> On 22-Sep-2014, at 23:26, Sandhya aka Sandy <[email protected]> wrote: > > A few of you gave some good tips on consulting. Makes sense. During that > post-Intel break, I had tied up with a firm who signed me up for x days a > month and gave me y rs. That worked out well, and I have a few such > possibilities in the pipeline. The idea here is to have a supplemental
The idea here is that your supplemental stream becomes your sole stream of income rather than that lovely extra sum of money you get now and then that comes in handy for a holiday or dinner at a great restaurant or whatever. So, make sure the pipelines - book ideas, consulting assignments etc firm up before you quit. And when you do quit, you're going to wind up working as hard or harder for the same amount of money. For possibly the same sort of people (so if they're based stateside you're still stuck with a round of late calls). And if you're going to be satisfied with less, you will have to see what unavoidable commitments you have and bring those down, besides paring expenses to the bone. And then watch for sudden unavoidable new expenses, impulse buys you can't resist, a new kid, etc etc. If your house was financed with a loan, that's one thing you ought to focus on prepaying and closing it out as early as you can, besides reducing (or rather sensibly managing) other debt like credit cards, cutting down other expenses like finding cheaper cellphone plans etc. I put every payment I can over say Rs. 200 on my card, far easier to track than paying cash and keeping accounts, but i make sure I pay the entire balance when it comes due, and pick a card that gives me air miles (Citibank Premiermiles) so I have to pay rather less for personal air travel. All my plans of quitting early and consulting before I was 40 went for an interesting toss a couple of years back when my wife presented us with a second kid when I was 36, and subsequently quit her job to become a full time mom. Presto, family expenses increased rather significantly and income decreased by umm.. 40%. I still have the second apartment I bought (a larger 3 bhk as my daughter needs a room of her own) to completely pay off, and still have around 35% left. And am discovering that everything spent on my son is much costlier than it was when I spent the same thing on my daughter, now 9 - and of course three terms for him at the same playschool before I put him into kindergarten are costing rather more than what I spent to send her to playschool in 2007, which back then already was costing me more than my entire college education did in the late 90s. And as a recent toe dipped into the consultancy sector to feel out a pipeline before I took the plunge forcibly reminded me that, least in India, prospective customers willing to pay for work tend to drive extremely hard bargains and expect five star service at maruti lodge prices, so you're stuck with roping in as many foreign clients (who pay better though they may well be just as demanding) and late night calls. A succession of such ands mean that I'm in that red queens race from Alice - running faster to stay where I am rather than getting ahead. And while if I am single or married with no kids, I can do a Mohit Satyanand and rough it in, maybe not a one room cabin on a hill, but a much smaller flat and public transport, that's not quite fair on my wife or my kids. Still, I can wear my usual work attire (since I work from home since 2002) of an old tshirt and shorts, shaving optional till my wife complains my beard is too scratchy or I have to travel outside on work, whichever is earlier. And always have time for a quick errand, catch up on sleep, silk and FB or whatever during the day because working almost exclusively with teams in the USA or joint China / US teams means a succession of early morning and late night calls, but perfect freedom through the day. You might try that, actually. Or find a career change to a team that works exclusively with local teams and isn't customer facing. > And yes, I do know Silk Smitha. J So you’ve been lured into the list on > false premise, Suresh? Back around 2000, Silklist was a list that I joined because more than one of my friends from elsewhere was already on it. Proceeded to make a lot of new friends. Talk about jumping into something even crazier then, than it now is (maybe because a lot of people on the list that I see from around then are much older and more mellowed) with my eyes open. --srs
