Introduction
 
At some point we decide what we want to be when we grow up. At another point we decide where we want to live. At yet another point we decide with whom we want to spend our lives.
 
Are you currently in the first career, locale, and relationship you chose?
 
Me neither.
 
And that’s ok. Actually, that’s great. Because life is about growing and learning every single day, and about being more in tune with yourself and your desires today than you were yesterday. We were not given this one life just to settle for less than ideal situations.
 
Realize that any decision you made prior to today was made by a different person from whom you are now - one with less knowledge than you currently possess: less knowledge about you and others and society as a whole. So if your former self made a decision that no longer works for you, there’s great news:
 
You can quit.
 
In fact, you probably should quit. And you don’t have to do it alone. This book is for anyone who has a job, a career, a relationship, a living situation, an educational pursuit, a leisure pursuit, an ANYTHING that may not be working well.
 
Quitting isn’t a dirty word. Settling is. A good friend of mine refers to settling as ‘suicide of the soul,’ and I couldn’t agree more.
 
So let’s do this. Together.
 
Let’s start quitting.

Chapter 9

Preparing your Finances for a Quit

Finances are likely a large concern while preparing for a quit, and they should be. As I mentioned before, the hierarchy of needs dictates that it’s quite difficult to achieve a state of peaceful happiness when you are homeless and have no idea when you will eat next. So let’s go over some basic ways to try to ensure that you’re financially stable as you make your quit.
 
Clearly the finance situation is most crucial if the thing you plan to quit is the job that pays your bills. So let’s focus first on that situation - preparing to lose the main source of your income. There are a few ways to handle this, the most basic being to save money prior to quitting. However, that may not be feasible, especially if you’re living paycheck to paycheck. If that’s the case, you may be required to take a really hard look at your finances. Could you add a roommate? Move to a cheaper living situation or different area of town? Do you live in a city where selling your car is an option? Can you ditch the daily latte expense?  There are a number of ways to pare down your cost of living.
 
The real issue arises when you’ve done all those things and are still barely making ends meet. Recall that as a last resource, there is always unemployment which may (depending on the circumstance of your quit) cover you for a few months. Note, this is more likely to be an option for you if you are let go or somehow get your job to release you. For example, in California, you can’t receive unemployment if you are unemployed through any fault of your own, as determined by California law. So please, do not assume this is an easy backup option - I just wanted to mention it as I do know friends who have used it to help in their transition.
 
What if none of the above are options? Well here’s another one from the cringe files - could you move in with your parents? I know, depending on your relationship with your family, or their financial situation, this may not be desirable. But it’s also nothing to be ashamed of if it’s part of a plan to get you to a better situation where you can be financially stable and living your best life.
 
Another idea is to reach out to your network. There are a few ways this could be useful - first, do you have a financial guru in your friend circle? Perhaps having that person look over your finances could be a good starting point. Before my last quit I had a friend make a spreadsheet for me to track my finances so I’d have a good starting point.
 
Now, since I’m far from a financial expert, I decided to reach out to my network for some additional tips for a financially savvy quit. I know two CPAs who quit the finance world and went into vastly different careers: one is an actor and another is a professional beer brewer. The actor said that his one tip for preparing your finances would be to adjust your thinking on what jobs are, for lack of a better term, beneath you, at least in terms of hourly pay. He pointed out that a $50,000 a year salaried job, which most would consider respectable, may not actually garner that much per hour after you consider taxes and any unpaid overtime that comes with a salaried position. So if you’re in the transition period and are offered a position that seems menial or significantly beneath your pay grade, keep that in mind, as it may be worth it to take that job in the interest of keeping a positive cash flow in the short term.
 
My friend the brewer offered me the advice he himself used when transitioning from finance to brewing. He downgraded enough to be able to live on half of his salary. This is clearly advice you need to start while you are still in the job you plan to quit, but it’s also great advice for how to live once you’ve found your new gig. He said that once you’re able to live on half your salary, then try getting down to living on a quarter of your salary. This accomplishes two goals: First, you will be able to save money for the time when you finally make the leap, but it also helps you identify areas where you could be saving money, which will be of great use should there be lean times during the transition. With his technique, if you come upon a month without any income, you 1. Have a reserve and 2. Don’t suddenly have to sell your car or move immediately if you realize your house or car were unnecessarily financially burdensome - you’ll already have pared those down to what’s truly necessary.
 
Now there are non-work-related quits that may also affect your finances. Two that come to mind are quitting an educational pursuit and quitting a relationship. Taking the education example first, the issue may be that you’re in an expensive degree program, and quitting it may actually benefit you financially. However, if you are halfway through something expensive, like professional schools (medicine, law, etc.), and you quit before graduation, paying back whatever loans you accrued during the portion of the program you did attend may be difficult without that final degree.
 
