Woman (31) asks if she's crazy to quit finance job to work part time at Starbucks.

In a story on Reddit a woman asked a question I think a lot of us have thought about (maybe without as much security as she has): Can we quit a stressful job, for a better lifestyle that pays less? Here's her story...

I'm 31 and I have just crossed over $500k invested between my 401k and trading account...zero debt. I have $50k in a checking account to last me a couple years without work. All my money is from me working, saving, investment gains. I live in Kansas City. I don't own property but I live with my elderly parents who are almost 80 years old.

We are from Calcutta so it's not that odd for unmarried adult kids to live with parents. They are very independent both financially and in everyday life. My monthly expenses are barely $1000 since I don't pay rent. My parents absolutely refuse rent.

But on their birthdays and holidays, I give them each a stack of cash, $1000 or so and I have to force it onto them, they don't want my money since they are FI but I just want them to have it. I spend probably $20k a year including those cash gifts.

'I will stay with my parents until they pass. I refuse to ever put them in a home.'

I don't hate my job but I hate wasting 9 hours of my life here every day. I am an analyst on my company's finance team and I earn $85k gross. I want to get a part time job where I work 3 days a week to get health insurance and spending money.

I think Starbucks or Costco. I'd like to let my $500k grow to $1m in about a decade, then completely stop working. Why? Because 4% @ $1m will be enough to cover health insurance and spending.

My other idea is to get contract finance jobs where it's only a 6 month term, make $25k to cover spending + health insurance, then I have 6 months off.

I think I'm ready. I want to quit. I have my resignation letter typed up. I'm so scared. My plan is quit, decompress for a couple months, then go visit India for a month (I haven't been there since we left when I was 3 years old) then maybe start looking for part time work. Like I said, I have $50k liquidity set aside to last me a couple years.

I'm going to think more over the weekend then quit on Monday.

Edits:

After reading all the input, I'm convinced I should not quit on Monday. I will take advice here to try extra hard to find part-time work. I guess many of you are right - 20 hours at Starbucks would probably feel just as shitty as 20 hours in a finance job, except I would get paid 4x more at the finance job. I don't know. I realize I should think much, much more before quitting this thing.

A financially independent guy I know got a job at a florist shop last June, not really to earn money but to 'meet people'. Instead, a few clients insulted him without any real reason and he resigned after two weeks of working there.

In my opinion, in all these jobs that anyone can do some people will treat you as junk, because they will judge from your position that your social status is low. That's how people are constructed, unfortunately.

Comments:

Jobs like Starbucks represents a common desire for many people who work: Leave the job at the job. Too many jobs require constant communication. Some even demand its employees respond immediately to texts/phone calls after hours and on weekends.

My nephew quit an IT job because of that, they were constantly calling him, or sending tasks for him to review late in the evening. Starbucks? Show up, work begins. Leave, work ends. There's comfort in that.

The 'Barista-Fire' thing is always total shit to me, seems like it comes from folks who never worked a shit retail food service job and think it must be fun to make no money to get yelled at by entitled shits all day while having the privilege of cleaning up messes and having shit spilled on your clothes and shoes.

I'm an electrical engineer and it is known that the best paying jobs right out of college are in finance (doing FPGA). Fintech jobs are also known to totally burn you out, and most friends who got into it did it for two or three years to make bank and then left to get 'normal' jobs.