From Paychecks to Purpose - Career, Identity, & Purpose | MHFI 338

Mile High FI Podcast

In this collaborative episode, Doug Cunnington and Blue (from From Payments to Purpose) discuss the profound connections between money, career,

Key takeaways

• Blue shares how early entrepreneurship via lawn care instilled a foundational value for money and independence.
• The speakers discuss the psychological risks of tying one's entire identity to a job title, especially during career transitions or retirement.

Main topics

• Childhood money memories
• Career transitions and engineering

Notable quotes

I realized like, oh, it turns out I'm much better working for myself than someone else.

Conclusion

The episode provides a reflective look at how to build a fulfilling li

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hey, what's going on? Welcome to the Mile High Five podcast. I'm Doug Cunnington and today is another collaboration episode. Blue, which is a pseudonym, is the host over at From Paychecks to Purpose. And we connected a few months ago. She happened to be in the area around Longmont here, so we decided to record an episode. So that is what we have today. And we kind of... didn't necessarily like interview each other, but had a discussion where we covered a few different topics. So that's what this episode is. I encourage you to check out from paychecks to purpose. I, before we recorded, I checked out a handful of episodes to make sure I was like, this is a good collaboration. And I was pleasantly surprised. I was like, cool, come on in. So we actually recorded here in the studio at my house in the basement. So that's where this is recorded. And we. blurred Blue's face as she remains anonymous. Hence the name Blue. That's not the name on her birth certificate. So anyway, thanks a lot to Blue for recording with me and we'll send it to the episode now. Speaker 1 (1:16) Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of From Paychecks to Purpose. My name is Blue, and I like to talk about all things at the intersection of money and living a good life. And today, I'm here with Doug of the Mile High Phi podcast, and we're going to have a two-way conversation about career identity and purpose. This is part of sort of my From Paychecks to Purpose series. And I'm very excited to be doing this with you, Doug. Thanks. Speaker 2 (1:49) You're welcome. Welcome to the studio. I'm pumped. I'm excited. I'm well caffeinated. And I think this might be just the first or second, maybe the second time I've had someone record in my studio here. So it just kind of worked out that way. So welcome. And I hope the recording and everything turns out good. Speaker 1 (2:07) Yeah, definitely another level. I know we were talking before this started to see your setup. This is pretty awesome. what you have going on here. I'm definitely beginner level with my, you know, little DJI mics, but I think that I could definitely see myself growing, you know, to something more like this at some point in the future. Speaker 2 (2:27) Yeah. Thank you. It took a lot of time to put together the studio very piecemeal, but yeah, it comes together pretty good. And I have figured out a lot of stuff that didn't work before I arrived at this, but yeah, there's something about having. someone in the studio versus like remote and you could see the body language. And like you said, we were able to chat and you got to, you know, see the house a little bit and all that. So it takes it to a different level versus like you have something scheduled, you pop on to like essentially a zoom call and then, you Speaker 1 (3:00) know, Speaker 2 (3:00) it's like, Oh, I gotta go. Bye. See ya. So anyway, welcome. Speaker 1 (3:04) Thank you. All right. So I know one of the first kind of things in my general format for a From Paychecks to Purpose series episode is to kind of talk about things in our childhood, like just highlights that shaped our views on life, money, living a good life, that sort of thing. Speaker 2 (3:24) Yeah. And I think back to some of the early I guess, instances when I thought about money. And I think it was 12, right around 12. And some of my friends had CD players. And I was like, I think I want to get one. So I went to my dad, hey, I think I want to get a CD player. And can you buy it? And he was like, maybe. But once you get it, how are you even going to buy CDs? And he said, ah, think about it. So I went upstairs and I think I wrote like in a spiral notebook. I kind of remember, I wish I had that scrap of paper. It was probably nonsense, but I was like, I'm going to cut grass and I will make whatever, $12 to cut grass. I had no idea what to charge. I'll make like some money cutting grass and then I'll be able to join. whatever, Columbia CD club or whatever, and get 10 CDs for like one penny. Now, you know what a CD is, right? So CDs or music. Yeah. But do you remember the clubs, like the music clubs where you can get cassettes or whatever for super cheap? Did you run into that? Speaker 1 (4:36) That might've been slightly before my time. Yeah. Maybe Speaker 2 (4:40) a couple of decades, but I was like, oh yeah, I get these mailers. My dad would get the mailers, but literally it would be like, you know, You pay one penny, you pick 10 CDs, you get them. You are then obligated to buy like four more CDs at regular price over the next year, but put it all together. You get a decent deal. So anyway, I wrote that down, showed my dad and he was like, okay, like we'll get started with it and we'll see what we could do. And the next day I started to... push the mower. I was like, I'm just going to push the mower around and find a yard that has like long grass and go knock on their door. And I think I, it was like the next door neighbor up the street and they were like, okay, you could do it. So like immediately it worked out. They had me wash some cars. They had me cut some grass. So I was sort of