Articles with job decisions

New job, New state, New Lifestyle! Maybe not…

As you may know, Mrs. SSC has been looking for teaching jobs, so every week she gets emailed new postings and if she sees something that looks interesting for me, she will also forward it along. I had an interesting job opportunity forwarded to me from Mrs. SSC that we both would seem to fit, and the company wanted both a geophysicist and a geologist. Double bonus! We figured it could fit our needs if we both got an offer, so we applied.

Last week, I got an email from that company saying that they would be interested in talking with me about the position. I returned the email and gave them some open dates and they responded with, “Would you be free tomorrow morning around 9am?” I was excited because who doesn’t like getting picked, but the down side was that Mrs. SSC hadn’t been contacted, bummer…

During the call, I found out about the position, job responsibilities, office setup, and more and it sounded great. Better yet, I qualified to start on the upper end of the pay spectrum, around $95k/yr! My schedule would stay the same with 9/80 style, and there were some other Lifestyle Change perks as well, but it was looking pretty good.

Then, reality struck, hard and heavy. We had already vetted some cost of living (COL) increases in this area, assuming we would both get offered positions. Even then, we knew that with 2 salaries it would be tight, because I haven’t mentioned this part yet, but this job was in California… GAH!!! We thought it would be worth it though, because we could start our Lifestyle Change a bit early, but just take a different path than we planned. I mean who wouldn’t want to live in California for a few years? This would be in Camarillo, which is near Ventura and Oxnard, and has topography, and well a milder version of seasons, but at least different from Houston. Also, there are a lot of parks and hiking around there, as well as the beach, and other fun stuff to do with the kids. You can even see snow on the surrounding mountains in the winter! Oooohhhh…..  🙂  Based on those types of things that we want in our Lifestyle Change, we thought it would be fine to go there for a few years, even if it would delay things a bit. We’d have better work schedules, and be living in a better geographically pleasant area.

I started doing some rough calculations based on what we spend now per month on essentials to see where how good or bad it might be. Since we’ve got a solid year plus of tracking that info, it was easy to ballpark the COL in California. When I started adding these up we were left with about $265/mo left over. This was assuming no daycare costs with Mrs. SSC staying at home, and other minor adjustments like no maids, no cable, no gym, etc… When I got to the end of the month, I had very little left over… It was depressing, as you can see in the chart below.

Even with big unrealistic cuts, it's tight.
Even with big unrealistic cuts, it’s tight.

Between taxes (27%), 5% contribution to 401k, and housing which was about $2600-$3600/month for a 3 BR house, we were left with enough to survive and that’s about it. This would mean that we wouldn’t be able to add anything to our “extra” retirement savings, no college savings for the kids anymore, no allowance money, no replenishment of the emergency fund if/when something happened, and no extra money for anything. It’s good we’d be in beautiful CA, because we couldn’t afford to leave to travel anywhere else. With realistic tweaking of the budget averages from last year we would only have an extra $3100/year. Per year… That was not adding in the real adjusted COL to our averages, rather assuming we could cut ~10% and the rest would take care of itself in the wash.

I looked at our highest spend categories to see what other cuts could be made. Our car insurance is about $182/mo for both cars, but we have another year of $323 car payment on Mrs. SSC’s vehicle. So even if we paid it off before we left, which would be entirely doable, that still only frees up another $3900/yr to buffer the budget. Also, I asked Mrs. SSC, “What’s the house and misc. shopping, do we spend that much just shopping?” She said, “Well, that would be your clothes, my clothes, the kids clothes, light bulbs, toilet paper, stuff like that… You want toilet paper right?” Hahahaha Not a whole lot of wiggle room there either, especially since our allowances wouldn’t exist and they used to cover our clothes. We don’t want to derail our FFLC plans this close to the goal, so I ultimately had to turn the position down because it would put us in a negative/neutral financial position.

Thinking about this from a standpoint that we’re in now though brought me back around to the positive side of things. First, it’s good to know that in a few years, this position might be open again, and I would be an effective shoe-in to get that spot. Second, since we’d be at our FFLC number, we wouldn’t have to worry about whether we have extra savings to add to it, because according to our plan, we’d be living off of it solely without any extra income. A position like this would effectively allow us to live in CA with the only real expense being me working for a year or so. Since we wouldn’t be touching our savings, they’d just grow too. Now that’s a win! Third, this is exactly what Mrs. SSC has been talking about in the sense that if a geologist job or other random teaching type of position opens up, it’s fine if it only offers $30-$40k/yr if it’s somewhere that we would like to live for a few years. We could live somewhere fun and interesting, explore around there for a few years or more, and then move on to the next cool place.

