justin said:
Wow. I'm curious what is producing this $500k one-time income?
Well, I am part Italian, and my father's side is 100% Sicilian
)
I work for a family-owned business. Winding down on a major project (hint:
http://stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/stl/ballpark/index.jsp ), and my involvement was more than critical (basically, was supposed to be just the project manager but also ended up being the jobsite superintendent overseeing 35 construction workers as well, as our superintendent turned out to be a POS but my family members refused to do anything about it).
It's nice to see that the project did so well now that it's in the close-out stage, but believe me - combining my personality type with the sh*t I put up with, there were many times (even with just 1 month until completion) that I honestly didn't think I'd be able to make it to the end of the project without quitting or having a nervous breakdown (which I did have, by the way, thanks to a mentally derranged construction worker going off on me (another story for another thread).
Because of the many bad experiences from the construciton manager/in-house problems in my own company/the construction industry in general/unions, I'm hanging up my hardhat and moving on to a different career in the next 12 months. I just have to play my cards right so I don't get screwed out of my bonus by leaving before I get it.
I had previously posted my thoughts of going for my MBA last June...but I procrastinated and realized that if things went well with the project, then I may not even need to get my MBA to get a good job to reach FIRE status. It's also good I didn't start it because based on how the project was from Dec 2005 to April 2006, there's little chance I would have had a second to even think about grad school work with the committments from my job....let alone get as little sleep as I did get between staying up late and worrying about a multitude of problems that could have gone wrong. There is a chance that I might end up working for the engineer that designed the ballpark, since I skied for the first time earlier this year and loved it (and their office is in Denver), but it's all up in the air for now.
The good news is that my new career can be literally anything I want. I'd prefer to get a 'decent' job that's fun and interesting (making at least $40k/year), work for another 3-5 years, and then goof off with the 'gravy' part time jobs with good bennies (e.g. movie theater ticket windows, etc.) for kicks until I simply don't have time for the pt job.
It's funny how much brighter your day looks, and how much less unpleasant the bs is when you know that you're merely biding your time to get your annual bonus to set you on FIRE.
Of course, it hasn't been a bed of roses to get to this point from graduating 5 years ago, and did involve quite a few sacrifices...but the rewards are sweet.