{"id":237400,"date":"2019-10-09T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/?p=237400"},"modified":"2023-12-05T14:16:31","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T21:16:31","slug":"decision-to-quit-a-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/decision-to-quit-a-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Should I stay or should I go? Wrestling with the decision to quit a career"},"content":{"rendered":"

J.D.’s note:<\/strong><\/em> In the olden days at Get Rich Slowly, I shared reader stories every Sunday. I haven’t done that since I re-purchased the site because nobody sends them to me anymore. But earlier this year, Mike did. I love it. I hope you will too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Earlier this year, I sent my wife a text message: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how freaked out would you be if I quit my job this afternoon?”<\/p>\n

My wife and I had only been married a short while, but she’d known since our second date that I didn’t plan to work in my traditional job until normal retirement age. She also knew that I hadn’t been very happy at work in recent months.<\/p>\n

We’re very compatible financially \u2014 both savers raised in working-class families that didn’t always have a lot. We make a point of having what we like to call “Fun Family Finance Day” from time to time. On Fun Family Finance Day, we do everything from competitively checking our credit scores<\/a> to discussing questions that get at the root of our money mindsets to help us create our goals.<\/p>\n

But this question wasn’t part of the plan. Not then.<\/p>\n

And it was never on any of the lists of questions that we’d discussed with each other. It was like a pop quiz, a pothole in the smoothest relationship road I’d ever traveled…and I was the one putting it there.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Dreams Remain Dreams Without Doing<\/span><\/h2>\n

My wife and I rarely argue, but when we do it’s usually about food. It’s the kitchen and the grocery store that are our battleground. Our finances are fine. Thankfully, when you’re confident in the life you’ve created and the person you chose to build it with, it’s a lot easier to be honest about what’s on your mind.<\/p>\n

That still doesn’t always mean you get the answer you want. Or the answer you were expecting. She responded: “Wait what. Kinda. What would you do?”<\/p>\n

A completely reasonable and fair question. Not to mention one that I’d probably have to get comfortable answering from a lot more people.<\/p>\n

I think my immediate reaction was: We talk about this stuff all the time, where is my, “No worries baby, YOLO!”? (I must have watched too many romcoms back before we cut cable from our lives.)<\/p>\n

Being a grownup, it turns out, is actually really hard sometimes. I was about to learn that talking about something, and actually doing it, are a world apart.<\/p>\n

Life is full of dreamers and doers<\/a>. Sometimes those two personalities cross over. But there are plenty of people who go through life talking about so many things they’ll never have the courage to try \u2014 or the discipline and determination to follow through with.<\/p>\n

Which person was I? The dreamer? The doer? Or that fortunate combination of both?<\/p>\n

<\/span>Standing on the Ledge<\/span><\/h2>\n

There’s a quote perched atop my bucket list of long-term goals:<\/p>\n

“At some point, you will need to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself not just if this is something you wanted to do at one point, but if this is something you will want to have done.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Words are meaningless without action. It was time for me to take that long look in the mirror. I thought back to one of the questions that my wife and I had previously discussed: What does money mean to you?<\/strong><\/a> To me, once I grew out of the “stuff accumulation” phase of my early- to mid-20s, my answer had always been freedom. Money meant freedom. To my wife, the answer was security. Money meant security.<\/p>\n

You can probably see how freedom can conflict with security. That was the case here. Not only that, but I was asking to change the perfect plan, one that she was comfortable with and excited about.<\/p>\n

That’s not one, but two<\/em> shots against financial security. If I’d thought more about our financial blueprints<\/a> and how they differ, I might have seen this coming from a mile away!<\/p>\n

As I was standing on that ledge, about to quit my job, thoughts started to race through my mind. What did I actually<\/em> have to lose if made the leap? Lots.<\/p>\n