This whole exercise did make me realize that our budget for FFLC is looking pretty nice though. Even with it re-adjusted since we’ll be renting for a couple of years, and then possibly buying in a more long term area, we should be doing well and living fairly comfortably without a lot of worries about needing extra income. Also, I realized that if any unexpected expenditures that come up, we have our allowances to use as a buffer, which is comforting too. In the end, it did end up with me feeling a lot better about our numbers, plans, and expectations of our Lifestyle Change. I’m even more excited now, knowing in another year or so, we’ll be in full control to do what we want, and not have to be constrained by the thoughts of “Can we afford to live there on that salary?” That is a pretty cool feeling. Until then, we’ll just keep sticking to the plan and counting down days. On the plus side, we’re under 850 days to go until then…

breakdown from Smartasset.com and their tax calculator
breakdown from Smartasset.com and their tax calculator

So much background noise…

Offshore rig
Offshore rig

Recently, I’ve been a little out of sorts and it’s manifested itself everywhere in my life. Most recently I had a pseudo-sleepless night, where I couldn’t get my brain to turn off until well past 1am, and I get up at 5:20am everyday… From the blog, to home life, and even at work I’ve noticed a general heightened anxiety. It just occurred to me today that it is stress caused by background noise of everything going on in my industry. I work in Oil and Gas, and well, unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard about all of the job cuts, layoffs, and restructuring due to the low oil prices. Today oil is around $37/bbl which is ridiculously low, and low enough that most companies can’t make a profit with those prices. They are stuck in the model we all rally against, “spending more than you earn”.

Most companies realize this and are working to reign it in, but with prices staying this low, it seems like a chasing the tail exercise. We meet the criteria to profit at $60/bbl and then it drops to $50. We are close to profiting at $50/bbl and the price drops to $40. We restructure and cut even more chasing profitability at $40/bbl and the price keeps dropping. It’s been this kind of background noise that has caused a lot of anxiety in me, because most companies are still spending more than they are earning. When you hear your VP talking about negative profit on some assets, you can’t help but wonder when the breaking point will be reached. Until then, I’ve been trying to find a way to quiet the background noise and give myself a break.

While most companies have been restructuring and reducing man-power, my company has been fairly light on staff reductions but heavy on reorganization of assets. This alone keeps me on edge a little because unlike Mrs. SSC’s layoff situation, mine would go much quicker which would be less stressful and that’s fine with me. But lately, the stress is starting to build.  Now, I get daily oil price updates from almost all of my co-workers, which reflects their anxiety with this whole situation. There is so much anxiety being built up around the office, it almost feels palpable.

You all have read how Mrs. SSC’s company went through a large round of layoffs recently, but that was with $60/bbl oil, not $40/bbl oil, so now they’ve announced there will be more “tweaking of the manpower”. Rumors of layoffs are rampant around my office, and while I avoid gossiping, it’s all but impossible when someone shows up in your office and starts blabbing about the most recent rumor of layoffs, staff reductions, re-orgs, or the new low oil price. A lot of my co-workers are a lot younger than me, single income earners, and heavy on debt from school loans and/or lifestyle inflation and therefore are rightly worried about job stability. The running joke for 6 months now has been, “Well…. I wouldn’t go buying a new house/truck/car/vacation house/etc… just yet.” It’s just more background noise.  But, as you can tell – all that noise is creating a stress monster.

 

Ultimately I have to figure out how best to settle this anxiety for me, so this is what I did about it.

First, I admitted that the anxiety is there. Yep, it’s that easy of a start, even if it’s not easy to admit. By admitting I was anxious, nervous or whatever, it gave a face to the nebulous low level stress and anxiety that had crept into my life.

Secondly, I avoid most news sources that are not contributing positively to my anxiety level. Which means, I just quit going to news sites in general, lol. Not for a “bury the head in the sand” approach, but again, it just doesn’t add anything positive to my life currently, so why keep that habit around?

Third, I reminded myself how we’d be affected if either or both of us got let go. Actually, it was Mrs. SSC that reminded me of this, but tomato, tomahto. This was good in that it reminded me that the sky isn’t falling, we’re not living paycheck to paycheck, and things will be OK if we both got chopped. In fact they could get better.

