I have about 6 months to go before I reach my FIRE number, but burnout has really taken a hold of me.
I have 0 interest or motivation in my job. I lay in bed till the minute I can't do it anymore. I'm thinking about quitting and taking a break even though I havent fully reached my number yet.
1st complication is that I still owe 100k on a 200k 'loan' a friend gave for a house purchase. I say 'loan', it was technically a gift and they arent asking for the money back. But, I think my conscience won't be clear till I pay them off.
2nd complication is there are a couple fixes / improvements for the house that I'd like to complete in the shortterm. Here are a couple examples:
– Arborist inspection. (Budgeting ~5k, to bring down a couple trees)
– Well water test. (~5k for a comprehensive test)
– Washing machine fix, functional, but annoying to use in its current state. (1k)
– Geothermal hot water survey. (~5k?? Unsure about this one.)
If I stay the 6 months, I'll be able to pay the 'loan' back (and hit my FIRE number). Really struggling with this, because (1) I feel like the need to payoff the 'loan' is self imposed & (2) I've really lost any sense of inspiration or interest in my work.
Stats:
Investments: ~$1.3M
Income #1 (burnout job): ~350k
Income #2: ~200k
Nondiscretionary Annual Spend: 26k
Discretionary Annual Spend: 32k
Currently maxing out 2 401ks (1 with after tax contributions & megabackdoor roth). Investing 6k in a brokerage monthly. Funding 2 HSAs fully. Funding 2 roth iras fully, through backdoor. Between 14k – 6k a month is going to the 'loan' payoff (depends on monthly RSUs). Then save or spend the rest, currently there's around 26k unallocated.
6 months away, burnt to a crisp
byu/Weary-String7519 infinancialindependence
Posted by Weary-String7519
11 Comments
What is income 2? The point of fire is to enjoy your time. But you also need to enjoy the time to get there as well. That’s different for everyone. If you quit your job you’ve still got $200k of income that is more than you spend. It increases your fire time but maybe makes life a bit more enjoyable in the meantime.
If your friend isn’t asking for payment back urgently, maybe the $200k allows you to stretch out making monthly payments of a slightly longer period?
I’d say anyone can quiet quit for six months to a year. This is a good time to start mentally detaching. By the time you hit six months, you might find you could eke out another month or two to have some cash for home improvements.
How long have you worked? 15 years? What’s another half a year? It takes a couple of month to fire someone off they’re not breaking any big rules.
Why don’t you invest the money being used for “loan” payment for now. If they aren’t asking back, invest it and let money grow. You can pay back later – this gives you more flexibility.
If you have vacation days left, use some. Do bare minimum.
It’s only 6 months, you can do it.
Senioritous when you have made the choice is a real thing. Do what you can to just push through as long as you can. Emphasis the things you enjoy with your job, phone in the stuff you don’t.
Do ypu have the option to seek time off for mental health?
There’s a lot of room between $350k and $0. Is downshifting or pivoting to something less life-draining but still bringing in some income an option at all?
Assuming you are in the corporate world in the US it would take them at least 6 months to fire you so quiet quitting is an option but I’d suggest you might look for jobs that interest you more even if it’s a pay haircut. Might be something out there for 60-70% of the pay but is stimulating and lower stress.
Tbh if you’re worrying about replacing home appliance/repairs that doesn’t sound like you’re ready to FIRE, but to each their own
Can you find a doctor or LMHP to write you off for intermittent FMLA mental health leave a certain number of hours/week? Maybe you can do this 30 hours/week for longer and more sustainably? Do you have PTO you can use?
Start delegating tasks to your subordinates, frame it was cross training. Start quiet quitting.
You know your place of work better than any of us here, but would providing them with advance notice of your planned departure completely screw you over?
Last year I told employer at my job I was burned out in that I would be departing to do my own thing, but gave them six months notice to help them transition through that time (there was some restructuring that I helped with).
They were appreciative of that and because we were able to start the transition early the work and expectations began to downshift along that timeframe. Because I left on good terms, they’ve also paid me my contracting rate (around 3 times my salary rate) for the limited help I’ve provided them with since the fact.
If it’s a truly toxic place that may not work, but I wanted to share.