cellini's Diaryland Diary

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A Way Out?

I am suddenly realizing that I have a metric pant load of work to do in terms of my writing and teaching career. Between finishing the deer book this month, scheduling at least 2 more classes, setting up the travel for the new book, research, blogging, etc. this is a lot to do.

What I need to do is quit my day job. And I just realized that I might have a way of doing that rather soon. See, I own something like 14 or 16% of the company. That stock is worth between $45-60k. If I leave then they will want to buy me out since its no good having someone who is no longer working here holding stock in it and making money off of their efforts year after year. That's just a fact of life with a small business. So I'm going to talk to my father after work and suggest that we conduct a phased buy-out over the course of the next year. I quit effective 2 weeks from now and then for the next year I sell them back about 1% every month. This would effectively serve as a paycheck for the next year, only I'd be responsible for my own health insurance and I expect that it would be taxed as capital gains rather than salary. Come to think of it, the company is worth less than it used to be so I might not have to pay any tax at all. In fact, I think its about a $10k loss that I can *deduct* from my other income.

Ha! I just did it. I went and had that exact conversation with my father and we are on the same page. He wants to do the phased buy-back over the course of a year. He is going to crunch the numbers and get back to me with exactly how much I'd be paid per month for my stock.

In as little as 2 weeks I could be free of my day job. Guaranteed income for an entire year while I write more books and get the TV show produced.

HELL YEAH! I have so many trips that I need to take for this book and I was running out of vacation time. I'm going to be able to walk out the door and go fishing whenever the fuck I want. And write, and research, and spend the day in the library when I need to.

Why didn't I think of this sooner?

I think that the biggest relief is suddenly not having to worry about getting fired. I have been living in fear of that for a long time now, given how shitty business has been. I'm leaving on my own terms.

The freedom. My God, the freedom. When I make the trip up to MA next month to catch and cook Europe@n green cr@bs I'm not even going to get a round trip train ticket. I'll just book a one way ticket back on Amtrak whenever I feel like I'm done. When I go to California maybe I'll just drive cross country instead of flying. Why the fuck not?

Trish will shit a brick over this tonight. Mark my words. She does not handle change very well.

Oh, I hope that the stock price works out to enough to pay for our health insurance and still have more money left over than I get in salary right now. Health insurance is fucking expensive if you don't get something shitty.

This is really exciting. If I pull this off, I'll have more freedom for at least a year than ever before in my entire life. I've always wanted to be able to get in the car and just go somewhere. Sort of point myself south or west and see where I end up with a day or two later. I'll be able to do that!

5 pm - 2010-07-07

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