learning like the value of money and I wanted to buy my own shit basically. And I'll skip a lot of stuff. I, then talked to them. They gave me, they were entrepreneurs. So they like saw a seed of like, Oh, this guy wants to work. So I made flyers, made copies of them, passed them out. People like to see like a young kid trying to do some stuff. So people would hire me. And I, you know, eventually it was cutting whatever, 15 or 20 lawns per week or month. I don't remember, but I made a lot of money doing that because it was like no taxes. I was making, probably 15, 20 bucks an hour and minimum wage was like 435 back in those days. Speaker 1 (6:15) That's awesome. Speaker 2 (6:15) So I never got a job in high school because I just made my own schedule and cut grass and did whatever I wanted. So that was kind of like the early sort of highlight of like me, like seeing the value of money working and like. I guess being an entrepreneur as well, which I didn't realize. So Speaker 1 (6:33) that's super awesome that you had that experience so early on, you know, I bet that set you up to think about what could be possible and maybe encouraged you a bit. Cause I know on my end, like I describe myself as a conservative risk taker. And I think that there's a fair amount, it's not every fire person, but there's a fair amount of fire people who are in my camp, like, you know, one more year syndrome, all that sort of stuff. And. I think there's a good chance a lot of us fire people. We could do something entrepreneurial and get a lot of what we're looking for without actually having to be like fully 4 % rule fi, you know? Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:10) So Speaker 1 (7:11) that's something I try to challenge within myself, but I didn't have an experience like that growing up that kind of like showed me what things could be like, you know, if I did my own thing and my parents just did W2 jobs. So it was, it just wasn't really something that was. in my periphery as like an example of something I could do until relatively recently, you know? Speaker 2 (7:31) Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:31) Totally Speaker 2 (7:32) makes sense. And you mentioned it maybe gave me insight on like what was possible. It did, but then I forgot when I got to college and then doing like co-op jobs, internship kind of things, then you kind of get indoctrinated to the corporate structure. And then I forgot. It kind of made me a maybe a worse employee in some ways, because I was like, I was always kind of complaining about stuff. But eventually I realized like, oh, it turns out I'm much better working for myself than someone else. Cause I don't want people to tell me what to do. Right. Interesting. Yeah. Speaker 1 (8:10) Yeah. On my end, you know, I, I don't have an equivalent story. I very much just, my, my parents were very responsible and very frugal and I, I very much had good examples of like how to spend money, but. They didn't really talk about money a ton. My dad started talking to me about money when I was an adult, but it was more like you got to open a 401k and set that up and that sort of like basic stuff. I didn't even get an allowance. So I basically didn't really have like any real interaction with money until I hit college more or less. And so I basically just didn't really realize exactly like. the importance of everything. The message that was given to me is you want to be financially secure, right? But I don't think I really understood to a full granularity, like this full, like in focus way, how that can actually pan out or what you really need or don't need. Does that make sense? So of course I just went towards the things that sort of like oh well these are good jobs so if you do one of these you'll probably be fine so i went towards one of those but yeah go ahead yeah would Speaker 2 (9:24) you say your family was frugal or Actually, I'll just leave it at that. I won't fill in any blanks. But yeah, frugal. Yeah. Speaker 1 (9:34) My mom, for sure. Yeah. My mom was, she loved couponing. She didn't really buy clothes. I know that that's like a thing that some people like to do. They have, and they enjoy that. But she really didn't. And she really valued experiences. So like we went traveling a lot. Actually, when I was really little, because my mom liked to travel. And they had traveled before we were born and when we were little. And in retrospect, I'm really, really glad that we did that because my mom, unfortunately, she got cancer. And relatively early, she passed away. She was like 49 and I was around 13. So it was definitely, you know, kind of a hard thing to see and to have to. kind of endure in those years. And it really taught me the lesson of you just have to balance living life now with saving for tomorrow. And you can't have this lopsided view of either thing, right? But yeah, I mean, I definitely tried to learn lessons from her about the frugality and the experiences over things because I don't know if they had not been as frugal, maybe they couldn't have gone on those trips, right? Right. Speaker 2 (10:46) Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Because like the frugality makes sense. And then, but Big trips can be quite expensive. Interesting though, my mom... She loved a good bargain and she liked clothes. So she would buy like just cheap stuff because she liked to, you know, even something that wasn't super nice. So she would buy like cheap stuff because it was a good deal. It's taken me a while to like shed that because like, I mean, I saw it as an example. I'm like, ah, it's a really good deal. May as well get it even though I don't need it. But I'm in a decluttering phase right now. So it's like, all right, this shit's getting out the door. Speaker 2 (11:23) Yeah, every now and then I'm like, oh, that is a really great deal. Maybe I should get it. Yeah, Speaker 1 (11:28) that is interesting. I definitely have