Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. My wife and I are in Baby Step 7 with a net worth of about $1.6 million. I'm calling because I have a plan to leave my corporate job for my side hustle and I kind of need a sanity check. I just want to know if I'm being a fool to trade security for independence, you know, or is this exactly what Baby Step 7 is for? Well, give us the numbers. I love this question. Tell us what your income is in your corporate job. Okay, so I make close to $200,000 a year right now. And the side hustle, this is not great. Consistently, it's about $2,000 a month that I bring in net. And that has been, over the course of two years, a consistent $2,000 that we can count on. What is it? So it's just buying and selling abandoned storage units. I tried the first one as kind of a hobby, and now my wife calls this my hobby jobby. And I buy five or six a year, so it's really not a lot. And I've just done this in my spare time. Yeah, this is just above a hobby. She's right. Right. So how old are you? I'm 44. How old is she? She's 39. What does she make? So up until about four months ago, she only had part-time jobs and worked in the home. But starting in September, she got a full-time job as a teacher, her dream job that she's always wanted to do. And now she's making about $4,000 a month net. So she's netting $4,000. What do you do with your corporate job? What's your career? So I'm a software developer. Okay. The answer is no. Tax season is coming up fast, which means a lot of you are paying more attention to your money and maybe realizing the holiday damage. So if you're trying to clean up the budget and start the year strong, cutting your phone bill is an easy win. With Boost Mobile, keep the phone you love and pay just $25 a month for unlimited data, talk, and text forever. No contracts no traps just predictable savings that help you stay in control Switch now at BoostMobile slash Ramsey Restrictions apply See website for details The answer is no. Because we always answer, what would we do if we were in your shoes? Would I walk away from a $200,000 gig for a $24,000 hobby? Not at 44. No. You still got a lot of earning potential. I think there's still a transition. of it, I think you need a better side hustle. And let me just tell you my rule of thumb on when do we leave a full-time job to a side hustle, just so that you have some context, because you're not there. But I would want a minimum of six to 12 months of my income. And in your case, that's 200,000. I would want six to 12 months of that in the retained earnings is what we call it here in the company, the side hustles bank account, before I even thought about moving out. But in In your case, I don't even think that's the right, because this is hard to scale. I would just say some percentage of your income. It's a hard to scale business. If you had a side hustle that was $150, you know, you could make that jump. Yeah, that's fair. But here's the thing. Going from, you said software engineer, is that what you said? Yes, sir. From software engineer to junk dealer is probably not my plan. I understand that. There's probably a middle ground here. I liked what you said from corporate world to independence. Yeah. Let's talk about that and how can we maybe be a software engineer freelance, start doing some consulting contracts, and you decide who and when you want to work for and all that kind of stuff. And maybe you make $250 doing that. I don't know. You don't necessarily have to go down. But you've got your independence, and you can set your hours and do some of that stuff. Sounds like you've got a pitch. I want to hear this out a little bit more because I do have a follow-up question. Go ahead. I know you want to say something. So if I could push back just a little bit, about two years ago, I was ready to just jump and leave the corporate world. I was burnt out and I still am and I felt like I could barely hold on I found something that I could gravitate towards and something that I loved and was passionate about and something that I felt really proud that I had built and bootstrapped from a initial investment to something that consistently makes a month in cash And we also planned two years ago, I knew I couldn't jump in. It would be ridiculous to try and say that I can replace a $200,000 a year income ever. But that's not what I want. I don't want to pile up money in a bank account just to have $10 million when I retire if I'm not happy. And my soul felt like it had been sucked out of my body. Totally get it. Let me ask you a quick question on that. What would you say is the greatest source of your burnout? Is it people? Is it the environment? Is it the workload? Those are usually the big three. What is it for you? Yeah, I would say it's the corporate nonsense and the lack of independence. that there's just so much in my way. None of those mean you have to make less to be happy. I know, but does it mean that I need to make more or the same to be happy? No, but to automatically assume less equals happy, that's not a proper framework. I understand. Let me ask you another question. I'm very happy, and I make a lot more. Yeah, I'm sure. What has to happen, Ryan? You've done this long enough to know something about this business. if you gave it 40 hours a week, what do you anticipate the income becoming? I thought about this a lot. I know. And I've had, so here's my plan. So the best month that I've had was $6,000 in net profit. And that was from buying multiple lockers instead of having to space them out so much because I had more spare time to do it. I have a sabbatical coming up because I do have a great corporate job. It's very cushy. You know, I have a sabbatical that comes up for having worked at the same company for 15 years. And I have six weeks off in March. I want to take that six weeks and I want to bust my butt and put my nose to the grindstone and see what I can do Putting 40 hours 50 60 hours a week What do you think you can do What do you think you can do I think that I could average 6 a month and I could have breakout months of 10 Okay, so I'm going to tell you something. After hearing your cause of burnout, and I'm on your team, but I'm going to give you some tough love, that is a mindset issue that you actually can control. I didn't hear toxic environment. I didn't hear a jerk boss. I heard cushy job. So I'm going to tell you what's going on. You can control your desire and your desire is to be independent. I love it. But I'm going to tell you this right now. I love the six week sabbatical. Do not quit your job right now. This is the advice I would give to myself. Let's prove out this hypothesis in the six weeks, but let's not immediately quit if that goes well. And I think you need to change your mindset starting today that yes, what's really going on in this burnout is, is I'm spending all my time thinking about my desired future and I'm not willing to be patient to get to that desired future in a much better way. And I think you're just so ready to leave and be your own guy that you're missing what is a phenomenal platform by which to step into that desired future. I think you can step into it too soon and talk yourself into making less money because I just want to be happy. I think you need to be wise. I think more wisdom, less happy is the mindset right now. Yeah. I'm a little bit afraid. No, I'm a lot afraid that you've confused the freedom that you feel doing this business with an actual passion for the business. Yeah. You're just buying us on junk. I mean, it's okay. It's not exactly like you're changing the world or there's passion. Where's the passion? The passion comes from your independent and your control and your own destiny. And that's where you're getting your passion from. It's not the actual actions. and I think you can do that in a way that is better for your family at 44 years old than $24,000 a year. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.
