There are many experiences that lead to a tremendous change in one’s life. A few standouts in mine have been:

• Meeting my future wife
• Deciding to attend and then graduating college
• My wedding day
• Buying our first house
• The birth of my children

Other than the luck of meeting my future wife, these were planned experiences. Unfortunately, sometimes a life-altering experience isn’t planned for and can be much less pleasant, coming to you more like a hard punch right in the throat. On the positive side, these can provide the drive to dramatically affect the trajectory of your life. One such event set off a chain of dominoes that thankfully brought me to early retirement.

After graduating college with a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, it was time for me to be a yuppie. I was still together with my high school sweetheart and a professional in a career making a lot better than average money. My soon-to-be wife was doing pretty well after working for many years at new car dealerships, and she had just graduated college after helping to put me through school. I imagine from the perspective of most folks we appeared to be living “the life”, and we had certainly bought in to that. Less than a year prior, we completed construction on our first house – a lovely 2100 square foot, 4-bedroom Colonial (almost) McMansion, were in the midst of planning our wedding in a few months, and had just found out a few weeks before that our first child was on the way. I was barely 8 years out of college, excited to be leading the engineering department at the ripe age of 34, and cruising around in my new fully-loaded Nissan Maxima, with payments, of course. My wife also had a new car, we each had new motorcycles, student loans, about $10k in credit card bills; and did I mention the McMansion? Yes, all on credit with payments (see where this is going?). At that time, I could see 30 more years of the same-same and being happy through it all. Looking back at my calendar, I believe the date was July 7, 2005…

“Hey Chris, have a minute for a meeting?”

It was about 10AM, and although it was an odd time to request an unscheduled meeting, I thought nothing of it and replied, “Sure, be right there.”

I grabbed my notebook and headed to the meeting room. As I walked in, I knew something was wrong. I don’t remember if others were there, but I remember my manager and the HR manager sitting at the table. I remember remarking, “this doesn’t look good” to which the HR manager replied “no, you’re right Chris”. It was then explained to me that I was being let go. We were merging with another company, and my position was being phased out. I was being offered a 5-week severance package, a week’s pay for each year I put in, and I could collect unemployment.

Shit!! What the hell was I going to do? My mind raced, I panicked, and had no clue where to go from here. No way would that severance cover the thousands of dollars a month I needed to make ends meet. I literally started hyperventilating and blacked out. I woke up, hoping it was a bad dream. Again, but more calmly this time, I started wondering what the hell was I going to do? Two new car payments, motorcycle payments, a big fat mortgage that was more than double our previous rent, two student loan payments, credit card bills, a wedding in a few months, a baby due in 7 months, and now a huge chunk of income slashed! Would we have to sell everything? What would everyone think? Maybe a sad pity party would ensue as we filed for bankruptcy and sold off our possessions just as it appeared we had “made it”? The irony struck me that I was always trying to do the right thing; I thought I was a nice, easy to work with, smart guy, that any company would love to have; and now I’d have to sell everything off and move back to a rental in the country with hopes of getting another chance.

It took a few hours, maybe a couple of days, but after calming down and reviewing my severance package, unemployment benefits, and my wife’s salary, I started going through our new expected budget. Although this really sucked, I started thinking that maybe we’ll be okay. It was tight, but after backing out extra expenses of weekly happy hours, buying out daily lunches, tolls on the turnpike and gas for work everyday, it looked as though we could balance it out. In fact, my stubbornness kicked in and I thought:

“Screw those bastards! They might kick me down, but I won’t have to change a damn thing! I’ll keep all my stuff, and nothing will change. I’ll dust myself off, and get a new and better job! They’ll look back and wish they kept me around! I’ll make sure everyone there knows I’m better off now!”

And so, while that was initially the plan, thankfully, a better plan soon came along.

This was my new beginning.