Finally, I just accepted it and let it go. I accepted there are a lot of things I can’t control, and this is one of them. Worrying about it isn’t helping anything, and it’s now causing me to lose sleep. Ridiculous! So like Elsa from Frozen, Just, Let it go! (Can you tell we have toddlers in the house?)

This says it all
This says it all – courtesy of www.memeforge.net

For me this strategy will help, but it will be some time before the stressful background noise is totally gone. It is a lot lower though, and I immediately felt a lot better. In fact, I’ve slept like a rock most of this week so far. I’d added a big burden to myself that was unnecessary and not beneficial to anyone. After I addressed it and then let it go, it floated away like 99 red luftballoons and I felt that much lighter. (Link to the video if you’re feeling nostalgic)

Now, Mrs SSC would like me to wrap up with something about the awesome power of mindfulness and how knowing what makes you truly happy can help in these situations, but it can be even simpler than that. Just taking a step backward for a few minutes and doing a quick examination is much easier than continuing to burrow into the ground trying to avoid the problem.  I’m kind of bummed I’ve wasted so much time worrying about this situation that I can’t control, when honestly, even if there is a change, there is a high chance that it will ultimately make life better… Maybe it won’t be as easy as it is now, but I’m always up for a challenge, and we’ve positioned ourselves well for unexpected situations. Heck, we even have plans in place if those situations do occur.

 

Have you got anything going on in your life causing background stress? What steps do you take to deal with it?

September 2015 Budget Update

I can’t believe September has come and gone. It seems like only 6 months ago we were finding out Mrs. SSC may get laid off this week. We’re still waiting to find out, as they are dragging it out thru the later part of this week, maybe even into next week. Huge eyeroll… I think lack of efficiency may be a key factor in needing to have so many layoffs to begin with, but since I’m no corporate analyst, I’ll just leave that alone.

Um, it's a pie chart....
Um, it’s a pie chart….

September positives, daycare was down last month, even though it all evens out since we’re just paying “per week”. Also, health, gifts, entertainment, pets, and cash were all lower than usual. Mrs. SSC even crocheted a pair of Minion hats for a set of twins, whose birthday party our oldest was invited to. That saved us from buying any birthday presents, so YEAH for small wins!

Numbers, numbers, numbers!
Numbers, numbers, numbers!

September Negatives include utilities, which were slightly higher, probably due to that 3 weeks of 100+ degree weather in early September. Car repair/gas/tolls came in a little higher than previous months, no clue why there, maybe more toll usage? I’ll monitor that closer for next month. Groceries, though… BUST! Not sure why this jumped up so much, but we will be doing a grocery curtailing this month and monitor purchases and receipts to get it reigned in. We would analyze September’s receipts, but we don’t always keep every receipt. Looking at overall purchases from credit card statements, there doesn’t seem to be anything out of whack, so we will monitor and report back for October! SO exciting, you probably are giddy with anticipation! 🙂

Well, except for waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall later this week, there haven’t been too many changes in the SSC household. We have made multiple budget and savings scenarios, and lifestyle changes regarding this upcoming layoff cycle and we will report all that out to you as soon as we know something. I have to say, as stressful as it has been lately, it has been pretty darn encouraging to review all of our income, savings, FFLC timelines and more and realize that we are still sitting in a pretty good position. It does alleviate some stressful aspects of this situation. However, the anticipation and dragging out of this announcement and decision is just ridiculous though. Talk about adding more undo stress to an already stressful time. Aye yi yi!!

Hope everyone has a great week!

Are soft skills worth highlighting?

Soft skills offer you glimpse into a persons personality.
Soft skills offer you glimpse into a persons personality.

With all of this talk about layoffs and possibly looking for a new job soon Mrs. SSC has been working on her resume. Don’t worry, she’s been working on it before now, but it keeps bringing up this debate over whether or not to highlight soft skills. If you do list them, to what degree should they be featured and what is the best way to incorporate them? We have opposing schools of thought on this concept. I think they show a side of you that your technical skills may not reflect, while Mrs. SSC tends to go the more traditional route and downplay or not list soft skills at all. Let me elaborate on some of my more humorous soft skills and then I will show how they can be interpreted on a resume.

