EP #28 - Why I Walked Away From a $250K Job—The 3 Fears I Had to Overcome

In this episode, I share my journey of leaving a high-paying yet unfulfilling job, the fears I faced, and how I prepared financially to take the leap. I discuss practical advice for those considering quitting their job, including the importance of financial security and following one's passion. Join me as I reflect on my experiences and the steps I took to find greater fulfillment and success in real estate investing and content creation.

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Transcript

Nancy: 0:00

This is the Financial Freedom Fighters Podcast

Jacob: 0:13

Leaving what was on the surface a dream job, paying me 000 a year was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. I agonized over it for nearly a year, just really paralyzed by the uncertainty of what would happen after I quit. Nearly six months later, I've gained a lot more clarity on the most important factors to consider when deciding to leave your job. I've watched a lot of I quit my job videos on YouTube. And I think a lot of those videos are reckless, you know, quitting without a backup plan, quitting without any money. I disagree with a lot of the videos I've seen. I want this video to be different. I want to give practical advice to you if you're thinking about quitting your job so that you can quit with confidence without risking your financial security or without risking, frankly, your sanity. anyways, here's my story. Chapter 1: The Feeling you know, the feeling you have so much anxiety on Sunday nights, because you are dreading the idea of going to work on Monday. Every day at this job starts to feel like it's eating away at your soul. Every task and project starts to feel more and more meaningless. You're confused because you used to be such a high performer. You used to go the extra mile, but now you don't have it in you to do that. promotions stop coming, the office politics start to get away from you, and you just start to feel really trapped you want to rage quit, but ultimately you're afraid and you're confused because you have worked so hard to climb the corporate ladder. Are you really going to quit now? Do you need to just suck it up? Who am I without this job? What will people think of me if I quit? These are all thoughts and feelings that were swirling around in my head for the better part of a year. I just didn't feel like myself anymore. I knew something needed to change. I knew something needed to give. I knew I needed to quit, but I just kept asking myself, Chapter 2: How Did I Get Here? For context. I'm a 33 year old millennial. I'm also a first generation American. My parents immigrated here from the Philippines with very little to their name, I only share that with you because that backdrop really shaped how I view life and careers and jobs, when I graduated from college, the country was still recovering from the great financial crisis. I had a bunch of student loan debt that I needed to pay off and I absolutely needed to find a stable job. Finding something I was passionate about was not really a consideration. Ain't nobody had time for that. I ended up getting a job at a big four accounting firm. It's not like I was super passionate about accounting I just wanted a stable job. And so went the story of my career for the next 10 years, I was determined to one, make as much money as possible and to climb the corporate ladder to eventually one day become CEO, to prove to my parents that their sacrifice was worth it. If I felt that I've maximized my promotions at one company, I would just move on to the next and rinse and repeat that process. Happiness wasn't really a consideration. You know, work was for money and happiness was for everything outside of work. The problem with that philosophy, however, is you spend one third of your life working. You work for eight hours a day. You sleep for eight hours a day and the other eight hours, you're so exhausted from working and you have so much anxiety that it's really hard to enjoy the time that you're not in the office. And you do this until you're 65 years old when most people traditionally retire and the average life expectancy is, 75. the hamster wheel of life. the realization hit me like a ton of bricks, I just found myself asking, Is this all there really is to life? continuously working jobs that aren't really fulfilling. trying to make as much money as possible until I retire. And then after I retire, I, I die not long after that. I knew that something had to give. I knew that there was more to life than this hamster wheel that I was on. And I was really, really starting to feel that about 10 years into my career. You can only live out of alignment with who you are for so long before something breaks before you burn out entirely. And that's where I was at. Exactly. I was burnt out from my job, 10 years in corporate America, hopping from job to job, that was not. Fulfilling to me that I was not passionate about. And now I was burnt out. And now I had to face a crossroads in my life and in my career, climbing the corporate ladder was not my dream in the first place. It was something that I was doing because I felt like I owed something to my parents to make something of myself, to prove to them that their sacrifice was worth it. But it was never my dream I knew I had to bounce. I knew I had to leave, even though I knew I had to leave, I was afraid. I was terrified. Chapter 3: The Fear fear is an interesting emotion. on one hand, fear is built into our programming as a protection mechanism. It's supposed to keep us alive and away from danger. On the other hand, however, in most modern day context, fear and anxiety that we feel. It's not commensurate with the actual situation. the fear and anxiety is, is really overblown. And in my case, this was definitely true. You know, this was not a life or death situation, nevertheless, I found myself losing sleep, getting angry, riding this rollercoaster of emotions, turning into someone I wasn't because I was in a job that I no longer wanted to be in anymore, point blank period. But I was too scared to