#108: Taking Another Massive Pay Cut Because I'm "Downshifting" My Career Again

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Hey all, it’s MMV.

I gave my resignation notice last Thursday to my boss and this week is my final week working in the Department of Defense (or War).

If I’m being honest, I’m nervous as f#ck.

I’m leaving a very safe and mundane job for one with a lot of uncertainty.

I’m also taking about a $40,000 pay cut for the first year as I’m starting from basically the bottom.

This is the second pay cut I’m taking after my consulting career. I went from a $200K total comp to just under $140K total comp and now to around $100,000.

You might call me crazy and I won’t take offense to it because I think I might be.

But I’m trying to be strategic about it so I’m calling what I’m doing “downshifting”.

🇪🇺 Trump says 8 European nations face tariffs rising to 25% if Greenland isn’t sold to the U.S.
Who needs allies when you have the most expensive military? 🤷🏻‍♂️

🏠 Trump housing plan to allow 401(k) money for down payments
More options are good, but I personally wouldn’t pull from my 401(k) for a down payment on a house. I’d probably do this to withdraw from my 401(k) without penalty and use cash that I already saved up for a down payment… not a bad idea, right?

❄️ December core consumer prices rose at a 2.6% annual rate, less than expected
I guess that means no interest rate cut at the next Fed meeting (unless Trump’s scare tactic with the DOJ investigating Powell worked).

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What do I mean by “downshifting” my career?

Downshifting is shifting your car to a lower gear while it’s in motion. This increases the car’s RPM (revolutions per minute) and has two benefits:

In my situation, I’m slowing down my career by taking a temporary pay cut to get more fulfillment, more money (in later years), and more autonomy.

I curiously looked up if this term was used before and found out I’m not the inventor.. darn!

What I’m really looking for is fulfillment and autonomy. The money will come later.

Since the Trump administration decided to end normal telework, my work life has gone to sh*t. I held on for a year hoping things would get better, but it hasn’t so I decided to look elsewhere.

So I’m willing to take a step back (with a lot of short-term instability) in order to get more control of my life at work in the long run.

If you read my last email, I’m going into law enforcement. It’s a crazy pivot.. but it’s a career that fits my personality (Myer-Briggs).

What’s crazy is that I was a military officer, I always considered becoming a lawyer, and I’m about to become a Criminal Investigator (or Special Agent).

That means that I have to go through training where I’ll be away from home for a few months. This is a sacrifice my wife and I have to make.

I’m so grateful that I have a wife who is supportive of me. She understands that it’s temporary discomfort but we’ll make it work. She also knows that I can’t seem to sit still at a job so we made a deal that if law enforcement doesn’t work out, I should try to get a corporate job that pays well again.

I honestly don’t know what to expect other than that I will probably go to training in March or April.

But what I’m hoping to get out of this is change:

If you’re miserable at your job like it’s sucking the life out of you, let me be an example of why you don’t have to let it continue.

Yeah, it might end up being the wrong decision for me, but I rather try and figure it out than to go through another year of mundane, soul-sucking work under the micro-management of a boss who doesn’t know when to retire and move on.