Hey Fastlane forum, allow me to introduce myself.
I'm a 23 year old who realized in the past year that my life is worth more than what I'm being paid for it. I had the "time > money" realization after a seemingly amazing series of events led me to a job that I can't wait to leave. I'll explain a bit.
Growing up, my parents made me believe that we had everything under control financially. Looking back (now that I'm older), that was not the case. We moved out of Baltimore city and into the county to get away from the violence that was ravaging my neighborhood at the time. The house we moved into (where I'm typing this) is a decent sized single family home that's still being paid off 20 years later. My mom changes jobs constantly, and while my dad tends to stay with employers for long stretches of time, they haven't always been as loyal to him and he is to them. At some point during my middle school years I believe, he was laid off and my mom wasn't working and the only money they had saved was my college fund. I didn't know at the time, but that fund was keeping the house while my dad was looking for new employment. Granted it wasn't much, but by the time I was ready to look at colleges, my fund was all but empty. I always wanted to go to college but I realized it might be a little harder than I expected.
Then we got a letter in the mail from the federal government. "Based on your son's SAT scores and areas of interest, we would like to offer him an interview for a college scholarship program and subsequent employment with [insert agency]." Could it be? A full tuition scholarship, followed up with a guaranteed job? Well yeah, it was. I went and interviewed, got the scholarship, got paid to go to school full time for four years, and graduated in May 2015. Then we got to second half of the deal.
While I knew that nothing was free and that I'd owe them a time debt upon graduation, at the time that I accepted the deal, I was unaware of how valuable that time was. This past two years has been dreadful. I make a decent salary (more than my parents combined), but I'm indentured to the govt until mid-2019. If I decide to quit, I have to pay back the cost of my schooling, minus the time I've already worked. This isn't meant to be a sob story but the truth hit me like a ton of bricks. I messed up. I traded a chunk of my life for money and I'm ready to make a change.
When I'm not at work, I'm a producer (although not in the exact sense that @MJ DeMarco might think). I'm a musician that creates instrumentals for vocalists to sing/rap over and create songs. While I've always wanted to do that to sustain myself financially, I was never able to figure out how that would happen. Part of the puzzle was missing and it wasn't until recently that I figured out what that piece was and how to fill it. It had no passivity. When I realized that, I worked out conceptually how to make that possible in a creative venture like music, separate from royalties/licensing after a song explodes. And now that I have that plan, I've been working on the mechanism to facilitate it in all of my free time.
A random post on Reddit suggested to read TMF . I bought the audiobook version to listen to to/from work. The book reflects my exact line of thinking, but expanded tenfold and more concrete. It has opened my eyes to what needs to change and how to change those things. I'm only on chapter 29 right now, but it's the first thing I turn on every time I get in my car. I've read plenty of books but this one is different. I really don't have to explain it because I know you guys get it. I'm here because I wanted to be around likeminded individuals. I still live at home and while I've saved almost 25k, the environment is not one conducive to progress.
My goal over the next two years is to provide a product of value to my online music community and generate enough passive income to leave my job early and not be worried that I'll never see that kind of money again.
I'm a 23 year old who realized in the past year that my life is worth more than what I'm being paid for it. I had the "time > money" realization after a seemingly amazing series of events led me to a job that I can't wait to leave. I'll explain a bit.
Growing up, my parents made me believe that we had everything under control financially. Looking back (now that I'm older), that was not the case. We moved out of Baltimore city and into the county to get away from the violence that was ravaging my neighborhood at the time. The house we moved into (where I'm typing this) is a decent sized single family home that's still being paid off 20 years later. My mom changes jobs constantly, and while my dad tends to stay with employers for long stretches of time, they haven't always been as loyal to him and he is to them. At some point during my middle school years I believe, he was laid off and my mom wasn't working and the only money they had saved was my college fund. I didn't know at the time, but that fund was keeping the house while my dad was looking for new employment. Granted it wasn't much, but by the time I was ready to look at colleges, my fund was all but empty. I always wanted to go to college but I realized it might be a little harder than I expected.
Then we got a letter in the mail from the federal government. "Based on your son's SAT scores and areas of interest, we would like to offer him an interview for a college scholarship program and subsequent employment with [insert agency]." Could it be? A full tuition scholarship, followed up with a guaranteed job? Well yeah, it was. I went and interviewed, got the scholarship, got paid to go to school full time for four years, and graduated in May 2015. Then we got to second half of the deal.
While I knew that nothing was free and that I'd owe them a time debt upon graduation, at the time that I accepted the deal, I was unaware of how valuable that time was. This past two years has been dreadful. I make a decent salary (more than my parents combined), but I'm indentured to the govt until mid-2019. If I decide to quit, I have to pay back the cost of my schooling, minus the time I've already worked. This isn't meant to be a sob story but the truth hit me like a ton of bricks. I messed up. I traded a chunk of my life for money and I'm ready to make a change.
When I'm not at work, I'm a producer (although not in the exact sense that @MJ DeMarco might think). I'm a musician that creates instrumentals for vocalists to sing/rap over and create songs. While I've always wanted to do that to sustain myself financially, I was never able to figure out how that would happen. Part of the puzzle was missing and it wasn't until recently that I figured out what that piece was and how to fill it. It had no passivity. When I realized that, I worked out conceptually how to make that possible in a creative venture like music, separate from royalties/licensing after a song explodes. And now that I have that plan, I've been working on the mechanism to facilitate it in all of my free time.
A random post on Reddit suggested to read TMF . I bought the audiobook version to listen to to/from work. The book reflects my exact line of thinking, but expanded tenfold and more concrete. It has opened my eyes to what needs to change and how to change those things. I'm only on chapter 29 right now, but it's the first thing I turn on every time I get in my car. I've read plenty of books but this one is different. I really don't have to explain it because I know you guys get it. I'm here because I wanted to be around likeminded individuals. I still live at home and while I've saved almost 25k, the environment is not one conducive to progress.
My goal over the next two years is to provide a product of value to my online music community and generate enough passive income to leave my job early and not be worried that I'll never see that kind of money again.
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