ONLY 65k!!??? I have 23k in the bank at 28 (roughly 80% what I make in a typical year) and I think I'm doing pretty well. Since you work in tech and marketing I assume you have a college degree already, so going back to school probably isn't the answer. You should definitely buy a decent car, and try to find a job you actually care about. Maybe you could work for a nonprofit for a cause that means something to you? Good luck and I hope everything works out for you.
sc runner wrote:
You should definitely buy a decent car,.
Why should anyone "definitely" buy a car if one is not needed. Dumb waste of money.
Perspective wrote:
sc runner wrote:You should definitely buy a decent car,.
Why should anyone "definitely" buy a car if one is not needed. Dumb waste of money.
Because then he could expand the search area when he needs to work again, also it makes traveling much easier.
sc runner wrote:
Perspective wrote:Why should anyone "definitely" buy a car if one is not needed. Dumb waste of money.
Because then he could expand the search area when he needs to work again, also it makes traveling much easier.
You're assuming that he lives in a sparsely populated area or an area with no reliable public transit.
Also, how is accepting a long commute bettering his situation anyway? That is time he could be putting into other things that actually matter in life.
Why does everyone have to live the super saver frugal lifestyle, squirelling away cash in savings?
The FI fad and retire early obsession gets old after a while. It is ruining people's lives. They stay in unsatisfying jobs, forever packing away money. They never end up retiring early either!
Spend some money people! Help the economy..
Even the resident LRC retire early guy is STILL working and he says he doesn't like working that much!
Just keep saying, "Winning!" while ridiculing all those fools who are slaving their lives away instead of seeking instant gratification. Some day you may change your attitude though while performing your new menial underpaying task for those fools who've now retired at age 55 with plenty of resources to enjoy it.
Why is it everyone who says they're going to live frugally hasn't managed to do so to date? It's like a drug addict saying they can quit anytime they want to. Remind me again about how $65K stacks up against the sum of all your take home pay throughout your career? Less than 10%? And some of that money has had a decade to grow. I predict you'll be broke in no time.
i'm 33 now, did you what you did when I was 26. Had about 30k saved up. Quit my job and lived out west for the summer, training for a race. Once the race was over I went and taught in South Korea for a year.
I loved my time in S. Korea. I was able to work there and travel and saved about $13k. it is a very fun lifestyle. you meet people from all over the world. its always a thrill to be in a foreign country.
there were some negatives though. i missed space a lot. just general open space. also, there seems to be a stigma on english teachers over there. its like a half career. i felt like i wasnt contributing much to society. my only skill was that i was a native english speaker.
overall, it was a great experience that had huge benefits for my life. although it set me back a half a decade in my career and definitely do not regret it.
Travel.
Train.
Get a part time job, if nothing else so you can meet people and have some reason to get up and out of the house.
Move to a big city and work in the hospitality industry as a cook, bartender, or waitstaff. Pay isn't great but it's a lifestyle choice. You meet lots of young, interesting, and socially active people. If it's your thing, you can probably get laid a lot.
Devote 10-15 hours per week to learning a new skill. Woodworking, musical instrument, art, cooking, bartending, writing.
Get up early and work hard and whatever you decide to do. Sleeping in kills productivity and makes you depressed.
I'm 33 too, but married with two little kids, a job I like, and a house in the 'burbs (and soon a vacay home too!). I don't really envy you because I'm pretty settled into and happy with my life, but I can definitely see the appeal of your move and think it could be a great opportunity to experience the world, travel, and do some fun stuff while you are still relatively young and commitment-free.
So, if I were you, I think I'd spend the whole summer backpacking/bike touring in Europe on the relative cheap, probably following some of the Tour de France, etc. (I'm a big cycling fan) but otherwise with not with much of a defined itinerary. Then I might head over to Asia for the fall (where I've never been), again trying to see the sights on the relative cheap. I'd probably then head home for the winter holidays, and then go out west to Colorado or something and find seasonal work as a ski patroller or lift operator and basically be a ski bum for the winter. When the ski season wrapped up in the spring, I'd thru-hike the entire AT or PCT. At that point, I think I would have squeezed most of my pent-up wanderlust out, seen some cool stuff, become an awesome skier, and had some time to think about what I wanted out of life. Then I'd try and go get it.
And if you did want to return to some corporate gig after all that, I don't think it'd hurt you much, if at all. I can't speak for the olds that populate this board, but when I'm hiring, I generally view this kind of thing as a positive, or at least not a negative (assuming the person otherwise seems qualified and a good fit). I'm sure it will give you something fun to talk about in an interview, if nothing else.
join the peace corpse
Thanks this is great. I've put a great deal of thought into the "live to work v. work to live" line of thinking and I lean more and more towards the latter although spending 8 hours a day doing something mundane scares me.
retired handle wrote:
Serious response here. Here's my input.
1) Read some books. I highly recommend the 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. Sounds gimmicky, but it is really a book about philosophy and life. Just read it.
2) Definitely travel. It doesn't necessarily have to be something grand like traveling around the world non-stop for a year, but you should definitely travel some. Traveling is a luxury most people never get to experience due to time, money, and familial obligations. You have none of those. Go travel and focus on just having an experience, doing things, and seeing places you've never seen before. I suggest reading T4HWW first though.
3) Run a bit more. Running clears your mind. It will help you think.
