Relocation: Choices and Reflections — Part 4 (Spinoff)
I used to believe that if I saved enough, I’d finally be free.
- Saving Because Someone Said To
- The Money I Couldn’t Decide What to Do With
- A Discomfort I Couldn’t Quite Name
- Shifting Toward Something More Intentional
- Growing Assets, Growing Anxiety
- The Anxiety Numbers Can’t Solve
- The Thing That Actually Made the Decision
- The Decision to Leave
- What Was on the Other Side of the Number
Saving Because Someone Said To
In my twenties, I saved money because a senior colleague told me to.
If I’m honest, it wasn’t really my own intention. It was more that I accepted it as something one simply did.
The numbers in my account grew slowly and steadily. But what I actually wanted to do with that money stayed vague for a long time.
The Money I Couldn’t Decide What to Do With
At some point I started thinking: shouldn’t I be doing something with all this?
Buy a car, maybe. Buy a place to live. I looked at properties for a while, toured a few apartments. Nothing clicked.
And then I came across insurance products — the kind that accumulate value over time.
Better than letting it sit in a low-interest account, I was told. That framing made sense to me, so I went along with it.
Around that same time, a health scare made me more aware of the future in a concrete way, and I signed up without much further deliberation.
Looking back, the decision seemed rational on the surface. But somewhere in it, I think I was also avoiding the harder work of deciding for myself what I actually wanted.
A Discomfort I Couldn’t Quite Name
Around that time, a vague unease began to settle in.
A quiet thought began to settle in: if I kept going like this, I would spend my whole life working — carrying a low-grade dissatisfaction that never quite resolved itself.
I couldn’t have put it so clearly then, but there was a real anxiety in work that had no visible end.
Shifting Toward Something More Intentional
Gradually, my thinking changed.
Not just saving — but building: maintaining an emergency fund, and putting the rest to work. Low-cost index funds, NISA, iDeCo. The idea that money could earn, so that future freedom became possible.
I made one rule for myself, though. One thing I would not cut:
Travel.
Travel was fuel. Without it, I wouldn’t have lasted. Eliminating it would have broken something in me eventually. So I thought about where money goes just as carefully as I thought about how to grow it.
Growing Assets, Growing Anxiety
And then something strange happened.
The more my assets grew, the less reassured I felt. Instead of relief, what arrived was: it’s still not enough.
Without quite deciding to, I had built a benchmark in my mind — a level at which investment returns alone would cover my living expenses with room to spare. A line past which I’d be free to travel, to live without constraint, to stop.
And until I reached it, I told myself, I couldn’t quit.
The Anxiety Numbers Can’t Solve
Now, looking back, I understand what was happening.
The benchmark was rational enough as a calculation. But it was never going to dissolve the anxiety. If anything, it made things worse.
Because naming a target means constantly measuring yourself against it. It means watching the gap. And the gap — even as it narrows — has a way of feeling permanent.
Growing. Still not enough. Moving forward. Still not enough.
That feeling pulled at me quietly, steadily, for a long time.
The Thing That Actually Made the Decision
In the end, my conclusion was simple.
The problem was never the amount of money.
No matter how much effort I put in, there was no guarantee it would be recognized fairly. Some environments treat people in ways that simply don’t make sense — where contribution and reward bear little relationship to each other.
Living inside that reality, something finally became clear: continuing to work in this environment is costing me something I can’t afford to keep losing.
The Decision to Leave
Once I saw it that way, the question changed.
It was no longer how much do I need before I can quit?
It became: is it okay to keep going like this?
And the answer was no. So I resigned.
There was still fear. I won’t pretend otherwise.
But one thing I can say honestly: having built up a certain level of assets made that decision easier to step toward. Not because the money gave me freedom — it didn’t, not exactly. But it gave me what I’d call permission to choose. A margin. A sense that this was a decision I was allowed to make.
What Was on the Other Side of the Number
The future I once imagined — where enough savings would finally bring security — probably never existed.
But that doesn’t mean the years of building were wasted.
I think I’ve arrived somewhere I didn’t know I was heading: a place where the question is no longer how do I accumulate more? but how do I actually want to live?
Since deciding to move, one theme keeps returning — something I can no longer look away from.
A relationship that lasted many years. The choices I made inside it. What that time actually was, and what I was really looking for.
Working through that feels necessary before I can fully step into what comes next.
→ Continued in the next installment.
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