As you may know, I’m part of a group of nerds who writes about money on the internet. We find joy in helping others avoid some of our missteps, find better bank accounts and credit cards, and some of us aspire to retire early. One of my favorite money nerds is doing just that! On October 1, 2020, my friend “Purple” from APurpleLife.com is retiring at the ripe old age of THIRTY!
Today, on her final day as a working stiff, a bunch of us are writing to celebrate Purple. We’re doing this all over our blogs and social media accounts, because Purple has been an incredible addition to our community, and even won a Plutus Award for the Best Personal Finance Article in 2019!
Here’s the links to other posts from the group celebrating Purple’s achievement today:
Jess from Financial Mechanic wrote this post about Purple’s journey and is linking to the other posts about Purple from our group: https://financialmechanic.com/this-woman-just-quit-her-job-at-age-30-after-saving-500000
Angela dedicated one of her Women’s Personal Finance Wednesday posts to Purple yesterday
Darcy from We Want Guac wrote this A Purple Life blog review:
Ms. Mod from Modest Millionaires wrote this post congratulating Purple for retiring at 30:
Rich & Regular sat down with Purple and Momma Purple in this wonderful piece called “Conversations with A Purple Life”
Jessica from The Fioneers made her Purple tribute on Instagram:
My post will be to share some of my favorite money and life lessons learned from Purple, complete with links to her blog articles so you can take a look at them, too.
Things won’t magically get better just because you land your dream job
Purple described searching for her perfect job, then landing it. But she came to the realization that:
“The perfect job equates in my mind to finding the most well decorated prison cell. It’s still a prison.”
It doesn’t matter if you get paid well, or you get to work from home, or have nice coworkers, or whatever. Your employer still lays claim to at least 40 hours of your time each week, plus the time it takes to get ready in the morning, commute to the workplace, your return commute home, and even some of your so-called “free time” as you think about work issues in the evening, as you lie awake restless at night, or on the weekends. Some even expect you to check your work emails during vacations, when you’re literally being paid NOT to work. It’s gotten ridiculous, friends.
Even those of us who are “lucky enough” to work from home, are now shouldering new burdens. My electric bill is higher, since I’m using my own air conditioning 24/7 plus paying for extra electricity for my work computer to run all day. If I didn’t already have it, I would need high-speed internet. I’m using my own bathroom all the time, which means more water use and using my own toilet paper instead of the scratchy stuff at my workplace.
My dream job a few years ago allowed me to work from home, have a company-issued vehicle, traveled frequently (both day-trips and overnights) and I got to explore new places in Florida that I’d never even heard of. I worked as part of a very cohesive team, and we implemented not one but two innovative new programs that were recognized throughout the country as effective new strategies to deliver services to our constituents. But it still wasn’t enough, because some micromanagement and some broken promises from management led our whole team to break apart and we all found new jobs that would compensate us for the knowledge and experience we brought to the table.
Jobs are Just Never-Ending Group Projects
For most of us high-achieving students, nothing struck a nerve quite like hearing the teacher/professor exclaim that this assignment will be a group project. You know the drill – small groups are formed, a project topic is provided, and then 1 or 2 kids are left shouldering the load for the whole group. Sometimes it’s laziness, sometimes it’s a lack of knowledge or skill, and sometimes there’s a perfectionist in the group that won’t let anyone else contribute. For all these reasons and more, Group Projects are The Worst!
Purple correctly points out that our grown-up jobs often require teamwork, which often looks just like those group projects of our school years.
“It’s the fact that the work I do involves teams – it’s all a group project. Instead of getting clear instructions and a set timeline like we did in school and setting off to complete the task on your own, we must coordinate between people, rely on them, bother them/remind them of their jobs and basically do what I had to do during group projects in school.”
I’m more of the “I trust myself to do my job and do it well” kind of employee, whereas plenty of other people on my “teams” have been the type to spend half the day standing around talking with other coworkers, taking 9 bathroom (or smoke) breaks a day, and just generally not getting their work done in the prescribed timeframes and hours expected. I would be quite happy to be a team of 1, reliant upon nobody else to get the work accomplished, and then all of the credit would be mine to claim, as well.