4) Not sure exactly what career advice to give you. Many people are like you, if not most people. They're middle aged (okay, you're not quite middle aged yet but getting there) and receive little or no satisfaction from their job and feel like they're wasting their life. You have essentially two choices/ways of looking at this: a) your job is your life, so you need to find something you genuinely enjoy and find meaning in. This is very difficult but possible. I cannot help you much on finding out what that is for you. b) change the way you view work. Instead of it having to be something you are passionate about, view it as a means to an end. Your day job is a source of money. You can do other things you love during time outside of work. How many accountants love their job? Probably none, but they do it because it's a decent job that allows them to go to concerts, buy cars, have a hobby, etc. I'm not necessarily recommending this; just that it's a different way to look at things. Here's a link that explains it better:
http://markmanson.net/passion5) Get laid. You have plenty of time to make that a priority. Go have a little fun. Like running, it will also help you reflect.
6) Don't spend your days sleeping in late and staying up all night on the internet. It's an easy habit to get into and is a waste of time/life.
...
I hope this has been somewhat helpful. Best of luck to you.
1) If you are not married and don't have any children to support, then do whatever the hell you want to.
2) If you are a person who cares about having a career-type job, then go find one. If you couldn't care less about that, then go find a job that just pays the bills that you don't find horrible. One benefit to a low-paying job that gets boring after a little while is that you can go find another boring low-paying job pretty easily.
3) Nice to have that 65k as a cushion if you want some time off, so take time off if you want. Ultimately, unless you are planning to inherit a lot of money soon, you will need to work. You will want to work for a while yet just go up your Social Security output if nothing else.
Good luck.
issac brunhau wrote:
33 yo former runner here. Still run the occasional road race but I'm happy to break 17 mins.
I've worked my way around in the marketing world (specifically for tech) for the past 6 years. I loved the job at first but it was more for the "show" and "glamour". ie. "I work in tech, I'm helping with x and x exciting project".
Over the last year I've come to realize how ridiculous and meaningless it is. Most high paid (or equity paid) tech marketing MBA guys earn the company as much as a fresh undergrad could. Some old school guys (like our VP for instance) know nothing about campaign measurement and still think billboards are a smart idea. All that doesn't even bother me that much. It's just living your life to look at a computer screen and pump up some new silly tech product you personally don't care about.
So I quit. I only have about 65k in the bank (no car, property etc). So what the heck should I do with my life? Anyone else do anything like this?
What's wrong with billboards? I'd love to know what you think is the best form of advertising. We've never advertised on letsrun as we aren't selling anything but I'd like to learn.
If a billboard is cheap enough, it would be a good deal.
rojo wrote:
We've never advertised on letsrun as we aren't selling anything but I'd like to learn.
Perhaps you are unaware that you have lots of really annoying ads on your website? Or maybe you meant "we never advertise for letsrun." But you do. Running in a letsrun singlet is advertising. Giving out free letsrun shirts for contests is advertising. Putting out free youtube videos in content you think people will like even if they don't use your site, and then having a link on the youtube page back to your site is advertising.
rojo wrote:
What's wrong with billboards? I'd love to know what you think is the best form of advertising.
Billboards are expensive and very broad reach. That works fine to advertise certain products: cars, hollywood blockbuster movies, target, etc. Products that are broad reach can benefit from broad reach advertising.
But most companies and products are niche. Letsrun appeals to only people interested in running, and generally more than just a casual interest in running. So targeted advertising is what you would want for a company like that, because your market is small. So the vast majority of people seeing a billboard are not your target audience. But you're still paying for the reach of the billboard even though most of the impressions are useless.
So for a company like letsrun, you would want to do things like... youtube videos of running interviews with a link back to your site, letsrun singlets at races, t-shirt giveaways in an attempt at viral marketing...
As another example, if you had a company selling beer bottle openers, I would want to advertise on beer websites, beer magazines, through promotional giveaways at bars and tasting rooms, using twitter for a social media campaign in conjunction with beer brands, etc.
For the 5 people not running AdBlock, your site looks like a giant billboard on their entire monitor.
rojo wrote:
issac brunhau wrote:33 yo former runner here. Still run the occasional road race but I'm happy to break 17 mins.
I've worked my way around in the marketing world (specifically for tech) for the past 6 years. I loved the job at first but it was more for the "show" and "glamour". ie. "I work in tech, I'm helping with x and x exciting project".
Over the last year I've come to realize how ridiculous and meaningless it is. Most high paid (or equity paid) tech marketing MBA guys earn the company as much as a fresh undergrad could. Some old school guys (like our VP for instance) know nothing about campaign measurement and still think billboards are a smart idea. All that doesn't even bother me that much. It's just living your life to look at a computer screen and pump up some new silly tech product you personally don't care about.
So I quit. I only have about 65k in the bank (no car, property etc). So what the heck should I do with my life? Anyone else do anything like this?
What's wrong with billboards? I'd love to know what you think is the best form of advertising. We've never advertised on letsrun as we aren't selling anything but I'd like to learn.
If a billboard is cheap enough, it would be a good deal.
Not running adblock here. I guess that I am behind the times.
Do you still have a lot of contacts? You could try freelancing. I quit about a year ago and it's been pretty fun and exciting.
Are you cute?
Well usually its good to have a plan before you quit but that is moot now.
What did you good to school for and what did you do between the ages 21 and 26?
What are your skills and interests? Quitting and traveling can be fine if you have highly marketable skills. You can come back, grab a job that you like and tell everyone what a great experience it was and how glad you are that you did it.
If you don't have those type of skills or opportunities, you could come back in a worse situation.
issac brunhau wrote:
How is quitting a job I don't enjoy make me a loser?
Your utter lack of forethought makes you a loser.