Soft Skills:

  1. Advanced Banjo, Guitar, and Dulcimer player
  2. Excels at Small Talk: Voted “Most Likely to be in Someone Else’s Office Chatting” by my previous company
  3. Excellent Gardener: Produced 1 perfect tomato from a single plant – expects to double success this fall
  4. World of Tanks: Blitz!:  Deputy Tank Commander of VOLT clan. Achieved a 64% Win Rate
  5. Excels at Weeding: Uses hands to pull roots instead of indiscriminately using chemicals
  6. Franchise owner in Madden XXV: 8 consecutive Superbowl Titles, Developed 2 MVP quarterbacks from Rookie status
  7. Candy Crush Soda: Achieved Level 368 – current level progress may be higher than listed

 

Interpretation of Soft Skills by Hiring Manager

  1. Creative, and disciplined to become advanced on an instrument – instrument choice shows outside of the box thinker
  2. Good office personality, probably well-liked by colleagues. Would transition well into any group. Plays nice with others.
  3. Prefers quality over quantity! Willing to put in the hard work for little reward. Probably would accept more work for same pay and not complain…
  4. Knows how to strategize, lead a team, and manage risk. Can quickly assess a situation and determine the best scenario to achieve success!
  5. Not afraid of hard work, selective in his thought process and work methods.
  6. Good manager, and can develop people – possibly mentor material and/or leadership position
  7. Persistent, driven to win. Won’t accept defeat, but continues to strive for victory

 

Interpretation of Soft Skills by Mrs. SSC

  1. Choice of instruments sounds like a hippy, maybe not corporate material
  2. Doesn’t stay on task – disrupts others – could be counter-productive to the whole floor if left to roam the halls on his own
  3. Can’t grow anything – must not use internet for help or reach out to others when needed. Who grows only 1 tomato?!
  4. Spends too much time playing games – 64% win rate?! That doesn’t happen overnight…
  5. Weeding by hand?! Who does that – this guy is stuck in the past – chemicals are around for a reason, sounds like a typical work harder not work smarter situation…
  6. Again with the games?! Does this guy have a social life – probably just everyone he chats up at work…
  7. ??? Shows ability to get obsessed with things that don’t matter. Probably heads down lots of rabbit holes in his current work projects. Probably easy for him to get distracted and stay off task…

 

Clearly Mrs. SSC is a bit more harsh than the hiring manager’s interpretation of my awesome soft skill set, because I did get hired by a different company. They tend to like the out of the box soft skills I’ve spent a lifetime developing, but I can’t seem to get Mrs. SSC on board with that. She keeps rolling her eyes and telling me I’m ridiculous and those kind of soft skills would get her passed over for an interview, much less a position. I have to disagree. I mean, I added some soft skills like mine to her resume, and she didn’t protest at all. Although, I didn’t tell her, so maybe she hasn’t noticed yet?

What are some soft skills you would put on leave off of a resume? Have you ever seen anything as ridiculous as my soft skill set on an actual resume?

Layoffs are looming: Part 2!

With the upcoming layoff cycle, we’ve been looking at how we’d be affected if it happens to us. Chances are possible of Mrs. SSC getting cut, mostly due to the heavy, ~30%, cuts they’re making in her department as well as up to 20% business unit cuts. If you read the last post on this you might think, wait, wasn’t it only 12% cuts reported? Yes, yes it was, however, the biggest hit is geoscientists, so while overall it averages out to 12% company wide, the geoscientist group is getting hacked at 20-30% across the board. Yeeowch!

This affects us way more than I first thought. I figured, eh… we should be okay, just a little tight on savings, but then it sparked conversations on life, what we really want, if this career path is even fulfilling enough to go back, and if not, then what? I mean, this could drag out into at least 3 posts, haha! Don’t worry, I won’t belabor you with that, unless it’s still on my mind in a week and I haven’t found something shinier to focus on. I’m sure I could think of another music analogy post… Seriously though, beyond the financial part of all this is the innate thing we’re all searching for, and that is “what do I want to do, that I can get satisfaction from and get paid for?” Currently, that’s not Mrs. SSC’s job.

The other bigger conversation that has been brought up is, what to do next? I mean, Mrs. SSC hasn’t been happy at her company for almost 5 years now. Anyone else see how this timing ties into when Mrs SSC began plotting for FI? Haha! Coincidence? Heck, no!

For most of life we get driven to go certain ways in life or down prescribed career paths by our parents. For Mrs. SSC it’s even more extreme since she is very self-driven. She’s been driven to work hard, get a degree, work harder, save well, and all the other things will sort themselves out with life. At that point you’re already successful, so good job! For me, well I was driven to umm… well… I mean come o,n I was aspiring to be a long haul trucker for the glamour of it. Not exactly the same upbringing, and so let’s just say I took the long loopy path to where I am, and in the midst of all of that, I got to find myself. Mrs. SSC hasn’t had that experience yet and so she’s kind of wanting some time for that self-discovery that she missed when she was younger.

