Background:
My working life was kind of a mess. Seems like every employer choice turned out bad in some respect. After the military in 1968, I went to college under the GI Bill and got an engineering degree and later an MBA, both from Ivy League colleges.
I took a job at Anaconda Metals in Connecticut out of college in 1973 as an Industrial Engineer when the Company was in decline and needed cost controls. By 1980, I worked my way up to Plant Manger of one division’s largest manufacturing plants and was the youngest ever at that management level in the Company. It was all good until the price of copper fell into the toilet and we were almost bankrupt. With a stroke of luck, ARCO bought the Company during the second oil embargo in 1977 or so. All seemed good and they poured money into the failing metals company. That effort turned out to be a big mistake in a few short years.
Through a stroke of luck, I landed a corporate job at ARCO in Los Angeles and moved there from Connecticut in 1981. We had two toddlers and faced an 18% mortgage in LA. Fortunately, ARCO helped tremendously with the move and mortgage assistance.
In 1985, I was a corporate auditor and worked in corporate M & A. I was part of a team assigned the sale of the Anaconda plants (how fitting!) and proceeded to get them sold or closed. At that time, the price of oil was approaching $8 barrel and ARCO was shedding assets and employees. I knew my time was limited as my boss retired (he was my mentor). In mid-1985, I was one of 6,600 employees taking the “package” so to say and I was technically unemployed with a year’s severance and 18 calculated years of banked retirement benefits.
The job market was in the tank in the mid 1980’s and I ended up going into consulting. Within a few years, I was running the West Coast office of a boutique M&A consulting firm (privately held) and life was good! (For a while).
In 1989, the CEO of the consulting firm woke up one day in Houston and decided to fire his four regional VP’s, of which I was one. At the same time, DW, decided life was better elsewhere and filed for divorce. So, I am out of work and facing a very expensive California divorce with two California homes, two teen aged daughters and lots of bills.
Taking all of this in stride (and growing up very poor), I figured it was better than my life before hot meals and indoor plumbing. I managed a job in another consulting firm in Houston, got through the divorce with a 10 year old car and $40 K to my name and started over in 1992. My debt load was enormous as there was $3,000/month in child support and $1,500/month in alimony payments.
So I moved to Houston for the job, rented an apartment and rented furniture. A few years later, I remarried and bought a house with a fully assumable, no qualifying loan and quit the job to go out on my own. In 1998, I incorporated (Sub S) and worked my butt off for the next 15 years and got back on my feet. In the process, I put both daughters through college with no debt on their part and paid for two homes in The Woodlands, TX. Somehow, and I am not sure of the process, we put together a nice nest egg to go along with the paid for homes.
So, when you look back at all of this, career wise, I’m not sure I even had one that I can describe.