My brother experienced this very dilemma - he actually finished law school but decided not to take the bar or practice law, so he had to find a way to pay back a $160,000 loan without a high-paying law career. What did he do? Well first he tried substitute teaching and living with my parents while trying to find a job that paid well enough to cover his loan payments. In two years of trying, he never found that job. So he joined the Army...at age 30. No kidding. We thought he was crazy to do something that seemed so drastic to pay off his loans, but luckily for him, the Army was a great choice and he excelled and is very successful in his military career. But quitting law without a plan led to a very rough two years and a move to the military that not everyone would want to undertake, so let his be a tale of caution - make sure you really want to do law or medicine prior to accruing extreme debt.
 
So if you are halfway through an expensive degree am I telling you NOT to quit? By no means! But it would be irresponsible of me to ignore the reality of student debt. I have a quarter million dollars of it, and its presence shapes decisions I make every day. Despite my multiple quits, I have found ways to make my law and medicine degrees work for me in ways that make it possible to pay those loans, but in the lean, in-between job times, it wasn’t easy. And sadly there aren’t any easy answers to this conundrum.
 
Now, here is where I’m going to get into the nitty gritty just a bit (hipsters and start-up people call this ‘getting granular’ but that word drives me crazier than the word ‘moist,’ so I’m gonna stick w/ old skool ‘nitty gritty’... but I digress). If you are in a degree program and miserable and know you would never want any job that said degree would help you get - then quit before you accrue more student loan debt. But, if you are in a program and the degree will help you get jobs you may love, just not the exact job you imagined, then I’d be less likely to suggest you give it up. Let me give you an example: with a law degree you can be a lawyer, but you can also go into politics, or business, or contract reviewing, or certain types of consulting. So if you’re in law school and the thought of going the typical law firm route doesn’t appeal to you, but one of those other routes does, then perhaps you should stick it out. However, if you’re like my brother who decided he wanted nothing to do with anything that required a law degree, then perhaps getting out sooner rather than later would serve you well.
 
Ok, that was a lot of talk on educational finances without, as you may have noticed, a great solution to how to deal with your student loans if you started accruing them and choose to quit. That’s because I’m not sure anyone has a great solution to student loan debt - most of us are just saddled with it with no foreseeable way out. But there are several federal programs aimed at reducing debt or at least your monthly burden, like income based repayment, so I’d check out studentaid.ed.gov to see what assistance may be available.
 
Alright, on to relationships.  If you happen to be in one of those no-strings attached relationships I described in the chapter on when to quit, then you probably have little to do in the way of preparing your finances for a quit, as you are probably not intertwined financially with your partner. But if you are cohabiting or married, then money is a significantly bigger concern. If you are married and thinking of divorce, again, this is where I highly recommend you consult with a divorce lawyer before making any decisions. Each state differs on how finances and assets are divided after divorce, and each individual marital situation is unique, so it is beyond the scope of this book to advise on what may happen with your joint finances post-divorce.
 
However, there are two common scenarios of marriage dissolution I will address: the breadwinner and the home-engineer. By home-engineer, I am referring to the person who may not work outside of the home but who nevertheless works hard at either raising the children or keeping the household in order in a variety of ways. Back in the day it would have been called a homemaker, but something feels very antiquated about that term, so I’m going to use a different one.
 
First - the breadwinner. This is the one who is paying most or all of the family’s bills. Clearly, a split will be financially easier on breadwinners than those who don’t currently have a source of income, but the breadwinner should be prepared for additional expenses such as child support or alimony payments. If those are likely to dig deeper into your pockets than you are prepared for, I’d suggest prepping for your quit by using one of the money saving techniques above.
 
Second - the home-engineer. A marital split will hit hardest if you have no current source of income. So if a divorce is in your future, I would highly advise consulting a financial professional (perhaps someone in your circle can provide you discounted services) ahead of time so that the split is less financially jarring. It may require finding your own place to live, car, and job all nearly simultaneously. I would highly advise availing yourself of whatever family and friend support you can, as it can help ease the transition. Also, employing the strategies listed above to save up some money ahead of time. Also, finding creative ways to start drawing some income should help.
 
The home-engineer situation is significantly more severe if it’s a cohabitation that’s dissolving and not a marriage, as a divorce usually provides some spousal support, but a cohabitation does not. Know that you can do it - we are all stronger than we think and we can make it through difficult situations. But also know that there is no shame in asking for help from friends and family and your network. Those who love you will probably be happy to help you out of a less-than-ideal situation.

• Update #2 - Quitting by Design (the book) is HERE!!! Oct. 8, 2018

  Hello Quitting enthusiasts!

  The time is finally here! My book, Quitting by Design, is out and available to the public!!

  You are receiving this little …

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• Update #1 - It's almost here! Quitting by Design has a tentative release date! June 7, 2018

  Hello Quitting enthusiasts!
  
  As many of you know, Quitting by Design was picked up by Austin Macaulay Publishers, and I recently heard from them that if …

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