My Story: The Basics

If you read my first post, you know that one of my intentions with this blog is to tell my story, and that I’m a big fan of Brene Brown. Well, Brene always starts her podcast Unlocking Us with the same question of the person she is interviewing: tell me your story. Today, I want to tell you my story. But let’s start with the basics.

How I make money at this point in my life is as a medical writer. In my current job, I create a lot of PowerPoint slide decks for my clients, and at some point there is always a slide explaining the science behind a product or technology. The title is always the same: “The Science Behind ____(fill in the blank with whatever complicated technology we’re talking about): The Basics.” My story is of course more than a single PowerPoint slide, but for today, let’s start with the basics.

Growing Up

Admittedly, I grew up a pretty hardcore goodie two-shoes in a solid lower-middle-class family. I hated missing school, and I was devastated when my high school wouldn’t give me the perfect attendance award for all 4 years because I missed one day when I was in the hospital. Yeah, ick, I was totally that girl. I was the Valedictorian of my 8th grade class and Salutatorian of my senior high school class. Takeaway message: I LOVED school, and I was incredibly driven to be the best at everything I did (I was also a three-season athlete).

My brother and I didn’t lack for much as kids. We had loving parents who would do anything for us. We always had new clothes for new school years. We would go on one week-long vacation each year to somewhere we would drive to in the United States (my father is a Vietnam vet and had severe PTSD during my childhood, along with horrible motion sickness – the one time we tried to fly as a family, for the entire duration of the flight, my poor dad was sick in an airplane bag the size of a popcorn sleeve at a carnival, and we quickly learned NEVER AGAIN when it came to flying as a family; the one time he tried to ride a rollercoaster with us kids is a story for another time). Takeaway message #2: I consider myself to have been a very privileged kid.

Leaning into Adulthood

In college, when I took my first Psychology class, discovered my fascination for the brain, started doing research with a female professor in the summers, and decided I wanted to be just like her when I “grew up”, I knew I could do it. I went straight from college to graduate school, where I got my PhD in Neuroscience. Then I went straight into a postdoctoral fellowship, and soon after that I had my dream job as an Assistant Professor at a University in my dream location – Vermont.

I had worked this job for two years when a lightbulb went off in my head – and maybe you know where I’m going with this. Shocker, it wasn’t my dream job after all (is there even such a thing?). Shocker, I was miserable. My partner who I’d been with for two years and who I was convinced was the one I’d spend the rest of my life with up and left me with no explanation. I was spending ALL of my time working (likely the reason for the breakup; the whole 20/20 hindsight thing is a real blow sometimes, isn’t it). I would get up early to review my lectures for the day, go to work, come home, and prep for the next day until I went to sleep. I was anxious to no end (something I have struggled with my whole life). I barely had time to eat let alone cook, so I would cook on the weekends and eat the same thing for dinner every night during the week.

I slowly realized I hadn’t stepped off the hamster wheel since I was 10 years old.

What Next?

I was at a breaking point. But I knew enough to get help. I went to therapy, something I’d done on and off since college. My new therapist introduced me to meditation. I started connecting with myself, befriending myself for the first time in my life, and actually thinking about what I wanted.

I knew the dream job wasn’t working, so I had to figure out what was next. But even though I knew I needed out, it felt daunting to change course from a destination I had been striving to achieve for years. I started thinking about what else I loved to do in graduate school besides teaching, and it was reading about and writing up my work, and helping other students write and edit their papers. I also knew I didn’t want to leave Vermont, so I started freelance writing and editing from home. Since I crave stability, I ended up taking a $20,000 pay cut from my professor job to be a full-time academic editor for one of my freelancing clients, and I could work remotely.

When Things Started to Click

I worked there for two years, and something amazing happened. At first, the pay cut hurt my ego, but once I got the hang of the job and got out of training, I realized I was a really good editor. And I really liked what I did. And I was efficient. I could easily get my work done for the week in 35-38 hours. And it wasn’t the type of job where I couldn’t “turn off” – once I was done editing my quota for the day, that was it. It was the least amount of time I had spent working, thinking about working, or working towards something, probably since I was 10 years old. I had so much freedom. I had so much time. With all this extra time and space in my brain and my body, I discovered that I had all these passions and things that excited me outside of work that I had never even had the time to think about before.

The Financial Side of Things

Shifting for a minute to the financial side of my life, I have always been a saver. Some part of me just knew it was better to save money than to spend it, and I was often teased for that.

It was during my postdoctoral fellowship, where I was making more money than I had in my life ($40,000 to be exact), that I started to want to learn about money and how to manage it beyond having it sit in a savings account. Soon after that, I discovered financial independence, which intrigued me due to the freedom it could allow, even though I didn’t quite identify with the “retire early” part of the FIRE movement at the time.

Because, at the time, I was still on the hamster wheel.

I couldn’t even imagine not working (who would do such a thing? What would others think? I wouldn’t be successful if I wasn’t climbing society’s ladder!).

Time To Increase My Income

But this new job as an editor and this new way of seeing the world had changed things. I found myself wanting to get to financial independence a bit faster than before. I was already managing my spending quite well, so I knew I needed to increase my income. As comfy cozy as that first post-academic job was, it didn’t pay well for my field ($50,000), and I knew I could do better with my experience.

My next job paid MUCH better, but it was absolute hell. I had a completely toxic work environment where you were expected to be available basically around the clock. I realized my mistake but put my head down and bared it while I looked for other work. I was determined to find a job that paid well but didn’t cause me 24/7 stress and anxiety.

Within 7 months, I found it.

Settling Into The New Plan

During this time of working to increase my income, I had also discovered other helpful personal finance blogs like The Fioneers and Money Flamingo, which introduced me to Coast FI and the Slow Financial Independence movement. These concepts really resonated with my goals and values after getting off the hamster wheel. I had always thought of financial independence as a goal that I would maybe reach one day, but never saw myself not working or downshifting.

My goals have shifted in the last few years. I want to live at a slower pace. I want to enjoy my life now. I want to explore things that bring me joy outside of work, and have more time to do that. At the same time, I’m good at what I do, I enjoy it, and I finally found a job that is relatively low stress with good pay. I just want to work less.

I’ve hit Coast FI, so I know I have options. But while I’m aggressive when it comes to investing, I’m more conservative when I think about how much money I need in retirement. I like the idea of a financial cushion. Plus, my husband and I keep our finances mostly separate, but I like the idea of having more saved to, at least to some degree, account for the both of us.

But I crave having more time. More time to read. More time to work on this blog. More time to volunteer. More time to enjoy the beauty of life. And I crave spending less time working for someone else.

So, my current plan is to go down to part time once I hit Flamingo FI (having half of my FIRE number invested). Hopefully, I can make this plan happen at my current company, since I’m really happy there, but I will go back to freelancing if I have to.

So, there you have it! The basics of my story and where I’m going. And I hope to share much more as time goes on!

I’d love to hear some of your stories! Share with me in the comments, or send me an email through the Contact page.