walk away from something, even though I was pretty sure I didn't want to do it anymore. the only way I was going to get over this, the only way I was going to defeat the fear was I needed to pinpoint exactly what it was. I needed to name the enemy instead of this vague existential dread. I needed to name it. I needed to specify it. I needed to look it in the face so I could overcome it. So I could defeat it. There were three enemies in this case, three demons that comprised of my fear. It was money, it was reputation, and it was failure. Money was clearly the most obvious one. If I left the job that was paying me 250, 000 a year, what was I going to do for money? how was I going to fill that gap and how would I continue to invest and save for my future? So I need to figure that out before I could comfortably and confidently leave. The second one is reputation. we live in a society where our job and our income make up such a large part of our identity. I was afraid of what would happen to my reputation if I no longer had this job, if I no longer had this income, What will my coworkers think of me? You know, what would my wife think if I left my job, what would my family think? Lastly, I was afraid of failure. I knew I wanted to leave and I told myself that if I left, that I would have more time and space to pursue my passion. I'm passionate about real estate investing, pursuing financial freedom. You know, I wanted more time to focus on that. I also wanted to focus more on the content creation. I love helping people. Pursue financial freedom and learn about financial freedom and learn about real estate investing. And so I wanted to help as many people as I could through the content that I was creating and that I would find a way to be successful in those endeavors if I didn't have the ball and chain of my W 2 job. But what if that was just a lie that I was telling to myself, you know, what if I wasn't actually good enough to. Succeed in entrepreneurial endeavors. what if I wasn't good enough to be a content creator or a real estate investor? What if I was just meant to be a corporate W 2 employee, and that's all my life was destined to be and that I was just going to crash and burn if I quit. So I was just afraid of failure. again, these were my three enemies, money, reputation, and failure. And if I was going to. Get over this if I was going to decide to leave my job Then I would need to defeat these enemies these demons I was determined to do that, Whatever it was going to take I was going to defeat these demons and the first one to really Grapple with was the money Chapter 4: Money We all need money at the end of the day to pay our bills and to save and invest for the future. this was particularly big for me because growing up money caused the most disruption in my household. like I had mentioned previously, my parents immigrated here from the Philippines and they didn't have much to their name. They worked very, very hard my entire life to give my sister and I a good life and they did a great job. But. My parents would be the first to say that they did not have a good financial education money was a big cause of stress in our household. My parents live paycheck to paycheck almost their entire life. And so with that backdrop, I knew that I didn't want money to be a problem for me. And I knew that if I didn't want that to happen, that I would need to accumulate as much money as possible. I would need to save. I would need to invest. I would need to figure out the money game so that I didn't go through the same hardships that my parents went through. I just didn't want that stress. I didn't want those problems. Bringing it back to the conversation. It seemed unfathomable to me that I would consider leaving a job that was paying me so well when I was stressed and had these financial traumas, you know, why would I willingly give up such a high salary when I was just starting to get my stride, when I was just starting to, make real progress on a lot of my financial goals, why would I do that? But the reality was while money. Is important. It's not everything. clearly it's not everything because despite making 250, 000 a year, I had never been more unhappy with my career than at this point. And when I took a step back and I really analyzed my financial situation, that fear of money actually put me in a really, really good place financially because I was so focused on avoiding my money problems, my entire adult life, I prioritized saving and investing. I knew that money gave people options. And if I wanted to have options, I needed to accumulate as much wealth as possible. I knew that I diligently needed to build a nest egg. And that is what I focused on since I graduated college. when I got my first job, I was in student debt, and I was paying that off, but I started investing modestly, a couple hundred dollars a month into the stock market. It wasn't much at first, but it was a mindset. I knew I needed to be an investor and it was the discipline of being consistent. As I switched jobs and as my salaries increased, I just, Lived below my means and I continue to invest more specifically, I saved or invested 50 percent of my income for about 10 years. And even though there were periods, I definitely felt the temptation of spending more and not saving and investing as much as I did. I stuck with it. And I was able to do that because I automated a lot of my investing. I automated a lot of my saving. as soon as my paychecks hit, I that money was spoken for. It was leaving my account into my brokerage account or into my high yield savings account. And I just got used to spending what was left. I had that discipline and I had been doing that for over 10 years. And that put me in a really good spot financially. And for anybody that is hoping to build a nest egg. And for anybody that's hoping to build a habit of investing, I highly suggest automating and taking yourself out of the equation and just leaving it alone and increasing it when you increase your income. And you'll be surprised at, the amount of progress you're able to make over a long period of time. And This allowed me to build