Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

  • Home
  • About
  • We Recommend
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Genesis

I Quit My Job: How I Did It; and You Can Too

September 11, 2023 By Shane Ede 31 Comments

One of the first things that you, I, or anyone else will likely worry about when contemplating quitting our jobs is the financial aspect of doing so.  We’ll worry about whether we’ll be able to make enough money, on our own, to pay our bills.  We’ll worry about whether that income, if it is enough, will be steady.  We’ll worry about how we’ll make that money, and whether the income streams that we have are going to be robust enough to scale to a point where we can securely quit our jobs and work for ourselves.  I know they were things that were foremost on my mind when I was deciding whether I should quit my job or not.  In the end, I decided that it was time to let go of some of my fears and take the leap towards self-employment.  Taking that leap was not an easy thing to do.  Here’s how I was able to do it, and how you can too.

Get Your Finances in Order

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  It’s not.  If it were, there would be a lot of personal finance bloggers who would be blogging about something else today, myself included.  Despite what some people believe, personal finance isn’t a simple thing to master.  I know I haven’t done it yet.  I’m a little bit further along the curve than some, and further behind than others.

When I first started blogging about personal finance, it was during a very dark time in my financial life.  My wife and I had been wondering if we were going to have to declare bankruptcy, and paying our bills each month was a juggling act.  Somewhere in that time period, I discovered other personal finance blogs, and through them, Dave Ramsey.  I ordered, and read Ramsey’s book, The Total Money Makeover.

It was the beginning of a financial turnaround for us.  Ramsey’s book Kathmandu , Nepal,Himalayas,Everestgave us the financial know-how and direction to turn our finances around.  With the help of that book, and the amazing community of personal finance blogs, our finances became something that was far less of a worry for us.  That was over five years ago now. If we hadn’t had that turnaround, and gotten our finances in order, there is no way that I would have been able to do what I did.  We have been aggressively paying down our debt and refusing new debt whenever possible.

When I Quit My Job

If you’re a regular reader here, you are familiar with the story leading up to the day I quit my job.  We had become a bit lax in our financial governance, were about to buy a new house, and were suffering from a severe case of lifestyle creep.  Our lifestyle had grown along with our incomes.  We still were attempting to pay down our debt, and we were still avoiding new debt in most places, but we could have been doing so much more than we were.  That’s our fault.  We got comfortable with our income, got comfortable with the luxuries that we had let creep into our lives, and we lost sight of our end goals.  The day that I decided to quit my job, we took all that back and started actively working towards our goals again.

In a way, quitting has been a blessing.  It’s given us a renewed perspective on what we need, how much we need, and what we can do without.  If you think you are going to quit your job or just want to quit your job, you can’t do it without having a firm grasp on your finances, and truly having them in order.

Cut Your Costs

Part of getting your finances in order, and a large part of being able to make it without the once steady income that you made at your job, is cutting your costs to a level that is sustainable, given your new income level.  I went from a mid-5-figure-a-year salary with steady paychecks every two weeks to a part-time job that I get 20 hours a week at and an inconsistent online income.  In the time since I quit, we’ve cut our costs dramatically. When I was still employed, we were spending nearly $6,000 a month.  That includes debt repayment but is still a pretty large number. Now, we’ve cut our costs by about $2,000.  If you had asked me in October of last year if we could do that, I would have said you were nuts. We found a way to do it and so can you.  It’s all a matter of motivation.  Do you have the motivation to cut costs so that you can give your dream the wings it needs?

Work Your Ass Off

Have your finances in order.  Cut all the costs you can.  None of that will amount to a hill of beans unless you are ready and willing to work your ass off.  It’s something that I still struggle with.  Every job you’ve ever had has conditioned you to expect to have someone telling you what you had to do.  Everywhere you’ve ever worked, you’ve had a supervisor looking over your shoulder giving you the tasks that you were to work on, setting your yearly goals for you, and keeping you motivated to do them with the threat of unemployment.  Once you quit your job, and decide to work for yourself, that all ends.  It sounds freeing, doesn’t it?  It is.  And, it isn’t.  You have to become your own supervisor.  Your only motivator is to make your choice valid and make enough money to live off of.  You aren’t going to get fired for spending 4 hours a day on Facebook anymore; You’re going to go broke.  Scary, no?

