Well, that’s it, I’ve sent my resignation letter.
I’m FI. I’m Financially Independent.
Wow, it feels strange to write it. Especially here, on this blog where it all started.
I don’t even know which emoji to put at the end of that sentence, that’s how dazed I am. So here you go, take your pick: 🤯 🥳 😱 🙈 🥵 🤑 😃
Let me tell you how the last 9 days went… and no, it wasn’t a walk in the park…
Why now? The numbers check out, with margin for error
Those who support the blog have known it for a few weeks already, since we reached financial independence last September.
And I’m talking about financial independence in practice here, not in theory.
As a reminder, CHF 2'156'000 had been our FI target ever since we had it validated by an independent financial advisor. And it implied selling every property we own (our home included) so that our entire net worth would be liquid, and therefore usable to fund our lifestyle.
Except that, a few years ago already, the closer we got to our FI date, the more we knew we wouldn’t want to sell our home. Nor our rental properties, which bring us cash flow every month in the form of rent.
Around the same time, things fell into place nicely, since we decided to create FI Planner (an FI planning tool for Switzerland) with my co-founder Patrik.
That’s how I saw that we would need more like CHF 2'550'000 in net worth if we wanted to keep our properties while still having enough liquidity to be FI.
And, mathematically, we crossed that threshold last September. The famous 100%, for those of you who read the previous episode at 90%. I say mathematically, because psychologically, it’s not that simple…
In pictures, the FI Planner results page looks like this:
Our FI Planner simulation, with net worth in red and liquidity in blue, all the way to the end, die-with-zero style
A few notes about this chart:
- Mrs MP doesn’t feel psychologically ready to stop working yet, because she still needs to work on her post-FI lifestyle. So we ran the simulation with me stopping now, and her as soon as possible afterwards (which gives roughly 1-3 years from now)
- We keep all our properties in this scenario. If we ever really ran short of money, we could sell one or more of them to fill the gap. It’s a real option (at least for the rental properties), even before the blog income
- FI Planner assumes I earn no income at all myself, which isn’t realistic (since the activities around the blog bring in cash flow)
- We end up “dying with CHF 0”, because the simulation is optimized to the max
And it’s that last point that sent Mrs MP and me into some deep conversations.
Because yes, the numbers said yes. But the decision still had to be made…
The weekend we decided to pull the plug
That October weekend, we had time and not much planned.
So I pulled up the FI Planner results page again, to talk it through properly with Mrs MP (and not in passing).
Basically, the question that kept coming back was:
What more do you need [Marc] to dare take the leap [into financial independence], and resign now?
It’s funny, because I planned all of this in my YNAB, on the blog, in my book, but when you get to the fateful moment, well, it’s suddenly a lot harder to tell yourself “Awesome, let’s go, I’m resigning and from now on I get to decide what I do with every single one of my days!”
The hottest topic was that famous “Die with zero”, as Patrik and I call it. In other words, all your calculations are optimized so that by the time you die, you’ve spent your entire net worth (which lets you retire early as soon as possible).
So, that weekend, I asked myself:
- What if we spend more than our forecast of CHF 80'000-100'000 per year?
- What if the AI bubble bursts the day after I hand in my resignation letter?! And we lose 40% of our net worth overnight… argh!
- What if one of our kids decides to study medicine for 27 years, and at a university in New Zealand that costs an arm and a leg on top of that?
- What if I die at 95 instead of the average entered in FI Planner, that is, before 90 (oh my God, that’s young if you ask me!)…
- What if, what if, what if… for hours on end…
And then, I still forced myself to accept the fact that the blog, as a side activity, makes money. Which would let me build some margin on top of the CHF 2'550'000 so we can sleep soundly.
On top of that, I told myself: “Come on buddy, no pressure, but you did write a book that says you’ll be free by 40. And your 40th birthday is coming up, so…”
On Sunday morning, I therefore decided that the risk of running out of money was real, but manageable. First, thanks to our frugality muscle, which we can flex when needed in a year when the stock market tanks. Then, because we can sell one or more of our rental properties if things really get tight. And on top of that, the income from the blog. And in the very worst case, I’d find a job again, or a part-time one like Florence after she quit Google. But that’s the last resort for me.
In short, it was mid-October, and I had made my decision. I was going to resign soon. And Mrs MP was behind me on this (she was actually more like “Come on, we’ve been through every single question, we’re not going to spend another 4 hours getting the same answers!” :D)
And to let it all settle, I went for a walk in the forest. Alone, no podcast, just my feet and a head still buzzing a little.