a very sizable portfolio, in the stock market, and also allowed me to start investing into rental properties. And so at this point, when I was looking to quit my job, I had a sizable portfolio of stocks a handful of rental properties that was generating cashflow. And while I hadn't fully achieved financial freedom, I had stacked enough assets that even if I didn't invest another dollar moving forward, If my assets continue to grow by the time I reached traditional retirement age, I would have more than enough. And I think in the fire community or the financial independence to retire early community, they refer to this as coast fire. So I was coast fire and I didn't really think about it until I thought about the potential of leaving my job, leaving my high income. And so in reality, because of my investments and because of the fact that I only ever lived on 50 percent of my income, I didn't really need to make 250, 000. Anymore. And that realization was super, super impactful to me. I could theoretically make half as much in my financial future would still be secure, even living in the San Francisco Bay area, which was huge. I can make another video about all the financial moves that I made in my twenties to get to this point. So if you're interested in that, just let me know in the comments I'll go a little bit deeper, um, on a future video, uh, for that topic specifically. money at the end of the day is a tool. It's a tool that's supposed to give us optionality. And at this point, I realized the work that I had done had given me a lot of optionality, more optionality than I actually thought that I had. I realized I did have flexibility, I did not need to continue to stay in a job that wasn't fulfilling to me anymore, just because he was paying me a high income, I could figure it out. because in the worst possible case scenario, I had rental properties that were generating cashflow. I had investments And at that point as well, I had about six months in my high yield savings account to cover any immediate expenses. So my financial fortress was pretty secure. And on top of that, I was pretty sure even without this high paying job, I was going to find a way to make money. this is where I really diverge from a lot of the I quit videos that you see on YouTube. I had a nest egg You know, I had a financial fallback plan and I had done a lot of work to ensure that my financial future would be secure And I think that this is important if I hadn't done that, if I hadn't done the legwork over the past 10 years to make sure I had that nest egg, to make sure I invested in stocks, to make sure I invested in real estate, I would not have quit my job, I needed my finances to be secure, to give myself the confidence to be able to do that. And so if you're watching this and you're in your early twenties, I highly, highly encourage you to start prioritizing saving and investing so that when you get to my age, if you are unhappy with your job, or if you do want to make a major life change that you've set up that foundation for yourself so that you can leave if you want to leave. You're reflecting on my twenties. I prioritize increasing my income as much as possible. I worked long hours. I switched jobs. I got the salary increases. I got the promotion. And that was the first 10 years of my career. And. While that did end up burning me out, I don't regret any of that because it allowed me to save and invest. making a high income is only half the battle. You also have to have the discipline to invest. There's plenty of people that make six figures a year that don't have anything to show for it because they don't have the discipline of investing and they have lifestyle creep and as they make more money, they just spend more money. So they're never getting ahead. So making a high income is only half the battle. You have to save and invest. And luckily that was something that I had been doing for, The past 10 years. So what I had realized is that my fear of money was overblown. I had more than enough and I was going to figure it out and I was going to be okay. So, you know, the demon of money or the fear of money was thoroughly defeated. But even though my fear of money was overblown, I was still afraid of what people would think. Chapter 5: Reputation We live in a country and a society that is obsessed with work. whenever you're at a happy hour or you're just meeting other people, the first question that someone will ask you is what do you do for work? That's how it is, you know, and you can't even really be at dinner with friends and family and loved ones. Without. Spending a large amount of time talking about work. That's just the culture that we're in, and being in San Francisco specifically, this was definitely a problem for me, you know, surrounded by people that worked in Silicon Valley, worked at Google and Facebook, high flying startups, people having IPOs, paying them tons and tons of money. And I was a part of that. I w I worked in tech, you know, I worked at a relatively well known FinTech startup. I was a part of this culture. And. I identified with it. and I just tied so much of my self worth. To my job and thinking about leaving it was problematic because my identity was so wrapped up in my job. I struggled with who I would be without the job. You know, I struggled, what would people think of me if I didn't have that job? even though it sounds silly to say out loud, that's a real consideration. I was just afraid of what people would think of me. but the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous this line of thinking became to me, I am not my job and you were not your job and we should not derive so much or any of our self worth really from what we do for work from our job. We cannot have so much of our identity wrapped up in our job. That's incredibly unhealthy But I was guilty of this. I was guilty of this 100%, but the more I thought about it, we just, we just cannot succumb to this line of thinking. Work is just one facet of our lives. Yeah. It should not be our whole life. that's the problem of being a part of a work culture like the United States. That's all consuming. I