Hello everyone,
One of the most common budgeting advice is to build an emergency funds, that should cover 3 to 6 months of regular expenses, and to only use that money in the case you lose your main source of income.
Another name for that kind of savings is “f*** you money”, as it largely reduces the leverage your employer has over you. Have you ever experienced that?
It occurred to me in one of my previous jobs. It was shortly after covid, a period of time when I had been working from home, making as much as usual, but without all the usual expenses (eating out, travelling, having drinks, etc.).
It came out that just after covid, while we had all been working perfectly fine (there was even a productivity peak in all the metrics), the top management decided that it was time to go back to the office. Nobody really understood why among the employees, especially as everyone had been working so well.
It was the 3rd or 4th of January, I had just spent Christmas and NYE with my family and friends back in my hometown. Then I had a meeting with my director, and at the end of the meeting, he scolded me that I was not in the office, but working from home.
Earlier in my career, I would have probably said that I was sorry, and that I would be in the office the next day. But at this moment, I knew that I had enough savings to cover for several years of my regular spending. I didn’t say anything, but in my mind, it was crystal clear that I wouldn’t be part of this company much longer.
A few days, during my evaluation with my director, I told him that I was quitting. He was shocked, he could not understand. Was it about the money? The responsibilities? I didn’t even try to explain, because I know that the policy was pushed by the CEO, and he is known to be incredibly stubborn. In the end, I just told him that I wanted a change of scenery. I didn’t even had another job signed yet (I wanted to take a break from work for a few weeks). He probably thought that I needed my job so much that I would put up with this non-sense.
It felt liberating, and it would definitely not be possible without that emergency funds. I didn’t really even had to touch it, but just knowing that it was there, ready to be used if needed, made such a big difference.
What is your “f*** you money” story?
Alright, so here’s the catch: I was working for one entity of a group. I was reporting to the entity director, but the whole group was still owned (something like 55%) by a single person, with an egocentric personality, and that owner was vehemently against working from home.
I mentioned to the entity director that there was nothing he could change as the working from office policy was pushed by the group (he had mentioned that earlier to a lot of people, that we were not following “the group policy”). I did not have an HR exit interview where to report my issue with the WFH policy directly.
Just to give an example at how stubborn the owner was: it was okay for me to work in one office while every other person I was working with would be in a different one, but I wasn’t allowed to work from home. I would thus go every day from my hometown to that office, interact with no one, make a few calls with my team in the other office, and go back home.
To even add more context, one of my former reports who took my role left a few months afterwards as well, in his case the issue was the pay they were offering.
Long story short, this company was full of issues, and didn’t seem to bother to even ask for feedback. A lot of other people quit around the time I did.