife's income at the time went entirely to paying off debts. Our home is worth ~135k (three bedroom in a nice cheaper US city), and our cars are nothing to write home about but they get us where we need to go. My total income now is higher than our combined income was then. Like I said before, planning goes a long way.
Your comment does come off as a bit dickish, by the way. You made a lot of assumptions about me that are not true.
Absolutely understandable. We certainly went through a few years where we were just happy that we didn't have debt and could live off my income. Good luck with your own journey!
Anyway, I just noticed that you said "no way," and I wanted to provide a counter example. Good luck!
I am well compensated now, but right after college I was making 15k a year (it was in the arts) and I still managed to save money.
More likely you have a lot of optional things that you can trim away. Do you have cable? How often do you eat out? Do you smoke? Do you have a budget that you stick to?
It's all about priorities. If you don't prioritize it, it won't happen. It's not easy and emergencies and unexpected bills come up but the freedom is amazing.
Check out the Ramsey Plan. We wiped out most of our debt in about 2 years while saving for a house. And that's while renting, 3 kids, and living just outside DC.
Unrelated: I know a bunch of the Watson team here in Austin. Good group, cool tech. :)
Looks like it's too naïve, but it's good advice for people living in the U.S. and that have mortgages.
The point is that - like with most things - if you don't have a plan and you haven't defined success, you can't get there.
A plan doesn't make it easier but it makes you think about the details, gives you something to work against, and lets you track progress.
@hoorayimhelping SF also have ridiculous salaries compared to the rest of the world. Everybody seems to be making at least $120k starting out, and many up to $300k. I make way less than that, but also live in a pretty expensive city. I just bypass that by not buying a lot of stuff. It's only possible because I reject the average consumerist middle-class lifestyle. I won't buy a house, I'll never buy a car again, I bike to work, I don't have expensive hobbies. You can't have the cake and eat it too. However most people should be able to save more than they do.
Expenses: $1500
Children: none yet, but subsidized child care, paternity leave and other subsidies makes it pretty cheap
Food: $500
Housing: $400 (own apartment with my SO)
Student loans: $150
Car payment: no car, bike most places
Income tax rate: 32%, but employer pays another 30%, so effectively 62%
Sales tax: 25%
Insurace: $15
Phone: $15 (cheapest possible plan)
Internet: included in housing
Note: I also lived in the US before, with simliar savings rate, which was even easier.
My housing is 3 times your housing budget.
My student loans are $200/month.
My car payment is 300/month.
Income tax rate 9%.
Sales tax: 0
Medical insurance: $8000/year
Auto (and other) insurance: 1200/year
What I do have an issue with is "if you can't save x amount per month, you're living beyond your means". It's not that black and white. My trust fund question was legitimate. I also think that if you have a support system behind you (i.e. parents you could ultimately live with if you couldn't find work), it makes taking a year off with very little income, much more likely....as does, having a trust fund backing you up.
I recommend reading this: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-...
I pay for health insurance out of my own pocket, which is over 8000/year.
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
According to Numbeo, even if you live in Dubai you're way ahead of someone living in San Francisco, and even Montevideo, Uruguay (where I'm from)
Should I just blow it all on something ridiculous? Like what? Every single month?!
It's easy to waste money on small things. Some people buy expensive coffee and eat out everyday for example. It adds up really fast.
Let's see if you agree with the following:
If tomorrow you are fired from your job, and you can't afford to live on your state's unemployment aid for six months (that's not an arbitrary number, most states' unemployment period is 6 months) then you are living above your means.
So basically, yes, my entire family would be homeless if I were to get fired tomorrow. This has caused unimaginable stress on me, being the sole breadwinner of my current predicament. Do I wish it were different? Sure. But for you to base whether or not I'm a "responsible human" on this, speaks volumes about how you walk around in this world.
And yea, I stand by my statement, even though it makes me sound like a dick. How well you are prepared for "when the shit hits the fan" (in the order of most probable to least, so don't think I have a basement full of guns and canned food like a Mormon would. As far as eventualities go, getting fired is the most likely one to happen, and the Apocalypse is pretty low on that list), even if it never does, matters just as much, if not more, than what you do day to day, in my evaluation of what a responsible human is.