decided at this point, you know, that my self worth was not tied to my job and leaving this job would not decrease my self worth or decrease my value in any way, shape, or form. Who I am and what I'm worth has nothing to do with my job title. It has nothing to do with my income. And as far as what people think, nobody cares about you at the end of the day, everyone's so consumed about themselves. So why are you so concerned about what people think of you? why was I so concerned about what people think of me? Nobody cares. And so you just need to let that go. At the end of the day, the only people that I care about and what they think are my loved ones. And my family was going to support me, no matter what my wife, especially couldn't have been more supportive. You know, she saw how much this job was eating away at me. And she just gave me the confidence that no matter what happened, that me and her, we were going to figure it out. And that meant the world to me. And at the end of the day, that's all that mattered. So you should not be consumed with what people think of you, period, for your job, for your life, for anything, because that's not going to serve you. the people that matter, they're going to be by your side, no matter what. And if people are going to judge you because of your job or your income, they're likely not people you want to have in your life. Anyway, at the end of the day, your life is for you. You know, you have to live a life that makes you feel inspired. And I was no longer proud of the life that I was living. I didn't want to become a CEO anymore. I didn't feel as if climbing the corporate ladder was giving me the fulfillment that I wanted out of my life. And so I knew I needed to pivot. I got inspired by people that were real estate investors, that were entrepreneurs, people that were paving their own way. And that's the life that I wanted to build for myself. But even though I was sure of this new path, I was still so worried that I would fail. Chapter 6: Failure it's very easy to talk a big game. It's something else entirely to be able to walk the walk. What if I left my job to pursue my passion? I completely failed. You know, what if I failed as a real estate investor? What if I failed as a content creator? What if I burned through all my savings and have nothing to show for it at the end of the day, and I have to come crawling back to corporate America? What if there's nothing special about me and the average life is all that I was destined for? What if I should have been more appreciative of what I had in my job and not rock the boat in my life, even though I didn't care about the money. Even though I didn't care about the reputation, you know, even though I, I defeated those two demons, there was still an inner voice inside that said, I wasn't good enough to succeed that I didn't deserve to have success outside of the normal success of a nine to five job that I would fail and that I should just stay put where I am because I'm even lucky to be there and I should just be happy with that. This enemy was definitely tough to beat. And I know you. Have that inner voice for you as well But what ultimately helped me overcome this enemy was I just thought about myself at 80 years old sitting on my rocking chair or Doing whatever i'm doing at 80 years old and I asked myself what my 80 year old self would regret more Would I regret not taking this chance, not taking the opportunity to pave my own way and follow my heart and follow my passion? Or would I regret leaving corporate America more? And with that framing, the decision became really, really clear. I would certainly regret not taking this chance a lot more I would always have wondered what would happen if I had taken that chance. If I had taken that risk, fear can definitely be crippling at times, but without fear, there can be no courage is failure possible. Absolutely. You know, but so is success. And I'll never know if I don't give it a shot. I wasn't going to let the fear of failure stop me from trying. If I wanted to achieve something great, then I was going to need to risk something. and ultimately what I decided was I was going to bet on myself. I knew that would figure this out. And I was up for the challenge. I was going to pull this off. And so I defeated my last fear of failure, and I decided to quit my job, but I'm sure you're wondering what happened after I quit my job and how my life is going now. Chapter 7: How It's Going So Far when I left, it was definitely a surreal feeling. I have been at this particular job for the past four years, and I dedicated so much of my life work, so many hours at this particular job, I had helped this company grow and it was such a big, big part of me. So it was definitely a surreal feeling to leave. And while it did feel. As if a weight was lifted off of me, it was very soon replaced with the weight of knowing I had to walk the walk it was game time now, and that I had to figure something out funny enough, not long after I quit, I reconnected with an old real estate mentor of mine and his real estate investment company had an opening that popped up. And this was a job that, and a company, frankly, that I wouldn't Necessarily I've considered to work with in the past. It was just a completely different company. the company was about 10 people in total. So very, very small compared to the startup that I was at. and it paid far less money. That was just a fact it paid far less money and I never would have considered it just for those two reasons. You know, the company is too small. It didn't pay enough money. can't do it, but I was no longer optimizing for money. I was optimizing for fulfillment and this job was going to give me amazing experience in something that I was passionate about real estate investment. So I took that job and it's going great so far, you know, because the company is so small, my position really matters. I'm really making an impact And I just feel overall re energized and re motivated because it's just more aligned to what I want to do and what I'm passionate about. And that has sparked the motivation in me again. Obviously it's