Personally, I think she’d be just as happy working in a bakery decorating cakes, and doing something she can see real results on. I loved working construction and getting to see an empty field become a hospital, or an empty plot of land turn into a house, it’s amazing when you see what you work on turn into something, anything, and not just be a nebulous “ XX barrels of oil/day produced”.

The beleagured point of this is that Mrs. SSC isn’t even sure she wants to go back to this field if she does get laid off. One of my colleagues recently brought up that 50% of people that get laid off in the Oil & Gas industry don’t come back. I’m sure that is an overblown number, but I know over a handful of associates that are okay with walking away for good if they get laid off. Straight up not coming back and finding something else to do with their degree. They have spent YEARS in school working on those degrees to work in this field. Now, if laid off, they’re content looking into gov’t jobs, academia, and even jobs with nothing related to their degree at all.

Heading forward, no looking back. Except this is clearly looking back…

Ever since one of our friends got laid off this spring,  we’ve been working to see how this would affect us if it hit either of our companies. Well, it’s going to hit us in a few different ways but like most people, it starts in the wallet. We maintain a pretty good savings rate of about 50%. So, if we lose one salary, our savings rate would effectively be 0%. We are fortunate to be way ahead of many colleagues, since we generally live off of one salary already. Maybe even a little under that, but for the most part, all of our “essentials” can be taken care of alright with one salary. It’s not nearly as stormy an outlook as I was thinking at first. Plus, Mrs. SSC might get an added bonus of a forced “get to know yourself and what you want to do.”

 

Stormy, but hey, the sun's still shining!
Stormy, but hey, the sun’s still shining!

If a layoff occurs, we would have to find a way to move that savings rate from 0% to hopefully 10%, just to keep FI happening before we turn 50. We’d leave our oldest child in daycare full-time because he thrives well there and does great with the structure, friends, and the like. He will be in his last year before kindergarten, so it’s not a long-term bill, maybe 6 more months tops. Our youngest could do well with a 2-3 days per week/part time day care situation as she seems to be more independent and is a super fast learner. Plus, Mrs. SSC is looking forward to having time to spend with her and help her learn more too.

 

The biggest obvious budget hits are just the other luxury allowances we have now that would go by the wayside. These are the same things that will get cut with the FFLC anyway, so nothing to drastic yet. I’ve saved us about $1200 this year just doing the yard all season (it still has about 3 months before it ends) so that’s good, and we’d cut the maids saving us $260/month, and then Mrs. SSC parking and work gym would get rolled into an outside gym fee, which would likely even out. That’s her hobby, outlet, and she likes it and uses it, so we’re both good with that. Plus, we would be saving quite a bit on tolls and gasoline, since each commuting day is the equivalent of ~2.5 gallons of gas or ~$9, and $2.50 in tolls. At 220 working days a year, that is just over $2530/yr. Maybe we could even get the car insurance rate dropped on her vehicle too! Groceries budget could easily go down by $50-$75/month since Mrs. SSC would have time to shop for better deals, and we wouldn’t have to buy ‘convenience’ foods anymore. We could likely trim another $25-50 of general spending a month for the same reasons.

 

That beach might not be the most comfortable, but it's still beautiful!
That beach might not be the most comfortable, but it’s still beautiful!

When we looked at our FFLC date, it is a different story though. First off, I’ve gotta give a shout out to my man, compounding interest! Yeah, that’s my boy!! We’ve been good at feeding our FFLC accounts so they’ll still be working in our favor, hopefully. With our savings effectively reduced to 0%, we know we’ll just have to play a couple rounds of “what expense goes next?!”. We’re assuming we can still save at least ~$1k/month/yr and then increase it by $1k/month the next year due to my raises and maybe Mrs. SSC getting a part-time gig. I think we may be able to save more, especially if we make it a challenge. Take that and assume  a 6% investment growth, and we’re still looking at mid 2020 for our FIRE date! We’re not looking at a date as early as ThinkSaveRetire, but we’re still doing better than most in this downturn since we still have an early retirement date before we’re both 45!