You keep on and on about how no one here knows anything about you, and that's irrelevant. Whether someone lives beyond their means or not is not dependent on their personal situation, it's a calculation of "money in, money out". It doesn't matter that all of the things you are spending your money on are obligations, rather than toys. It just means you took on obligations in your life above your means. That's irresponsible.
The angles I look at this raise the same question: how can people do this? If people have no savings and no job lined up, how can they put food on the table? If they have savings, and know the value of safety net and how unpredictable financials are, how can they do this? It's not unreasonable to think they might have some kind of outside assistance.
Also - that percentage should be a minimum of 50%. More info on why here - http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-...
I've been working since I was in 9th grade and have NEVER had enough money saved up to take 3 weeks off, much less 13 months.
If you save 6% of your take-home income for one year, you'll have saved enough to take three weeks off. So if you take home, say, $500/week, put $30 each week into a savings account. You won't even notice that it's gone.
If you want to take 13 months off, the best strategy is to move from high ground to low ground. Eg, take a job in a city like SF, Denver, Seattle, NYC, etc that pays well, get a cheap place, get rid of any vehicles and use public trans, etc. Taking home $75k and socking away 1/3rd each week, you'll end up with $25k in savings - which is more than enough to spend 13 months roaming the country.
(In the past few years I've spent > 13 months roaming the country)
What does anyone do in the US who finds themselves unemployed? They scramble to find a job..any job to make ends meet and when that doesn't happen, they live out of their car. And when they lose their car, they live in a homeless shelter.
My very first objective in my very first job was to save enough money to have a buffer so that I could be autonomous for a few months/year.
It's not a long-term plan but it can work for months, even a few years if you really pare down and live somewhere cheap.
> Are you all trust fund kids?
That's pretty condescending.
Yes. And I don't mean that in a dismissive sense. I have a well-compensated job in a moderate cost of living area. I have tried hard to live thrifty and to save money, but my obligations always seem to scale with income. From shifts in tax burden after marriage & children (AMT anyone?), unexpected health expenses, to rate increases for daycare that scale with income, I have never received a raise that resulted in a net increase in my income. I have a positive net worth at this point (barely), but I still live paycheck-to-paycheck.
I marvel at and envy the kind of financial independence that would allow someone to quit a job on the spot. For as long as I've been an adult, I've had expenses (student loan payments, bills & utilities, housing, etc.) that far exceed my ability to pay without a regular stream of income. And my obligations have only increased over time as I built a family.
>Some people have good jobs and save money.
In my experience that isn't enough. You also need good luck to have good health - a few trips to the hospital can empty a savings account (at least in the US). You also need to live in an area where your skills are not just valuable, but where there is a competitive market for them. I have a number of fairly unique, highly-technical skills -- but they are only valuable to a few employers, and they are located in distinct, remote locations (so there is a high opportunity cost to move between them, and few openings). It also helps to have the good fortune of manageable expenses. In my experience, student loan debt is an anchor on young folks because it drains the very savings that would grant the financial freedom that would let them shop for the best job opportunities.
I don't begrudge anyone their success, but I often wonder how everyone else manages to get by at all, let alone so spectacularly as this.
Lets distinguish "incapable of saving" from "unwilling to reduce consumption".
It's not like she said "I quit my job on a whim and am going to go travel through Europe for a year to find myself". She's clearly a talented person with a sought-after skill and she probably knows she'll be able to find another job, this one just wasn't working out.
"You know the average American..." - She's not an average American. She worked at Dropbox. She is a tech-industry professional that has worked at some highly successful companies for a number of years.
After about nine months, because I was kind of bored, on a whim I went to a "Brass Ring" job fair in Santa Clara. Found myself interviewing and got a job at another startup (which turned out to be an utter train wreck, ugh).
I've been homeless, frequently broke, and have started companies, quit jobs, and all manner of things with no safety net whatsoever.
It's risky for sure, but meh, avoiding risks appears to equate to living an unhappy life being a slave to wage and not doing something you love.
Life is too short.
Stop doing the things you dislike, go do something you love. If that means quitting when you barely have 1 month of cash left (or less)... then do it. But don't do it and go hide in your bedroom, do it and make noise and tell the world you're free, approach the people doing the things you want to be doing, just go for it.
