Name: How to Save Enough to Say ‘No’ to Jobs
Uploaded: 2023-11-10T22:22:00Z
Duration: 7 min 6 s
Description: For some people, having more control over their career includes having the financial freedom to leave their job. WSJ’s Jessica Chou joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss how she saved enough for a “walk-away fund.” Illustration: Alice Mollon

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For some people, having more control over their career includes having the financial freedom to leave their job. WSJ’s Jessica Chou joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss how she saved enough for a “walk-away fund.” Illustration: Alice Mollon

https://m.wsj.net/video/20231110/d949438d-dc7c-48ce-b811-20bb4939c9d9/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

How to Save Enough to Say ‘No’ to Jobs

J.R.: Here's your money briefing for Friday, November 10th. I'm J.R. Whalen for "The Wall Street Journal." To some people, having more control over your work life means having enough money to tell your boss goodbye and walk away. Jessica Chou is a Senior Supervising Producer with "The Wall Street Journal." She wrote about this topic and she joins me. So Jessica, what inspired you to write this?

Jessica: I was thinking a lot about Lucy Liu and she has that viral clip of her talking about FU Money when she talks about how when she was younger she worked really hard to save up this money so she could say no to any job if she didn't wanna do it. And I didn't realize it, but when I first saw that clip in my early twenties, it really impacted me and it made me so anxious. I was like constantly watching my budget to make sure I was saving, and I was saying yes to almost every single freelance job. And after a while I got a little burnt out, and so, I was thinking about why am I saving this money? How much is enough? And at what point would I feel like I would want to use it?

J.R.: So when we're talking about the money, we're not talking about the salary from your job?

Jessica: I call it an Options Fund in the piece. For me, this is a bucket of money that I put aside in addition to my emergency savings in addition to my retirement. It's like a third fund that I've started to create for myself that basically allows me to get myself out of any situation that I don't want to be in. You know, if I'm going through a really tough time in my life, I can look at this money and be like, well, if I really didn't wanna be here, here's something that could support me.

J.R.: Now you like your current job, but has there been a previous job situation where you really did wanna say to your boss, "Hey, I gotta go, goodbye."

Jessica: It was a role that was really good experience for me for maybe one or two years, but there wasn't really an opportunity for growth. There wasn't any stepping stone to the next role or position. And there also wasn't a lot of room for salary growth. So that was a moment where I was like, "Hmm, let me reevaluate "and see if I can find another place to be "or like remove myself from this "and give myself some time to figure out what I want next."

J.R.: I'm sure there are many people in similar situations where they're at a job where they're not getting ahead, but that takes a lot of strength to actually not want to leave but actually take the step and leave.

Jessica: And I wanna be really honest, this fund, a part of it might be for my career, but a lot of it is just for any life situation. And the way that I've been thinking about it is I never want financials to be the reason I stay in a situation.

J.R.: A lot of people would love to have extra money, not just an emergency fund, but to be able to maybe not have as many financial chains on their lifestyle. But why is this especially important to your generation?

Jessica: It's felt like there hasn't been a lot of stability in our lives. We have layoffs often. A lot of us can't afford to own a home ever. Rents are constantly increasing. And my generation has more student loans than the generation beforehand. This isn't necessarily about loosening the financial chains, but it's more about creating a separate bucket to fall back on in case something happens or in case things aren't panning out the way that we wanted.

J.R.: So, not necessarily go on a great vacation or go out to dinner for two weeks. It's something in between that and having money for an absolute emergency.

Jessica: Well, there's an emergency fund, which financial planners will always say three to six months of your life expenses. And then there's your fun fund, which you can shrink and grow based on how much you're making and what your life expenses are. And then there's this fund, which is not the health emergency, not there's a family emergency, but this fund is something long-term still isn't working and I need to figure out how to change that. And so, that might be things are okay in stasis, but maybe I want a career change and I need to go back to school. And then, so you have this fund that allows you to jumpstart that change.

J.R.: So, how do you get yourself into position to take the first couple of steps to get yourself on the road to get to a point that you wrote about in your story?

Jessica: The first step is do you wanna do this right? Do you want this fund? Is it important to you? It's like prioritizing, right? Maybe first, prioritize your emergency fund 'cause that's very important. And then retirement. And then if you're like, actually, at this point I have this retirement fund, but I know in two years this isn't gonna work out for me, then you might want to reevaluate your savings plans. But for the first step is realizing, okay, I need this fund or I want to be saving for this. I spoke to a financial advisor, AJ Ayers, and she was basically like the secret to financial independence is either make more money or save more money. And the making more money is okay, if you are in a job that isn't paying you what you need to live or isn't paying what you want to get for your quality of life, then you might have to make some real evaluations of like, is this the industry you want to be in? Do I want a career change? Do I need to pivot? And I think when a lot of people think the FU Fund, they're like, oh, it's like fun money. And a lot of people that I talk to were like, "I'm never going to have that." Just, I would ask them about like, "Hey, do you have this fund? "Or have you thought about it?" And they'd be like, "Oh, you know what, "I don't think about it "because I don't think I'm ever going "to be able to get that." Maybe we're not in a position to have the type of money that you can do whatever you want with and not have any consequence, but maybe we are in a position to build up some money that can allow you to do something if you really do wanna change. And that's why I started writing the piece is I wanted to figure out how much is that middle ground of an Options Fund, of an FU Fund that isn't tens of millions of dollars that allows me to go on vacation forever. And so when I spoke to AJ, she had this calculation, which was basically, if you like your quality of life now, then your calculation is your current paycheck, your take home pay for the month, multiplied by how many months you would want to take for yourself. So if it's, I want enough to cushion me for 12 months if I need to take a break and I wanna leave this job, so it would be my current monthly take home pay multiplied by 12 months.

J.R.: And not that you would wanna say F you to anybody. It's just a funny category people put that money under an FU Fund.

Jessica: Sometimes I think of it not as a FU Fund, because oftentimes you're not really trying to say F you to somebody specifically, but it might be like an F This Fund. You know what, I don't need this anymore.

J.R.: That's The Wall Street Journal's, Jessica Chou. And that's it for your money briefing. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru. I'm your host, J.R. Whalen. Our Supervising Producer is Melanie Roy. Aisha Al-Muslim was our Development Producer. Scott Saloway and Chris Zinsli are our Deputy Editors. And Philana Patterson is The Wall Street Journal's Head of News Audio. We'll be back with a new show on Monday morning. Thanks for listening.

WSJ's Your Money Briefing podcast is your personal-finance and career checklist. Finance reporters and experts break down complicated money questions every weekday to help you make better decisions about managing your money. 