nice to have income coming in as well. You know, I haven't had to touch my savings because I've had some income coming in. And like I said, even though it's not even close to what I was making before, because I was only ever living on 50 percent of my income, I was able to sustain myself and pay for my expenses, even with the job that's paying much, much less than I was making before. And even though I'm making less money, it's. It's not as draining to me. and I feel like I have more flexibility and more energy to pursue my creative endeavors outside of my job, which is great. On the real estate investing front. I purchased my first luxury Airbnb a lakefront property in Michigan. We renovated it, furnished it, and we launched that and it's been going really, really great so far. I've discovered that I enjoy the hospitality aspects of Airbnb investing. So I'm definitely going to be doing more Airbnb in the future. on the content creation front, I've been really focused on, putting out high quality content on my YouTube and Instagram and my podcast, the financial freedom fighters. So make sure to like follow and subscribe. the most rewarding thing that's happened is I've been helping people, buy their first rental properties, and avoid all the costly mistakes that I made at the beginning of my real estate investing journey. And that's been really, really rewarding to work with these people if you are interested in jumping Into the world of real estate investing. And you want an experienced mentor that you want to work with. check out the link in the description below. There's going to be some information on how, we can work together one on one. I'd love to help you, as you jumpstart your real estate investing journey. And to circle back on my fears of money, reputation, and failure on the money side, I'm definitely not saving and investing as much as I did in the past. But that was by design. I knew that that was going to happen because I was taking a significant hit in my income. but funny enough, since leaving that job six months ago, my net worth has actually increased about a hundred thousand. And that's because the stock market has gone on a crazy run. The real estate is doing fairly well. money has been fine, as I thought, you know, everything was going to be okay and it's gone better than okay, actually. And so it really validated that I didn't need that high income and I don't need that high income, but I'm still determined to figure out a way. To continue to increase my income, just doing things that I'm more passionate about. And that's what I really believe is that at the end of the day, if everybody's doing work that they feel more aligned to, they're going to end up making more money anyway, because they are working in something that they enjoy and they're going to excel at. And that's how I feel in my current job. And that's how I feel with the content creation and, uh, my entrepreneurial endeavors. And so I'm not worried about the money at all. On the reputation side, like I thought, no one sees me any differently at all. If anything, people think it's really cool that I left and that I'm doing something different. And so reputation fear was overblown. And on the failure side, the fear of failure is always going to be there. And I will be lying. If I said there weren't some moments where I questioned whether or not I made the right decision, because it's a big life change, you know, but ultimately I do think that I made the right decision and I'm going to continue to let the fear fuel me and continue to make me work harder instead of paralyze me. I hope sharing this story with you has given you. A better idea of what to consider when you leave your job. So let's wrap this up. Should you leave your job? Honestly, it depends as cheesy as it is to say, uh, it really, really does depend. For me, I think it was the right decision. Definitely. I'd worked for over 10 years in corporate America. I saved up a decent nest egg and I knew what I wanted to pursue when I left my job, you know, real estate investing and content creation and real estate coaching, et cetera. So that was me, you know, if you're in your early twenties and you don't have a lot of money saved up and you're not really sure what you want to do after you quit, I would say leaving your job is probably not the best idea. I think your twenties, you need to focus on building your years of experience, you know, building up that resume. I think you need to focus on increasing your skills. That are going to help you increase your income. I think you need to prioritize saving and investing and building up that nest egg. And then I think you can consider leaving your job. You know, the nine to five grind is necessary evil for most of us, but if we are diligent about investing, whether that be in stocks or real estate, it opens up the possibility of retiring early and checking out of the rat race, which. Is what I want to do. I'm on track to retire by the time I'm 40, I'm 33 right now. And I'm on track with my stock investments and my real estate investments to retire by the time I'm 40. I will go into another video on my financial freedom plan. so make sure to like, and subscribe so you can catch that video, but ultimately that's what I want you to take away from this is that if you if you play the money game the right way. Then money's going to be a tool that's going to open up a lot of options for you. And you know, one of those options could be to leave your job if you don't like your job. And so the earlier you start investing, the more powerful it becomes. And that's why I urge anyone in their early twenties to prioritize earning and investing as much as possible, because it really helped me in the current situation that I'm in. If you stay till this point in the video, https: otter. ai If you found this video helpful, please make sure to like comment and subscribe. If you want to connect with me, you can do so on Instagram at cashflow saga, shoot me a DM let's connect and I'll help in any way that I can best of luck on your journey, my friend, I will see you in the next video. Peace.

Nancy: 25:41

Goodbye