Knowing WHY she wants to retire
Purple’s answer is a lot more realistic than mine. She says:
“I want to see what I can get up to when my life is not a cycle of drain and recovery.”
For me, it’s to stop having anyone else lay a claim to my time and efforts. In a way, that’s similar to what Purple said, but I also want to be more clear about what I plan to do: I moved to Southwest Florida to live my dream retirement life now. I want to go to the beach, play golf year-round, and never worry about another blizzard again. In my retirement, I may wind up as a “snowbird” chasing an endless summer, but that will allow me to avoid Florida’s biggest drawback: Hurricanes.
I may find out that endless relaxation and leisure activities is not how I want to spend the rest of my life. And I may find that I come up with new ways to make money in my “retired” years, so I have no trouble saying that I won’t be done working for the rest of my life when I finally retire. But as I’ve heard from Tanja Hester, author of the Our Next Life blog and the book Work Optional, Financial Independence/Retire Early is how wimps strive for entrepreneurship. We build the nest egg we’ll need for the rest of our lives, and then it’s ok if some self-employment scheme or idea doesn’t pan out – because your retirement is still secure within your retirement and savings accounts.
Knowing your Why is so important on the journey to Financial Independence, and Purple has a great Why.
She lives the #SlugLife
Purple is obviously incredibly productive in her work hours (and extended hours since she writes a wildly-popular FIRE blog), but she also recognizes something very important.
“Busy does not equal productive…and productivity might be overrated.”
In this article, Purple claims she is an unproductivity advocate, because we all have different ways in which we recharge our bodies and minds.
In today’s face-paced society, life can feel like we’re constantly rushing to do something or go somewhere. There’s a reason McDonald’s now has double drive-thrus everywhere, we all want our stuff faster! Nevermind the fact that there’s still 1 payment window and they usually only serve from 1 serving window – having twice as many ordering boards makes us think it’s going faster!
But forget fast food, people are often rushing their kids around to different activities. They’re trying to rush up the corporate ladder, vying for promotions and raises, or job-hopping to take a marginal step up on a different ladder. Purple flips that on its head – do good work, but take time to relax, recharge, and enjoy the time that is yours.
Controls her spending
Living in a city that most of us would consider expensive, Purple has lived in Seattle the past several years spending less than $18,000 per year. Spending so little certainly allows her to save and invest more, and it also requires a lot less for her to need to cover in her many decades of retirement. She doesn’t have a car, which is an $8-10,000 expense every year for most Americans. She splits her apartment rent with her partner, immediately cutting in half one of the largest expenses most people have every month. She travel hacks some amazing international trips, meaning that the airfare and accommodations are covered by credit card points/miles instead of paying the full cash price.
I’m a homeowner in a very suburban area, so I have to have a car to get around and I currently live alone so my guest room is available for friends and family to come stay with me on vacations. Doing those two things keep my annual spending artificially high, since I have to pay all mortgage payments and utility bills on my own, and I have to keep my car in good working order, insured, and filled up with gas to complete my nearly 2-hour round-trip daily commute. I do my fair share of travel hacking too, but I still spend quite a bit parking said car at the airport, or paying for nicer hotel accommodations when an Airbnb would probably work out just as well. In 2019, I spent $20,016 combined on housing, utilities, car, and travel, while Purple spent $17,896 on her WHOLE LIFE in 2019, living in Seattle. I could definitely learn some things from the cost-conscious Purple.
She’s an incredible friend
But more than being a job-hating, early-retirement-obsessed, #Sluglife, penny-pinching miser (which she is NONE OF THOSE THINGS), she’s an awesome friend. I had the pleasure of hanging out with her in Washington DC and in Seattle in 2019, and she’s such an excitable, hilarious, and yes colorful young woman, set on living her best life after her required working life is out of the picture.
I’m so proud of you, Purple. You did it!
And now she starts her best chapter. I can’t wait to follow along.
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