As scary as that may sound, it is freeing.  You’ll have the freedom to make the choice to work your ass off.  It’s something that, even now, almost 3 months later, I still struggle with.  There have been days where I haven’t done a damn thing.  And, I’ve regretted each one of them.  Each day spend screwing off has cost me potential money.  If I don’t get anything written for this site or any of my other sites, it’s one less article that you’ll enjoy reading (I hope), and one less well-written article to attract new readers and new advertisers.  Because of the long-lasting ability of any article that I write, the repercussions of a missed article can be exponential.  What you choose to do, may not be writing content for websites, but you’ll likely see the same trend.  And you’ll likely struggle to keep yourself on task without a supervisor.  I’m learning, and you will too, that you have to provide that supervisory oversight for your new venture.  It’s no longer a matter of keeping your job, but of keeping your bills paid, your heat on, and the foreclosure agent from your front door.  Work your ass off.

Have a Little Hope (And Faith)

None of what I’ve said is the most important part of this.  Without hope, you are destined to fail.  You have to have hope that you will succeed.  You have to have hope that you’ll overcome any mistakes you make.  You have to have hope that you will prevail and make your venture grow roots and blossom.  You have to have faith in yourself, that you can do the things you need to do to make your venture a success.  Without hope and faith, you will fail.  I can tell you, firsthand, that there are going to be days when both your hope and your faith will falter.  There will be days that you feel like you’ve started on the trail to scale Mt. Everest.  The air is getting thin, and all you want to do is, stop, turn around, and head back to the comfy, warm, job you had before.  But, like anyone who has attempted to climb that mountain, you have to keep climbing.  The trail may change directions from time to time, but the goal is the same.  Find ways to renew your hope through community, family, and friends.  I’m lucky enough to have a very supportive family, friends, and the community of personal finance bloggers to help me keep that hope and keep my faith.  You can find that too.

Get your finances in order, dramatically cut your costs, work your ass off, and keep your hope and faith alive.  Reach your summit.
photo credit: ilkerender

Shane Ede

I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.

You can also connect with me personally at Novelnaut, Thatedeguy, Shane Ede, and my personal Twitter.

www.beatingbroke.com

Filed Under: Debt Reduction, Financial Truths, The Beating Broke Story Tagged With: how to quit your job, I quit my job, quit job, quit my job, quitting

IS HEALTH INSURANCE A GOOD INVESTMENT FOR LONG-TERM?

August 19, 2020 By Shane Ede Leave a Comment

Don’t we love planning things? Whether deciding what clothes to wear at a conference to picking a vacation spot for summers – people prefer staying ahead of time. Unfortunately, no matter how much you plan, one can’t get hold of destiny. Life is unpredictable since you never know what happens the next minute. Alongside planning, consider preparing yourself for the best and worst times. You can seek financial security by making some substantial insurance investments.  [Read more…]

Shane Ede

I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.

You can also connect with me personally at Novelnaut, Thatedeguy, Shane Ede, and my personal Twitter.

www.beatingbroke.com

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Saving vs Investing: Investing for Income

December 13, 2018 By Shane Ede 12 Comments

Saving and investing go together like milk and cookies, sweet and sour, and Elvis and banana peanut butter sandwiches, right?  Right.  Well, almost right.  It’s easy for us to say that saving and investing are important parts of a personal finance plan.  It’s easy for us to say that and then move on.  After all, we just said they’re important, right?  Not so fast.

Saving and Investing ARE important

They just aren’t equally important.  Heck, it’s another whole post, but even the different types of investing aren’t equal.  Just as important as saving and investing together is the concept of when to use which, and how much.  The mix of liquid savings in the form of cash accounts and CDs with the amount of your money that’s invested can be one of the most important parts of your overall personal finance plan.

Traditional advice tells us that cash accounts and CDs are the super safe way to keep your money with you, and investing, in it’s varying forms is all kinds of risky.  Investing in stocks?  Risky.  Investing in pork bellies?  Risky.  (unless you really like bacon.  Just kidding, still risky.)  But, is the amount of risk involved in investing more or less risky than leaving too much of your money in the bank to rot away at current interest rates?  How about you ask the people of Cyprus if they still feel safe having their money in the bank?

Saving vs Investing : Investing for IncomeSuccess is risky.

