In 307 days and a little over three hours, I’ll be out of education. My best days are behind me in this industry. 

I started late as a teacher; I was 26 when I landed my first classroom position. The first half of my twenties I spent in a casino and being, generally, an asshole. Not one of us put money in financial markets. Most of us had some money in savings, but the rest we spent as quickly as we earned it. I knew about compound interest, I just didn’t do shit about it. 

Here’s something funny: working three decades in a job you don’t really want in the hopes of earning a pension large enough to live on when your health fails. That was The Plan in the Ohio Valley. A post-industrial American Dream. None of us thought far enough ahead to consider whether or not we were spiritually capable of such a feat. 

I’m certainly not. So, now, just like I did when I was seventeen, I’m researching viable career paths and studying the steps to pursue something else. It’s complete bullshit. And utterly necessary. 

Teaching was a “calling” for me, and I never really drank the Kool-Aid, although the ladles never ran dry. “Nobody got into teaching to be rich” is commonly uttered. True, but a salary that keeps pace with inflation might be a reasonable, achievable goal. 

I’m slow-witted. You wouldn’t know it to talk to me, as I can be obnoxiously charming and even maybe funny. Beneath the sarcasm is a long-running loathing. I’ve known for a long time I was wasting my time teaching. Here’s my payoff: my last two full years in the classroom were the best. There’s no going back, and those days are gone. I learn slowly. It takes months or years of near-disaster for me to wake up and do something aggressive. In some cases, I’m lucky I got fed up before forty. 

All the things I wanted to do but didn’t, I will do. Life is far too short. I can’t reverse time and make up for the $100 per month I should’ve have been auto-investing since age 20, but I will stop the batshit consumer behavior that keeps me from working toward true freedom: financial independence. It won’t be easy. But I won’t be 65 when I “retire” with crossed fingers that fifty years of insane blood pressure won’t drop me. 

Take a walk with me for the next 307 days. I think it will be interesting.