That’s a lot better than I was thinking initially. It helps to know your target number, and be aware of your budget, because of the case in point. My mind totally blew out of proportion how negatively we’d be affected, and then you do the math (I try to not ever do the math) and it’s like, “whoa! We got this, and we can adapt. Alright then… We can do this!” And then hope we don’t have to do this. Until we find out what we’ll be doing exactly, we’re just going to keep on, keeping on.

Layoffs are Looming! Would you be ready?

So it’s no secret that the oil industry is going through a typical cyclical downturn. Blame it on what you want, but that’s just the nature of the industry.

The ups and downs of the oil patch!
The ups and downs of the oil patch!

It’s also no secret that companies have been laying people off left and right. We’ve been fortunate enough to not have to deal with this yet, however, our time has come. Mrs. SSC’s company has been making waves about “re-org’s”, consolidation of departments and the like since February, and it had been rumored there would be layoffs, but it hasn’t been official until the last few weeks. They recently found out that there will be 12-15% staff reductions all across the board, with larger cuts most likely in Mrs. SSC’s group. No one is safe. Being true to their nature as a huge bloated bureaucracy, they plan on releasing little info and dragging the process out into October. Yippee!!
Alternatively, back in March my company announced that we can “keep on, keeping on” indefinitely with oil around $50-$60 a barrel. We did some minor reorganization, stopped our hiring campaign, and put raises on hold. They still paid out bonuses though, which was nice, and my move was well timed, so I already got a nice raise just by moving, so it isn’t too bad.

 

This week will mark the kickoff of the layoff cycle with a release of some info, possibly blank org charts, websites to see how you will be affected, and the like. Yep, everyone gets to essentially re-apply for their job and compete with others that may also apply for their job. Joy! Being a large company though, some people have gotten more information quicker than others. For instance, on a recent fishing trip a friend of mine told that he knows his boss’s job and likely his job is gone, as his group is going from 21 to 11 people. He’s kind of freaking out, because he’s a sole bread winner for his family, and no-one is currently hiring. However, he has a pretty good savings account, and he and his family live fairly well below their means. While he is worried, he isn’t super worried because they carry almost no debt, just the mortgage, they have a good savings account and emergency fund, and they have an amazing support group available from their church should things get really, really, bad. Another friend of ours who works with Mrs. SSC, recently had his wife get laid off from a different oil and gas company. Since he is now the sole bread winner and also works with Mrs. SSC he is more than a little worried about what could be coming. Again, they live pretty well below their means, and manage to save a decent amount. His job still covers their bills, and they can still save some along with that. So, while they are worried, they are not as worried as some other friends of ours, but no-one wants to be out of work, and have to start tapping into emergency funds and savings while scrounging for a job.

In my new company, I’ve only come across 2 people who mention that they save money outside of their work retirement plans. Two people… One of them is a new hire, and he follows the model of “pay yourself first” and then live off what’s left over. For instance one week, we were going out to lunch (I know, I know) and I invited him and he said he was going to be pretty broke the next 2 weeks because of a miscalculation with transferring funds to a Vanguard account. Apparently, he’d set it up to make a “monthly” transfer and it hit his account twice. Instead of dipping into his savings or other funds, he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Nope, can’t afford it for the next 2 weeks.” Commendable, because I would’ve just used “other money” and then “rewarded” myself on saving twice as much as I’d planned. Sidenote – I still have bad financial ideas sometimes. The other person has “outside of work” retirement accounts, and a fund for a retirement home rather, a house to live in in retirement already and they’re only in their early 30’s. The rest of the people from our work group looked at us like we had tentacles growing out of our heads when they heard us talking about Vanguard funds, retirement savings, expense ratios, and the like. One person said, “Why are you talking about retirement, that’s like forever away!”

 

That leads to conversations of other people we know that are not in the same boat. Specifically, a couple that makes two oil industry salaries and are freaking out about layoffs, because they still live paycheck to paycheck with little to no savings, much less emergency fund savings. Yes, you did read that correctly. This couple, in their 30’s with children, still gets occasional help out from their parents with bills and vacations. They like extravagant vacations, and they take them as often as possible. In between vacations, their spending habits aren’t reigned in well either, because that’s just the lifestyle they are used to. They know they should be saving more, or any really, but between little things here and there, and kid functions, and birthday parties, and groceries, they just don’t manage their funds well. They are really worried, because with a layoff from just one of them, their house of cards could easily crash down. They’re taking the ostrich head in the sand, fingers crossed approach and hoping for the best.