Few who accomplish success do so without some element of risk.  In fact, the easier the path to success is perceived, the less chance there is of truly obtaining it.  I don’t say that to seem philosophical.  I want to make a point, however.  You’ve got to have a little risk, if you want to succeed.  You’ve got to have Investments if you want to succeed financially.  And, I think the ratio of investments to savings should probably be much higher than most would suggest.

Investing for Financial Independence

One of the key tenets in a financial independence plan is that you need to replace your income in order to free yourself up to be independent of a job.  Not independent of work, but of a job.  There are, obviously, many ways that you can go about replacing that income.   Decreasing your expenses is usually a part of most plans.  But, most people’s expenses will only decrease so far.  Sure, you can go extreme, and get them lower, but for many that isn’t what financial independence is about.  Even with your expenses decreased as low as you’re willing to take them, you’ve still got to replace the income to pay those expenses.  Investing can be a very good way to get started towards replacing your income.

Investing for Income

In order to replace income with investing, you’ve got to invest for income.  You probably try and do that by becoming a super successful day trader and making up the income in profits from all the great deals you made.  First, find yourself a few super successful day traders who have done that.  Come back when you’ve given up.  If you’re going to invest for income, it’s got to be reliable.  It can’t rely on your ability to find a good bargain and then sell it at a massive profit a few days later.  There are traders who are still waiting on Facebook to make a comeback so they can even get their money back.  Reliable income is the key.  For this, we need investments that are steady, don’t require the continued increase in value of the stock, and also don’t require us to sell like a fiend in order to create the income.  What are these mysterious investments, you ask?  Dividend stocks.

Dividend stocks are stocks that pay a dividend on each share of the stock that is held.  The amount of the dividend can vary, but there are many that you will find that pay dividends in the range of 2-4%.  Depending on the policy of the company, they usually pay quarterly, but there are some that pay monthly and yearly.

Dividend stocks aren’t the only way to invest for income, however.  Investing in peer-to-peer lending in a program like Lending Club is one.  Rental real estate is another.  A business can even be a way to invest for income.  Each has varying levels of passivity, or the amount of direct interaction on your part to earn the income.  A business that you run can mean well over 40 hours a week of direct interaction to create the income.  Something like Lending Club or rental real estate can be brought down to a level that borders on passive income entirely.

Savings vs. Investing

With any investing tool, whether it be dividend stocks, lending, real estate, or some other instrument, there will be risk.  With risk usually comes reward.  I’ve been earning over 8% return on my Lending Club portfolio.  Dividend stocks can lose value, or even stop paying dividends.  The real estate market can dry up, and you can have problems finding renters.  Risk is inherent.  Unless you want to directly trade your time for money (call it a job), you’ve got to take on a little risk and begin setting yourself free.

Savings shouldn’t be shunned completely.  I still believe that an emergency fund is an important tool.  I still covet a debt free lifestyle.  But, once my debt is paid off, and my emergency fund is full, you can bet the rest will go towards investing for income, and building my wealth towards financial independence.

How about you?  What is the role of savings in your personal finance journey?

Original img credit: Two men with pipes posing as boxers / Deux hommes, pipes à la bouche, prenant une pose de boxeur by BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives, on Flickr

Shane Ede

I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.

You can also connect with me personally at Novelnaut, Thatedeguy, Shane Ede, and my personal Twitter.

www.beatingbroke.com

Filed Under: Emergency Fund, Investing, Passive Income, Saving, ShareMe Tagged With: dividend investing, dividend stocks, financial independence, Investing, lending club, Saving

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 119
  • Next Page »
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Improve Your Credit Score

Money Blogs

  • Celebrating Financial Freedom
  • Christian PF
  • Dual Income No Kids
  • Financial Panther
  • Gajizmo.com
  • Lazy Man and Money
  • Make Money Your Way
  • Money Talks News
  • My Personal Finance Journey
  • Personal Profitability
  • PF Blogs
  • Reach Financial Independence
  • So Over Debt
  • The Savvy Scot
  • Yes, I am Cheap

Categories

Disclaimer

Please note that Beating Broke has financial relationships with some of the merchants mentioned here. Beating Broke may be compensated if consumers choose to utilize the links located throughout the content on this site and generate sales for the said merchant.

Visit Our Advertisers

Need to change careers? Consider an Accounting Certificate Program from WTI.