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- My Wife's REAL Reaction to Quitting My $400,000/year Job
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I’m Often Asked How I Quit a $400,000 Job
But the real question people are usually wondering is:
“How did your wife react?”
Five years ago today I told my boss I was quitting.
At the time I had spent:
• 21 years in my career
• lived in 3 different states for the job
• and was earning $400,000+ a year
Walking away from that probably sounds crazy to some people.
But Silvia and I had already been having the deeper conversation for a while.
We knew we wanted something different for our lives.
Travel.
Freedom.
A life that wasn’t tied to that one job.
But the exact path forward? That part wasn’t clear at all.
Silvia actually wrote something in the comments on my post today that perfectly captures where we were at the time.
Here are her words:
“We had some idea of what we wanted to do, and we had financially prepared for the change… but the life we are living now was once a very unclear goal.
We knew we wanted lifestyle freedom.
We knew we wanted to travel, to explore, and to build a life that wasn’t tied to that particular job.
But the life we are living now started as nothing more than a small dream, without a definite place or a clear path.
So we decided to bet on ourselves.
To take a chance.
To open ourselves up to the possibility of failing… and of succeeding.
It was scary.
But staying where we were… living the same life year after year… felt even scarier.
So we chose courage over comfort.
Faith over fear.”
Looking back now, that decision led to things I never could have predicted.
Since that moment, I’ve:
• Built a podcast
• Created a membership and events community
• Moved our family permanently to the Dominican Republic
• Built a personal brand and media company
• Somehow become a trusted voice on the DR
None of that was part of some perfectly written plan.
But before quitting, we did make sure three things were in place.
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The 3 Things That Made It Possible
1. We saved one year of expenses
That bought us time to figure things out.
When you remove the pressure of immediate income, you make better decisions.
2. I proved a concept first
My Gobundance Emerge work had already started generating some income.
Not enough to replace my salary… but enough to prove the idea worked.
3. We believed in the path
This one is harder to explain.
But when you feel deeply that you’re meant to do something different… you just know.
Today I’ll admit something that still feels strange.
When someone asks what I do, the honest answer is:
“I’m a content creator.”
At 47 years old, that wasn’t exactly the title I imagined for myself.
But claiming that identity is part of becoming the person you're meant to be.
Five years later, I’ve adopted a line from a Dirty Heads song that pretty much sums up this chapter of life:
“I make a living out of living.”
And none of this would have happened without a partner willing to choose faith over fear with me.
Thanks for being on this journey with us.
— Jamie
P.S.
A lot of the decisions behind this journey — from leaving my career to building a life in the Dominican Republic — are things I go much deeper on inside DR Inner Circle.
It’s a private community where we talk about living, investing, and navigating life in the DR with weekly live Q&As and conversations with people on the ground.
If you want to go deeper than what I share publicly, you can check it out here:
www.jamiegruber.com
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