 

This attitude and lifestyle of spend, spend, spend rings true with more colleagues of ours than you might think, hell it’s probably not much different in your industry either. For the occasional person that may be thinking about retirement early, or retirement at all, everyone else is thinking about more ways to spend their paychecks. It’s just mind boggling to me that people don’t save more. I have to say though, if I was still single and hadn’t met Mrs. SSC, I’d think I was doing alright maxing out my 401k, and having my debts paid down. If I was diligent enough to actually have them paid down, which is doubtful. Even then, I would probably still be only a few paychecks away from disaster. It was living with Mrs. SSC that got me to realize how to break that spend, spend, spend cycle and start focusing on investing, saving money, and paying off debt.

 

As the weeks move on, things will be pretty stressful around here. Maybe we’ll luck out and Mrs. SSC will get to retain a spot on the payroll. Maybe she’ll get laid off, and get to figure out what to do next? I know we’ve already figured out exactly how it will affect our FFLC date, and our savings though. Since this post has already gotten so long, I’ll go into that in detail next week with part two of this crazy adventure! Yeah, layoffs!!

 

Source: Macrotrends, Inc.

TGISB! (Thank God It’s Spring Break)

SUCK-ville! Don't worry, we were stopped. For a while...
SUCK-ville! Don’t worry, we were stopped. For a while…

These last 2 weeks have been awesome! First, Harris county was on Spring Break, and then the outlying counties have been on Spring Break! Hopefully next week some other set of schools is out on Spring Break also. Why do I care about Spring Break since neither me nor my kids are even in school? I’ll tell you, because “Traffic has been great!” (a phrase rarely uttered anywhere near Houston freeways) I’ve been getting to work in 30 minutes, traffic is flowing well, and even when it is storming outside (which normally causes HUGE delays everywhere) traffic is still moving fine.

I remember last summer when I started my new job. (Initiate dream sequence music and sparkly fade out) It was mid-June, the birds were singing and the commute was nice. Traffic flowed well, there were no major headaches to deal with twice a day. Better yet, it was almost the exact same as my last commute. Then one day, everything changed and it went from “nice” to “SUCK-ville” overnight! Clogged highways no matter which one I took. Worse, the surface streets were just as clogged and slow too! I started looking at different commute routes but it didn’t make a difference overall. Somehow my commute had increased a consistent 10-20 minutes each way. I just couldn’t figure out what changed and then someone mentioned school. Oh… school… Riiiight… Man, that makes such a big difference. I guess people take vacation time off centered around Spring Breaks, Christmas Breaks, Summer Breaks, and other school closures.

You wouldn’t think that a few schools out would make that much difference, but based on how empty my office building and parking garage has been the last few weeks, it seems everyone with kids takes off this time to do something with family. It could be that there isn‘t a vacation, but rather a forced stay at home to babysit the kid. Most people I talk to though turn that into a vacation of some sort instead of just sitting around the house. I never ran into this too much growing up because my mom was home for most of our school age. For us, it was just another week to not have to go to school, which is still awesome in and of itself!

Note the string of cars on the bridge. FYI, they're stopped too.
Note the string of cars on the bridge. FYI, they’re stopped too.

Does this do anything for me financially? No, not really? Does it help me get to FIRE quicker? Even more so, nope. However, if traffic was like this every day, I wouldn’t be in such a rush to pull the trigger as soon as financially possible. I’d be a little more content putting it off for another 6 months, or maybe even a year and build up that comfort factor and savings. Then think, “Well, if I give it a few more months I can stick it out until bonuses get here, and it’d be crazy to give up that much money only a few months away.” This situation still may happen though even with the blech commute. We might have Mrs. SSC going to part-time at her job, and since I don’t think my company offers that, I’ll probably stay full time until things get really serious. Although, I don’t have anything to lose asking for part-time, so I will definitely ask when the time gets here.

From everything I’ve read though, once people pull the trigger and retire their biggest regret is not doing it sooner. Granted, these are mostly older people, but even some of the FIRE blogs I read echo that same sentiment. I’d love to make it sooner, but there are certain thresholds that need to be crossed financially before that can happen. Until then, I enjoy working where I do, with the people I work with and am happy plugging away at our goal until we get there. In the short term though, I’m counting down the days until school is out, and I get this traffic reprieve for a few months!

Commuting takes its’ “Toll”!

 

Man, commuting together did make a big difference!
Man, commuting together did make a big difference!

