Breaking Free From The Golden Handcuffs
Three things that helped me walk away from the cubicle with confidence
In 2022, I decided to step away from my career, focus on travel, writing, family, and emptying my cup. I wrote my resignation letter on a southbound train from Virginia to Florida, and then broke down into tears.
It was emotionally hard to leave a good job with a good company. Besides leaving a lot of money on the table, I was saying goodbye to a lot of good people too.
Before I resigned, I had:
A really good six-figure salary, built up over years in information technology
Long term stock plan incentives vesting in the next two years
An annual 20% bonus on top of my already hefty tech salary
Lots of high-value professional perks that come with working for best entertainment company in the world
In short, I had a shiny set of golden handcuffs.
But at that point in my life, I just didn’t want to be an IT manager anymore. I would have maybe done a different job at my company, but I didn’t have the skills to transform myself into something else.
I was unhappy, and that wasn’t good for me or my company.
For years, I would stare at myself in the mirror while getting ready for work and audibly say “I quit” to no one in particular. And then I would take a deep breath, finish getting dressed, and hop into rush hour traffic. I had too much riding on this, and so I couldn’t give it up.
When I finally made the decision to leave, my golden handcuffs, after years of holding me unhappily in place, felt pretty weak. Pursuing financial independence helped me to resolve three key blockers that made the golden handcuffs so effective.
Burn The Velvet Leash
Getting a house, a couple of cars, the camper, the boat - it’s the American dream.
But it is a bit like a leash around our neck. We’re tethered to a mortgage, car loans, and high interest credit card payments on all the other stuff.
As soon as we borrow money to support an opulent lifestyle, we lack the financial freedom to do anything other than “suck it up” when work turns toxic.
“Growth mindset, Allen! Just make more money!”
Most of us do make more as our careers grow. But instead of buying our freedom, we just buy nicer shit. A bigger house. Better cars. More expensive hobbies.
We don’t remove the leash around our necks when we get a raise, we just upgrade to a nicer one. That new fancy Velvet Leash is much softer on our skin. It is more beautiful to look at. It is the envy of our friends and neighbors.
But it’s still a leash.
We remedied this by cutting back and ending our cycle of lifestyle creep. Our focus shifted from buying a nicer leash to doing away with leashes altogether. I wanted less to be riding on this career.
Two new cars became one used car
A 3,000 square foot new home became a 2,000 square foot 1980s home
Eating out became cooking
Publix became Aldi
The less indebted we were to our lifestyle, the less tethered we were to jobs we no longer enjoyed.
Golden handcuffs are less effective if you aren’t highly leveraged in your personal life.
Fire The Anxiety Architect
“As soon as I retire/change jobs/move across country, the economy is going to collapse and I will regret not staying put.”
Over the years, I have become a senior Anxiety Architect. The best in the biz! I’ve designed all manner of doomsday scenarios about market crashes, recessions, loss of identity, and a complete unraveling of democracy. You name it, and I have catastrophized about it.
In order to get comfortable with market crashes, I had to put rational thinking systems in place.
One example of a mental frame I like to use repeatedly on myself is as follows:
Even buying stocks at the worst possible time yields substantial returns over the long run.
Evidence? If you bought shares of the S&P 500 at the worst possible time in 2008, at the market highs just before the start of the financial crisis, and then sold your shares at the worst possible time in 2020, at the lows of the COVID crisis, you are still up more than 60% on your investment.
Also, what a great time to buy!
Of course, recessions are scary. The heavy compensation of golden handcuffs make us feel safer during times of economic turmoil. But that safety is an illusion.
When the economy turns, or AI happens, or CheeseDick Consulting, LLC advises our CEO to do a reorg, then we’re often out on the street anyway.
My first layoff from a Big-4 accounting firm helped me realize that the golden handcuffs were flimsy and unreliable; that the company can discard them anytime they want.
Golden handcuffs tie you to the company, not the company to you.
What an absolute gift that layoff was for me; I’m so grateful for it. That life event kicked off our leash burning journey. We didn’t know much, but we knew we never wanted to be that financially vulnerable again.
Don’t Have Too Many Mentors
When I was learning how to get my finances in order, I would read every blog, watch every video, and listen to as many podcasts as I could. What I realized is that financial advice is all over the place. Everyone comes at it differently.
I would read about the genius of modern portfolio theory one day. And then I would read that modern portfolio theory was complete bullshit the next.
Some financial influencers say the 4% rule is dead, while others say it’s now even higher.
Dr. Wade Pfau, well respected, would tell you that whole life and annuities have a place in your portfolio. Dave Ramsey, also well respected, would rail against them.
Mr. Money Mustache would tell you that $1 million dollars is an extraordinarily insane amount of wealth. Suze Ormond would tell you that you need a minimum of $10 million.
Receiving such a diverse amount of advice, it is no wonder that we are indecisive and perhaps fearful of letting go of our paycheck.
I think all of these folks bring wisdom to the table, but in the end, we decided to pair down our financial philosophy and strategy to the one that suits our risk tolerance and personalities the best. That helped us filter out a lot of the noise and be more decisive in financial matters.
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches isn’t sure - Segal’s law
If you’re curious, we are kind of old-school mustachian hippies. We don’t like the idea of pouring $100 of fuel into a $70,000 SUV and then driving it into the ground. We fix our own stuff (when we’re able). We take the stairs; we move our bodies to keep them healthy. We believe we have an abundance of wealth, even if by other’s standards, we seem quite poor. Honestly, nothing would make me happier than to have people whisper “We don’t know if they are filthy rich or dirt poor” behind our backs.
Breaking the golden handcuffs is hard work, but these are the things that helped me the most to finally cast them aside.
I left a well-paying job with good benefits and generous employer contributions to my 401(k) so that I could move to a more desirable (to me) part of the country. Then I FIREd and abandoned a well-paying contract gig that could have continued for the foreseeable future. Both great decisions for me for which I have precisely zero regrets. Pursuing--and then reaching--financial independence absolutey was key to me not only making and executing on the decisions, but with vaporizing any anxiety and reticence I'd otherwsie have had.
Yep! Thanks for sharing this journey. It struck me, reading this, that you and I are fortunate to have spouses completely on board with our big changes of direction—from two new cars to one used car, etc. It’s a lucky thing to redirect with one’s partner.