heard that before with some people. Again, they grow up in that mentality of buying the sales and being very interested in that. I would say that my mom definitely did that. But for myself, for whatever reason, I don't know. I guess I just skew more minimalist. You know what I mean? Naturally. Speaker 2 (11:46) That is a good thing. All right. So, anything else with like childhood highlights that kind of, I mean, maybe that you see these Speaker 1 (11:56) days? Yeah, I think that the key things that I learned from my childhood would ultimately boil down to having that balance, right, between the here and now and the future. And, you know, it worked out well for my dad. He also was, relatively speaking, frugal. He's in a good place. And that's like, again, the good example that also I got to follow. He definitely, before I really, because before I didn't understand the why of FIRE. And so I didn't really get why I should be super interested in personal finance. He sort of got me on the right track, if that makes sense with the basics. And then I, by happenstance, was curious and found out about FIRE, sort of stumbled upon it. And then I was sort of like off on my own race, you know, doing my own thing. But he really did set me on the right track and I would not be in the same place if it wasn't for him. You know what I mean? Speaker 2 (12:52) What were the specific things like Roth? Speaker 1 (12:56) Yeah. So he had me, obviously he was like, you should do a 401k. You should at least do the match. You should think about doing more if you can. And then the other thing was he got me set up with a Roth IRA, like pretty early on. This is funny because at the time, again, I hadn't discovered the why. So I was like, why should I be super concerned about this? And I wasn't paying as much attention. So we set it up, but I forgot to do the microtransaction thing to verify the bank. Speaker 2 (13:30) And Speaker 1 (13:30) so it basically never... really made it in for like the first like six months. And then there was a whole thing about like, we discovered that it was, we got it in there, but then it had not been invested. So that was a whole thing. And we figured that out. And luckily I did caught it, you know, within a year. So it wasn't that bad, but it was definitely a thing that looking back, I'm like, I mean, that's the thing is like before I can relate to being a person who doesn't understand the importance. Because that was me before I discovered FIRE and like why I should truly care and be invested in the personal finance. Yeah. Speaker 2 (14:10) Yeah. And then, like you said, the minor mistake of, you know, forgetting to like link up the accounts and then investing. But luckily, those were your lowest earning years and stuff like that. So. Yeah. It'll be okay. Speaker 1 (14:26) Yeah. Plenty of people have much bigger financial mistakes that I know that people have talked about. There was like a choose five episode recently. I've talked about stuff like that. Yeah. Speaker 2 (14:35) Yeah. And like we could put a pin and never come back to it or talk about it in the future, but I have a foreclosure. I stopped investing in like probably 2007 or eight during the great recession for a few years, which obviously would have been really smart to keep. investing then. So yeah, yeah. Several hiccups and just dumb mistakes when I look back like, oh shoot, but I won't make those mistakes again. Right. Speaker 1 (15:03) Right. The important thing is to learn. Yeah. Right. Yeah. All right. So I think we can move from the childhood topic and get into sort of like a brief career recap, because I know that, you know, both of us maybe have similar-ish stories on this front. I've talked about it before. on my own podcast. And you've definitely talked about it before. So, Speaker 2 (15:26) but Speaker 1 (15:27) if you don't mind, I'll go ahead and start. So I went into engineering as my major growing up again, the message that I heard over and over again is we want you to do better than us. Like my dad had a, like a white collar job and like was pretty decently set, but my mom basically worked at a convenience store for her career. Right. And I definitely think, Because she was an immigrant and when she immigrated here, she was a caretaker. She brought her whole family here basically with her and was the caretaker for everybody else. She didn't really have the opportunity to even go back to school or try to progress into something different. Speaker 2 (16:09) And Speaker 1 (16:09) I got the sense that if it wasn't for all of us, she maybe would have, you know? So she wanted me to do better than her. The the top things that people think of traditionally or engineering is one of them and I was good at math So it was something I could do right kind of why I went into engineering I would say that as I got more and more into engineering I Got more and more meaning out of it. Like I am in a decent place with my current job in terms of The meaning I derived from my job like I feel like the particular role that I do like I do feel like I'm doing something that's sort of aligned with my values, or at least more so than other jobs, other engineering jobs. And so again, decent-ish place. But at the same time, I still only get a couple weeks of vacation every year. I still have all of these other limitations, right, of being a W-2 employee. And so I'm definitely working on and thinking about thoughtfully how I can potentially at some point pivot when it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 (17:15) you kind of found your way into engineering where they're looking back. Are there other areas where you're like, I'm actually pretty good at other stuff too. And it would be interesting if I went this other path, anything like that for you? Speaker 1 (17:29) Yeah. I mean, going into college, I was pretty good in school. Again, this was my parents really stressed doing well in school and