In 2006, the time had come. After nearly 20 years in my industry, at the age of 42 -- I was seriously considering leaving my job in corporate America in what was one of the more challenging decisions I have ever made. A month later, after careful consideration, it was done: I would retire and leave the rat race in the middle of the year. No more working for "the man".
There were a lot of reactions from the people I told -- many reacted in amazement, some thought I must have a secret job lined up (can we join you?), some thought I must have been fired (management layoff, scandal perhaps?), maybe I'd just gone off the deep end (like I hadn't heard that before). After all, over the last 18 years, I had rapidly worked my way through the ranks, became a partner in the business....and through the rapid growth of the company and my own advancement, I found myself managing the second largest regional office of a Fortune 1000 company -- and the world's largest human resources consulting and outsourcing firms. I was the operations head of a group of over 2,000 employees.
Then as I explained what I was thinking to others, the conversation got into: "Don't be ridiculous. Why in the *** would you give up your job -- who leaves a job like that? What are you thinking--have you really thought it through? Do you have enough money? What does your wife and your family think? Do you really know what you are doing? You realize you've been in management a long time -- do you have any real world skills? What if you change your mind? Are you really going to leave behind us and the people you work with?" I will admit these were darned good questions...I was not really sure the answers to all of them, and I was certainly dazed and confused.
What I was sure of....was that I was mentally and emotionally tired. Tired of the long hours and the pressure. Tired of answering to corporate on minutiae and spending time on "administrivia" that did not benefit my clients. Tired of having to 'reorganize' and 'downsize' to squeeze out as much money as possible for short-term thinkers. As much autonomy as I had (after all I was the boss!), I felt trapped, not intellectually stimulated.
What's interesting is that I had remembered reading a book during the late 90's about a former Peat Marwick audit partner that had done "bare bones" retirement at age 35 -- he and his wife decided to downsize and travel the world. While I wasn't quite in the same financial conundrum, I did find a lot of parallels as I went back and re-read it (if you're interested : Cashing In on The American Dream , by Paul Terhorst). It was very motivating because it validated for me that I could leave a "good" job in order to pursue what I really wanted to do.
In my current job I had a strong group of successors in place and a good candidate to take my job, so I could rest assured the company was in good hands and I wasn't in danger of destroying what I had worked hard to help build (that was important to me), and I had provided enough notice not to leave the company in a short-term lurch.
My wife and kids were extremely supportive (granted, I'm not sure the kids really knew what it meant, other than I wouldn't be going to my office any more -- but maybe Daddy wouldn't be as "stressed out"!). From a financial standpoint, I was very fortunate in that I had the financial wherewithal to leave; our company had recently gone public and had done reasonably well over the past five years. I wouldn't describe my status as "wealthy", but I could say we will have enough if I can manage our affairs appropriately -- but if I don't, heck, I can always go back to work for "the man" if I need to, right :-)
So I shut my eyes, held my nose, and made the jump -- and left my company. Time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life again. Refreshing in some ways, but a very lonely feeling.
On the other hand, I was free -- I had more time to spend with my family, to travel, to read the classics (!), build that beach house I had always talked about, start learning new skills again, to recharge my batteries. That part was awesome. I found the biggest challenge was the social contact -- the people I worked with were very important to me -- that is what I missed, not the job.....at some point, I may blog more about my exit and underlying reasons and emotions....but that's not what this is about. (Very therapeutic for me, however!!!)
Now, what are you going to do?
Even while working, my biggest "hobby" has always been managing my investments -- I love the investment world -- anything having to do with personal finance, investing, trading, wealth/tax/estate management. What you do with your money after you get it. Lots of people are good at making money, but far fewer are adept in the art of how you keep it, protect it, and grow it.
Over the last couple of years prior to leaving my job, I started reading every book on investments I could get my hands on. I had a quantitative background -- math, statistics, systems -- and in my old job, I came up through the ranks as an actuary and pension administration consultant who specialized in developing and testing systems. (This background I would find very beneficial in the next year as I develop and test systems for trading.)
I then started trading much more actively, making mistakes, reading more, making more trades, more mistakes, going back to the drawing board, making more mistakes....and so on....and after a while, I was officially started into the wild world of trading, and have been doing it for about a year now.And that's where we're going to start with this blog.