When we knew we were going to be moving to Houston, our biggest worry was about the traffic and commute distance. We limited our housing search to within 30 minutes of our office, while still being within a good public school district. Man, did that limit our choices. After finding lots of houses with aluminum wiring, or needing tens of thousands in repairs and upgrades, we started looking at the suburbs… Gah!!! We realized this would cost more in the way of gas, tolls, and time in the car, but ultimately, we were able to spend almost $100k less for our house.**

I mention this because I recently looked at our toll usage on Harris County’s Toll Road Authority page and I noticed it was easy to put a narrative to. When I switched jobs, you can see the  increases associated with trying to figure out a best commuting route, and even the effect of airport trips and other around Houston travel. It was eye opening and amusing.

When I was looking for a job, I needed it to be near downtown since we do not live near the energy corridor. I found a company with a great job opportunity that fit that criteria, and the only downside was that we wouldn’t be able to commute together anymore. Well, there was more than that, but that was the biggie. Mrs. SSC had calculated it would be about $8,000 more per year in commuting cost, post-tax (~$12k/yr pre-tax) if I took a new job. This was assumed wear and tear on the cars using online calculators, and doubling our gas usage, and toll costs, since our commute was still almost the exact same distance just to different places. Also, Mrs SSC would have to pay $70 a month to park, since we wouldn’t get the free carpool parking. Ouch!

You can see in the first months on the graph, we’re at an even $45 +/-. This was commuting together and the occasional use of the toll road on the weekends, but it was fairly consistent. In June, I started my new job and you can see the toll bill almost double, and I didn’t even start until Mid-June.

In July, it actually doubled… Something had to be done, because this was ridiculous. I’m all for efficiency but at what cost? Not this one. I first noticed that by getting on one exit later, the toll went from $1.15 to $0.75, which would save about ~$8/month or $96/year. This is assuming 4 weeks off due to holidays and vacations. Every little bit helps though.

Also, I found that my normal route of egress from the neighborhood had turned from 3-4 minutes to upwards of 8-10 minutes due to heavier traffic. I started taking a back route that got me to the same point consistently 4-5 minutes faster than going “the old way.” Plus, it avoided the toll roads totally. This was in August and you can see a big drop on the graph from ~$88 to $65. So that little measure saved $0.75 each day. Which is ~$15/month or $180/year saved. That’s getting better!

September, Mrs. SSC decided that getting on an exit later in her direction was costing more time than the $0.40 was worth so she began resuming that route, but still getting off an exit early coming home. There was a little increase, nothing big, just the ~$8 of savings previously.

It all looks red or orange, every day....
It all looks red or orange, every day….

October: I have no explanation. None, I can’t remember anything going on in October commute-wise or otherwise that would drive that up. Let’s see…. We did do a mini-surprise anniversary vacation on a cruise, so that entailed tolls down to Galveston and back. That was a bit of it, we did a lot of play-dates, and I think just got really lazy with avoiding the toll road on the weekends, and look how it added up. Almost $25 higher than average. Not counting Galveston, that would be about $20 of tolls related to not avoiding the toll road on the weekend. Maybe the kids were especially cranky when we got to that junction each time in October and the 5 minutes less in the car was worth $1.15. I’m SURE that was it, or something similar. J

As the graph points out, you can see the average levels off to ~$67/month except for months when we are flying places or have training classes in other areas of town that are easier to access with more tolls. Booo…. In general though, the overall tolls came out way better than expected. I’ve looked into getting off at earlier exits, but those Highway Robbers have the 3 closest exits to my neighborhood costing the same amount to get off. So, I skip 6 more stoplights and stay on the toll road doing 70 mph for a few more miles.

Overall, I’m still glad I switched jobs, as I really like my new company, new position, and all the people I work with. Had I drug my feet and waited until this oil price downturn, I might have missed my opportunity to leave altogether. While it did have some financial costs associated with it, I feel they are more than made up for with salary, job satisfaction, and the extra amount we are able to save towards FIRE.

** I know this strategy doesn’t fit with the MMM philosophy of live within walking distance to work, but for us that would be an extra $100k in housing costs, plus ~$12-$15k per year per child for private school when they reached school age. The public schools close to our work were rated horribly, and we didn’t see the payoff for closer living to the office.

Have you had a similar experience before with new costs associated with a new job?

Does anyone else have commuting issues like this that you deal with?

Have you been able to escape this part of the rat-race already and this post makes you even more glad you did so?