Of course it might still be irrational, stupid and risky to quit before the next job is secured, and I would also avoid it when possible. But being able to afford risk and to allow for ones own stupidity is a great comfort.
Yeah, it's scary to go from guaranteed income to $0. But, here's how I, a non-trust fund immigrant with dependents, did it:
1- line up consulting contracts.
2- leave (at this point I had disposable savings for 4months).
3- Don't worry about saving because it just causes me stress.
What I do now is to work on a project when my savings start to drop below 6months runway.
Of course, it's not all rosy. I have to hustle at times to get that contract. On the other hand, I can just take the time to smell the flowers any given day. I've been on more vacations this past year than the prev 6 years or working.
So. Be your own trust fund.
This is much better than burning myself out getting someone else rich :)
First time I took a year off to ski bum and travel (late 2008 just as the recession started to get rolling) In 2012 I took nearly a year off to start my own thing.
I noticed both times that as soon as I didn't have any income, I knew where every dollar I spent went and lived very frugally to stretch my funds.
In general, I live way below my means and save as much as possible. I'm early 30s and have always had shared living situations (either SOs or roommates) and that means right now my living expenses are about ~12% of my take home pay, so basically that means even after I max out my 401k I have a few thousands of dollars per month to do what I want with.
I'm 28. I have a net worth over $130k and a $25k emergency fund. I make over $70k (web dev) in a low cost of living area. I am maxing out my 401k and Roth IRA every year and will be opening a taxable account this year to dump more money into. I'm a renter (2BR for $515/month not including utilities), but I am fully supporting my fiancée who is finishing her masters of accounting degree.
I still spend quite a bit of extra money on video games and board games and a few other luxuries that I could and probably should cut back on. But I don't eat out (we cook in every night) and I live a mile away from my work.
My ultimate goal is financial independence. I want to be able to live off the 4% returns of my investments and not have to work (although I probably would do something, but more for myself than a company).
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence and http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
I'd be willing to bet the vast, VAST majority of Americans cannot just up and quit their job because they got a hangnail and felt sad about it. Not having a job tomorrow is my biggest nightmare. It's a nightmare that haunts billions of people on the planet. gregd's astonishment at this article is understandable.
If you're socking away tons money into savings each month, you need to take a look at yourself [YES THIS MEANS YOU, person hovering over the "reply" button], stop and look at yourself and realize you are one of a very lucky privileged few who can afford such a luxury. Be thankful for it, and don't pretend to be surprised that everyone here is not equally fortunate.
And yet, I still live paycheck to paycheck.
The comfy in-house design job for a single-product company means designing with the same palette and UI standards, using the same brand identity over and over and over. It's boring and creatively frustrating, particularly for anyone who's especially talented.
This is why you often see the best creative minds drift in and out of freelance or boutique agencies at various points in their career, having many different clients means having many different creative challenges.
I realize that some places are wrong for some people, in ways that can't be fixed. I'm just curious whether it's possible to articulate how Dropbox was wrong for the author.
Often if you're in an unhappy situation you can speak up and articulate what's wrong and others will adapt.
I suppose if you're young and single you can afford to be impulsive. A pattern of doing that repeatedly can't look too good..
You rarely get massive changes by talking to management (small changes, sure) and if you really hate your job, small changes are rarely enough.
The fact she conveniently leaves out huge parts of the story makes me wonder what the real reason was she left. As such, I can't comment other than to point out people quit jobs all the time these days, and the way her story is written, she hints at something, but never fills in the details - so the only conclusion we can make is:
She quit her job and is looking for a new job.
I'm curious to hear the next post, when she's had a bit of time to digest it.
After one such trip home to North Carolina, my girlfriend and I - sitting in the SFO terminal - started looking at NC houses, just to see. Three weeks later we closed on our home.
The valley culture isn't for everyone.
If your biggest struggles involve feeling guilty about $5 drinks you need better things to worry about.
So now "I quit my job" is the new learn nothing, "amazing adventure" startup-y blog post. FML.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/09/don...
You have one life to live and if you don't love what you're doing (she doesn't) and has the skills to do something else (she probably does) and has the guts to change her situation (she does), then in my opinion, she is making the smart and responsible decision.
She did, I can, so can you. Yeah best to have some savings or you may be homeless and hungry for a while but you absolufreakinglutely can, and should, quit your job if it makes you miserable.