It feels good to have “FU” Money

It’s been a stressful few months at work…there’s a new policy that will go into effect in October mandating employees to go back to the office 3 days a week (currently it’s one day), there’s staff cuts and layoffs impending that will cut 5% of our staff, and…on top of that, there’s been little to no communication from the top about how supervisors like myself can prepare for myself and my staff of 9 for these changes.

But in the midst of these stressful times at work, I come back to my trusty financial planning spreadsheets and I can ground myself again because I realize at this stage, we have FU Money (Watch this short 2 minute clip from JL Collins, renowned personal finance blogger and Author of “The Simple Path to Wealth”). FU Money, yup it means F***Y**, is when “have enough money to make bolder decisions”, when you can say “I have enough money to do without this job for a few months while I figure out what I’m going to do next”. This is what grounds me, and also really helps me understand why it’s called F***Y** Money. 

We have enough money that I could weather a layoff for a few months, even a year or so, but it’s the mental and psychological impacts of stress at work that are harder to shake off. And, there’s a reason for that. I’d recommend listening to this fantastic new podcast series, “Proxy” by Patreon Podcasts and former host of Invisibilia, Yowei Shaw, where she dives into her own experience being laid off by NPR when her show was canceled. She also was fortunate to have financial stability, a support system, but the emotional, mental, and psychological impacts of layoffs are real. It’s helped me to prepare myself for my own potential layoff and also to remind myself to treat the people I work with, my staff, my colleagues, as humans during this seemingly very inhumane way we treat workers during layoffs. 

It comes down to what do I have in my internal locus of control, what do I have control over: FU Money, Planning for potential next steps for my “work” by reflecting, researching, and journaling to get it in writing, Therapy, Communicating with family and friends to feel supported, and Exercise.

What’s outside my locus of control: Higher Ups hiding in their safe shelter, not having information to share with my own staff, the stress and anxiety that inevitably comes and I have to work myself out of on a daily basis (using the above tools).

National Geographic recently released an article about the “Science of Stress “ (you do need a subscription), but the main findings show that effects of stress can be life-altering from cardiovascular disease, obesity, and others, but there are ways we can work on that, many of which I’m trying to do within my locus of control. National Geographic has a Stress Test you can take, and surprise surprise, I am Moderately Stressed. But at least I get to say F***Y**.