Chapter 2
Why you need F-You Money
Shortly after 9/11 my company kicked me to the curb.
Six months earlier our division president had taken me to a congratulatory lunch for a record-breaking year. We were growing explosively and embarrassingly profitable. Over a bottle of fine wine we discussed my very bright future.
It was the best job I’ve ever had. We had a great team, great leadership, great fun, and I made great money. I had just cashed a bonus check for more than I had ever made in a single year before.
A year later, my little girl and I were sitting on the couch watching a news broadcast. The concerned news crew was filming people standing in a depression-era style bread line. They were, the reporter said, the newly poor suffering from job loss in the dismal economy. I was still unemployed and licking my wounds.
“Daddy,” said my then eight-year-old, “are we poor?” She was gravely
concerned.
“No,” I said, “we’re just fine.”
“But you don’t have a job,” she said. She was thinking, I’m sure, just like those poor jobless souls on the TV. Who even thought she knew what a job was?
“That’s no problem, honey. We have money that’s working for us instead.”
That’s what I said, but what I was thinking was: This was exactly why I had worked so hard to be sure I had F-You Money. In fact I’d been working on it long before I heard the term.
I may not have known at first what it was called, but I knew what it was and why it was important. There are many things money can buy, but the most valuable of all is freedom. Freedom to do what you want and to work for whom you respect.
Those who live paycheck to paycheck are slaves. Those who carry debt are slaves with even stouter shackles. Don’t think for a moment that their masters aren’t aware of it.
As already described, I first accumulated the modest amount of F-You Money I needed to negotiate extra vacation time two years into my first professional job. By 1989 the amount and the freedom it provided had grown substantially. Not enough to retire, perhaps, but easily enough to say F-you if needed.
The timing was fortunate. I wanted to take some time off to pursue business acquisitions. When one morning I found myself and my boss in the office hallway screaming at each other, it occurred to me perhaps the time had come.
I may not have owned a Mercedes, but I owned my freedom. Freedom to choose when to leave a job and freedom from worry when the choice wasn’t mine.
Good thing. It turned out I was unemployed for three full years after 9/11. I’m really lousy at job hunting.