Welcome, Dear Reader, to Part XI of my series of posts on how my job experiences and my relationship with money brought me to wanting to FIRE. Eek! Eleven installments?! And I’m still not done?! This is gettin’ out of control! Anyhoo, to read past posts here are links to Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, and Part X.
Employer #6
Boss #13
In my last post, I detailed a curveball that got thrown my way after Boss #12 offered me—and I accepted—an opportunity to work as a full-time remote employee of Employer #5 once I moved to the Mountain West. Namely, that higher-ranking muckety mucks at Employer #5 overruled her offer and I’d instead have to become an independent contractor.
After our move, I set up my company. I had no experience doing that, so it was all new to me. But if there’s one thing ‘Murica and (most of) its states do well, it’s to make it easy to start a business. The process proved to be neither terribly difficult nor time consuming. Enter Employer #6: my company. And Boss #13: me!
But then Employer #5 threw a nastier curveball at me and Boss #12. The muckety mucks who scuppered Boss #12’s idea to keep me on as an employee now—after I’d moved, and after I’d relied on the promise to work full time as an independent contractor—said that I could only bill a set number of hours (which amounted to about a half-time schedule), and that my rate would have to be a fraction of the original planned billing rate. And the icing on the cake? The gig was capped at three months. Meaning that after the three months, I’d be cut loose and would either have to find other clients, or a new job altogether.
This really shouldn’t have fazed me much. But it did. Far more than I wanted it to, too.
A main reason it shouldn’t have ruffled my feathers much was because I’d originally been prepared to move without a job. So, even with this unexpected turn of events, I still was sort of in a “better” position than having no job. After all, even the altered gig meant that I was working and earning money, if not nearly as much as I’d counted on. Also, my FIRE-knowledge-fortified brain knew that we could financially handle me not working for a substantial period of time and that, in all likelihood, everything would be fine.
But that at-ease part of my brain was a slightly inadequate match for the much larger part of my brain that had long been forged in the fire of financial fears and scarcity. While I did have a gig, even if not ideal, I’d still lost many months during which I could have been looking for jobs in my new state. I felt as if I was behind the eight-ball a bit. Which was made worse by me beating myself up for having the temerity to have thought that I’d escaped those fears and mindset. As a result, I began to worry and stress a bit. I even had moments of ever-so-mild panic.
The undeniably good thing, however, was that unlike what all but certainly would have been the case just a few years earlier (before I discovered FIRE), I wasn’t even remotely close to full-on freakout mode. For me, that was progress of a magnitude I’d not once thought possible. And I recognized as much at the time.
But, still, I was more worried, stressed, and panicked than I rationally knew that I should have been. In any event, I began the job search process I’d not fully launched because the offer Boss #12 made me had preempted me doing a full-on search. I discovered fairly quickly that the market for my type of work was far, far better in my old city than my new one. I found few jobs at all. And even fewer at my level and/or that intrigued me.
Meanwhile, time marched on. And curious things started happening. First, Boss #12 gave me more hours of work than the altered gig contemplated, Hours in excess of the limit were billed at an hourly rate. The rate was far less than my market rate. But it did allow me to be earning an amount each month in excess of what was contemplated in the altered gig.
Also, as the three-month mark of the altered gig neared, I heard not a peep from Boss #12 about me being let go after that. Then the three-months were up. Still not a peep from Boss #12. Instead, I kept getting work. Wow!, I thought. Should I say something? Or should I stay schtum and let it ride? I kept my mouth shut.
A few months later, I think I figured out what was happening. As I’ve mentioned, Boss #12 was skilled in getting what she wanted. And what she’d wanted from the beginning was to have me doing work for the group full-time. So, when the altered gig timeframe ended (and I’m sure she knew when that date came), I’m all but certain she just decided to keep me on and to not say anything about me and the gig to muckety mucks. As for the muckety mucks, I’m all but certain they completely forgot not just about the three-month deal, but about my gig altogether.
Were the muckety mucks to have reminded Boss #12 of the altered gig’s time limit by, she might’ve been forced to let me go, tho I think she’d have put up a mighty fight and there’s a very good chance that she’d have won. But it never came to that.
And so . . . I just kept working.
Eventually, I was able to negotiate a substantial rate increase. Although the new rate was still much lower than my market rate, it came with a few benefits. First, I was on retainer. That gave me some peace of mind as to the gig keeping on, and as to a stable and not insignificant monthly income. It also meant that I didn’t have to: (1) look for a job if I didn’t want to (and, because I hate looking for jobs, I in fact didn’t want to); or (2) look for other clients such that my aggregate earnings from them would exceed what I was receiving with my renegotiated gig.
In time, I had an epiphany as to yet another benefit of the gig. Because my monthly hours were capped at what amounted to a half-time engagement, and I ultimately was instructed not to go above the cap (which would have enabled me to earn more revenue), I got to experience what it was like to work a part-time schedule. That was an arrangement I’d been thinking would be one I’d like to enjoy once I FIRE’d. And here I was getting to try it on for size early. As it turned out, I liked it a lot, thank you very much. I wrote becoming a part-time lover about all this in a prior post.
I also found some other clients and gig work over time. That increased my hours at times. But it also provided a welcome boost to my income each year. Best was that, for the most part, I was able to modulate how many hours beyond my deal with Employer #12 that I wanted to take on. It wasn’t total control at all times. But it was something. And I quite liked it.
On the financial front, although our savings went down quite a bit because of lower income, our investments nonetheless grew apace during this period. That was helped both by positive developments in the markets we were invested in, our having invested the proceeds of the sale of our last condo in our old city, and the magic of compounding producing ever higher annual dollar returns because of the increased level of our investments. My FIRE date not only came into increasing focus, it appeared the date would come earlier than I’d ever anticipated.
Slowly but surely, the edifice of my financial and job-related fears and of my scarcity mindset began to crumble. Mind you, Dear Reader, the edifice was built upon triple-reinforced rebar.* So, latent elements remained. But the triggers for me to think about and feel those fears in seemingly every fiber of my being, and to be as extreme as I’d previously been as to my scarcity mindset, became fewer and harder to trigger in the first place. Anyway, progress is progress!
And in the end . . .
Dear Reader, we’re nearing the conclusion of my story to date. I bet you’ve never been so happy to reach the end of something before, have you? Even if getting to the end of the end takes fffooorrreeevvveeerrr. Tune in next time for Part XII of this series.
* I know next to nothing about construction and certainly have no idea what this means.
