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Hi everyone,
I quit my job, sold everything and then backpacking since July 2021. I have 0 income and I’m just burning through my savings. Is it a good idea? Probably not. Why am I doing this? Keep reading. I’ll make it short.
I was working in a corporate world for 10 years as a hardcore slowlaner. Saved some money, read some books, have an idea of passive income and FIRE (financial independence retired early). Tried to start few businesses and also invested in some high risk investments. I used some of my savings and I even borrowed from a bank. I thought good debt is okay, right?!
In less than a year, all of my 5 investments fail. I never saw my $200K again up to this day. I want to put the blame to the economy crash back in 2015, but deep down I know, it was all my fault. I was blinded by FIRE and driven by greed. It’s time to own my mistake. Learned my expensive lesson.
I’m grateful I still had my job at that time, so I kept working for couple more years to pay off my debts. Things started looking good. Yay!!
But then another crash in 2018.
Heck, I was a slowlaner, what can I do? Work was really slow and I was in the brink of losing my job. Thank God I paid off my debt, but still layoffs and cuts happened everyday, everywhere.
Turned out I was really good at what I was doing (or maybe because my salary was too low lol). From 8 people, 7 got laid off and I was the last man among the staffs. I got through the 2018 recession and I could finally start saving money. Yay!!
At this point I was thinking hard about my life, why did I do what I did back then. Why did I want to retire early so bad? My answer actually was really simple, I want to have passive income so I can retire, have financial freedom and travel anywhere I want. FYI, I never took a break from work to travel, because I hate that feeling when you have to return back to work after 2-3 weeks off. So maybe that’s the reason why I chose traveling.
And then while I was driving, I got this thought in my head: let’s say I got the passive income I wanted, retired, have financial freedom, can travel anywhere I want BUT it turns out I hate traveling. I would’ve just wasted all my time, effort and money for nothing!!
So, I kept thinking about this and came up with an idea. What if I took 1 year sabbatical leave from work to travel? If I liked it, I can figure out how to keep doing this for longer term. If I didn’t like it, I can still adjust my future plan. So I did some research and calculated how much I needed to travel for 1-2 years. Turned out, I have the money.
A month later, I submitted my request for 1 year sabbatical leave, got approved and started backpacking in Europe for my first time. Yay!!
Couple months in and then covid hits.
Borders were closing and I had no choice other than flying back.
Called my old workplace, see if I could get my old job back. Nope. But they laid me off so I could collect unemployment benefit. I was stuck at home with no job.
And then one day a friend came and asked me if I wanted to help him with his business. I said “Yeah, why not?! Got nothing to do anyways”. Within 9 months, 3 of us grew $1000/ month revenue to $100k/ month. Covid helped a bit. From past experience, I thought I suck at any kind of business, but I guess I wasn’t too bad after all.
By the end of 2020, I managed to get rid of my biggest headache. My mortgage. I thought I wanted a house. But after owning it for 6 years, I hate it. House price went down a lot. At some point I had negative equity. I sold my house and after all closing costs, I received $500 check. Amazing!
Most of friends told me to keep my house because house price will go up again. But there was no guarantee and I didn’t want to wait for another 5 years. I didn’t care so much about money. I just want to get rid off things that pulling me down.
Things got better after that. I found another job. It didn’t pay as much as my old job, but I could work from home while growing our business at the same time. This was all during covid.
When covid vax finally came out, I took those 2 jabs, quit my job, sold my business share, hop on a plane back to Europe and I am still backpacking until today, January 2023.
I learned even more during the past 1.5 years and I’ll share them in my next posts.
But I think that’s enough for now for my not-so-short intro. Thanks for reading! XD
Gus
I quit my job, sold everything and then backpacking since July 2021. I have 0 income and I’m just burning through my savings. Is it a good idea? Probably not. Why am I doing this? Keep reading. I’ll make it short.
I was working in a corporate world for 10 years as a hardcore slowlaner. Saved some money, read some books, have an idea of passive income and FIRE (financial independence retired early). Tried to start few businesses and also invested in some high risk investments. I used some of my savings and I even borrowed from a bank. I thought good debt is okay, right?!
In less than a year, all of my 5 investments fail. I never saw my $200K again up to this day. I want to put the blame to the economy crash back in 2015, but deep down I know, it was all my fault. I was blinded by FIRE and driven by greed. It’s time to own my mistake. Learned my expensive lesson.
I’m grateful I still had my job at that time, so I kept working for couple more years to pay off my debts. Things started looking good. Yay!!
But then another crash in 2018.
Heck, I was a slowlaner, what can I do? Work was really slow and I was in the brink of losing my job. Thank God I paid off my debt, but still layoffs and cuts happened everyday, everywhere.
Turned out I was really good at what I was doing (or maybe because my salary was too low lol). From 8 people, 7 got laid off and I was the last man among the staffs. I got through the 2018 recession and I could finally start saving money. Yay!!
At this point I was thinking hard about my life, why did I do what I did back then. Why did I want to retire early so bad? My answer actually was really simple, I want to have passive income so I can retire, have financial freedom and travel anywhere I want. FYI, I never took a break from work to travel, because I hate that feeling when you have to return back to work after 2-3 weeks off. So maybe that’s the reason why I chose traveling.
And then while I was driving, I got this thought in my head: let’s say I got the passive income I wanted, retired, have financial freedom, can travel anywhere I want BUT it turns out I hate traveling. I would’ve just wasted all my time, effort and money for nothing!!
So, I kept thinking about this and came up with an idea. What if I took 1 year sabbatical leave from work to travel? If I liked it, I can figure out how to keep doing this for longer term. If I didn’t like it, I can still adjust my future plan. So I did some research and calculated how much I needed to travel for 1-2 years. Turned out, I have the money.
A month later, I submitted my request for 1 year sabbatical leave, got approved and started backpacking in Europe for my first time. Yay!!
Couple months in and then covid hits.
Borders were closing and I had no choice other than flying back.
Called my old workplace, see if I could get my old job back. Nope. But they laid me off so I could collect unemployment benefit. I was stuck at home with no job.
And then one day a friend came and asked me if I wanted to help him with his business. I said “Yeah, why not?! Got nothing to do anyways”. Within 9 months, 3 of us grew $1000/ month revenue to $100k/ month. Covid helped a bit. From past experience, I thought I suck at any kind of business, but I guess I wasn’t too bad after all.
By the end of 2020, I managed to get rid of my biggest headache. My mortgage. I thought I wanted a house. But after owning it for 6 years, I hate it. House price went down a lot. At some point I had negative equity. I sold my house and after all closing costs, I received $500 check. Amazing!
Most of friends told me to keep my house because house price will go up again. But there was no guarantee and I didn’t want to wait for another 5 years. I didn’t care so much about money. I just want to get rid off things that pulling me down.
Things got better after that. I found another job. It didn’t pay as much as my old job, but I could work from home while growing our business at the same time. This was all during covid.
When covid vax finally came out, I took those 2 jabs, quit my job, sold my business share, hop on a plane back to Europe and I am still backpacking until today, January 2023.
I learned even more during the past 1.5 years and I’ll share them in my next posts.
But I think that’s enough for now for my not-so-short intro. Thanks for reading! XD
Gus
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