Courtesy Shanna Goodman
At a young age, my dad told me that, to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I had to first define my ideal lifestyle. I can recall us being outside, me probably kicking the dirt with the toe of my shoe while he said it. I have no idea if I'd asked a question or if he was spontaneously imparting some wisdom.
His exact comment was, "Figure out what kind of lifestyle you want, then work backwards from there." For my dad, as a fourth-generation rancher, that meant doing whatever he needed to do to keep the family ranch operational and providing for the family, including working outside seven days a week, sun up to sun down most days.
While it was hard work, to him it didn't really feel like work, because it was the lifestyle he wanted to live. He wanted to be able to stand at the top of the highest hill in the place, look around, and know that he owned everything he could see. He told me that made him feel like the king of the world.
Defining my ideal lifestyleAt the time, probably sometime in the '80s or '90s, no one was talking about lifestyle the way people do now, so this was a concept I didn't fully understand (or appreciate) until years later. Without realizing it, my ideal lifestyle was forming as something I'd seen out of a movie — something like "The Secret of My Success" with Michael J. Fox, which I watched on repeat at my grandmother's house. (I shudder thinking of this now, as the movie included quite a few sexcapades). In the movie, a farm kid from Kansas (like me) goes to the big city and becomes wildly successful by cleverly working a few different angles at a corporate job.
Since farm life wasn't for me, I envisioned my future similarly. I'd find opportunities, work the heck out of them, and then be on top of the world myself. In my mind, this vision aligned with my dad's advice: define your ideal lifestyle and work backwards.
I thought I'd built my ideal lifestyle — until it all came crashing downYears ago, in my mid-20s, I was working what I thought was my ideal job. I was in a chief marketing role, rubbing elbows with C-suite executives from all the major food and beverage companies — Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Sara Lee, Kellogg's, Campbell's, and more. I even remember walking past Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi at a press conference I'd coordinated, thinking I had really made it.
I was flying high on a handful of really exciting partnership deals and thought things were only ever going up from there. I was wrong, but of course I didn't know it yet.
Things turned sour when some egos at work clashed, and before I knew it, the multimillion-dollar contracts we'd negotiated for months — some, years — were cancelled. I was devastated.
For years, I'd invested all my energy and time into building something that ultimately came crashing down because of someone else's ego. This was a wakeup call for me, and I realized I wasn't going to continue putting my future in anyone else's hands.
The kind of lifestyle I'd been living no longer seemed ideal: It involved really long days, feeling tethered nonstop to my iPhone, working through vacations, and when traveling (something I'd loved to do before), I only ever saw the inside of airplanes, cars, hotels, and meeting rooms.
From that moment, I saved every penny possible so I could work towards a different ideal lifestyle — one that included more time with my family — and walk away from my job.
4 changes I made to save money fastI lived below my meansLiving below my means was a hard rule to follow, especially when everyone around me was buying designer clothes and new cars and going out every weekend. Instead, I bought most of my clothes at thrift shops or on clearance.
When the chaos at work started, I sold my Honda Pilot, paid what I owed on it, and bought a seven-year-old Camry with cash. I didn't want something as silly as a car payment to hold me back if I needed to make an exit.
I took time to celebrate a promotion, then saved the differenceWhen I received a promotion and raise, we went out to a nice dinner and I bought a new Coach bag on clearance to mark the occasion. Then, everything else went directly into savings. My thought process at the time was that I hadn't had the money before, so I wouldn't miss it.
I scheduled automatic transfers into savings accountsI set up automatic savings transfers, scheduled for the day after my paycheck went into my checking account. Creating a zero-based budget, I essentially paid my savings first, then what was left could be used for living expenses.
I got scrappy with savingsOnce my job started getting really chaotic, I laid out every penny we spent into different budgets and looked for places to cut. Eating out was the first thing to go, and my husband and I started packing every single lunch for work. All extras were cut and the grocery budget trimmed as much as possible.
I clipped coupons. I watched for sales on things we had to buy or groceries we bought frequently. I made freezer meals on weekends so that we wouldn't be tempted to eat out in the evenings when we were tired and grumpy. I even bought a year's worth of diapers at Walgreens for our daughter. This sounds a little counter-productive when trying to save money, but by buying Walgreens-brand diapers when they were on sale and combining with a coupon, I could get $9 packs of diapers for $2.50 each. I calculated the savings to be about $1,100 if I'd paid full price for Huggies.
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does afford you optionsAs work became more and more chaotic, my savings grew. I became less and less stressed as the dollars increased because I knew I could walk away when the job turned too toxic to stand. My housing costs were low, I didn't have a car payment, and I had $20,000 in savings to tide me over to finding a new job.
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does provide options. While venting about the chaos with coworkers, inevitably they would sigh and say, "But I need the job," meaning they'd have to deal with whatever came their way. I could walk away when the job no longer felt ideal. And I did. Because of my dad's advice, I could afford to.
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