And off I go for a little walk in the forest, to let it all settle after this big decision (photo credit: Atelier Picsel.ch)
Just to reassure myself anyway, I ran a few more FI Planner simulations that evening, adding several tens of thousands of francs of blog income for the following year and the one after. The goal was to see whether, in case AI killed my blog within 5-10 years, it would still leave me enough time to build the margin I wanted. And yes, it worked out.
I went to bed on Sunday evening happy to have made the decision.
Very happy.
Then, I started wondering whether I should hand in my resignation at the end of October, or wait until the end of the year so that I’d close out a full calendar year, and it would be cleaner for taxes too, and every other kind of excuse to find some logic in pushing this fateful decision back a little…
Monday: the real decision, and the first phone call
There are always these signs from fate, and you never quite know whether you believe in them. You tend not to, because after all you have a scientific and rational mind.
But this time, I don’t know, it makes me wonder. Anyway, never mind.
Basically, I get to work with a big smile to start the day, because I know that the only decision I still have to make is “when” I’ll send my resignation letter. Not “if”.
Then, around 11am, I walk into a weekly meeting about a key project for the company I work for. And they announce a new schedule…
This new schedule means there’s a big difference in impact depending on whether I hand in my resignation now or in 3-6 months… And since I care about doing right by my job, and not leaving my colleagues in the lurch (in a “Well, bye everyone, I’m FI, good luck with your lovely mess!” kind of way), that put me under some pressure…
Especially since, and we’ll come back to this later, my team is one of the things that made me love my job, compared to my previous ones.
So everything sped up that day. Either I made up my mind and handed in my resignation letter for the end of October, or my whole FI project got pushed back by several months…
When I got home, I told Mrs MP we needed to talk…
She panicked a little haha, but quickly understood that she was going to have to coach me through one hell of a decision, for real this time.
I’ll spare you the hour and a half of intense discussion we had, to reach the conclusion that the timing was tight, but doable.
So the decision was made: I was going to resign in less than 2 weeks…
But I had to tell my manager. Like, that very Monday evening, if I wanted to be able to resign for the end of October… Because he was involved in the key project and also had an informed opinion that would really help me with what came next.
My brain was in overdrive. I don’t know how to describe it, but you know when you find yourself in a super stressful situation, where you feel like your whole life is on the line, and your brain switches into alert mode, “fight, flight or freeze”…
I took a good quarter of an hour to come back down after finishing the conversation with Mrs MP.
Then I started thinking about how I was going to break the news to him [my manager]. I was even more stressed than at my job interview for this company!
Then, around 6-7pm, I called him. On autopilot. We spent about 20-30 minutes on the phone. He was really disappointed, but he understood and respected my choice.
Then I hung up, and right there, all the weight I’d been carrying fell off my shoulders at once.
That’s it, I was gently taking back the wheel of my brain. I had said it out loud for the first time. I was going to be FI. I was going to resign at the end of the month. I was also going to stop receiving a salary in 3 months…
But I was hugely relieved.
However, the most critical step was still ahead: telling my boss the next day…
But it was already dinner time. So I joined the kids and Mrs MP at the table. And there, during the meal, my brain went back into “survival” mode with dozens of questions: “What did I just do? What if this? What if that? Etc…”
Let’s just say it wasn’t the meal where I was the most present…
Then, a quick shower (with my brain still spinning), and I try to go to bed. My mind is racing, but I manage to fall asleep for a good, restful night.
Well, that’s what I thought haha!
Monday night: “am I making a huge mistake?”
That night was one of the worst of my life, or at least in the top 10.
I slept so badly, drifting in and out of “freeze” mode (the famous “play dead” among the 3 options “fight, flight or freeze”, the advantage being that I was in bed, so pretending not to move with my eyes closed, that helps)…
But my brain knew I was going to call my boss to tell her something irreversible. At least that’s how it made me feel, because in reality, you can always go back or at least talk about it, as long as your letter hasn’t been sent…
All the latent fears my loved ones have about losing a job came crashing down onto my own situation. I was thinking in particular of some acquaintances who had been struggling to find a job again for months… And here I was, quitting voluntarily.
Something not right up there? Are you nuts, MP, or what?
— The little blue devil on my shoulder
Every time, I tried to rationalize (while trying not to toss and turn 200 times so as not to wake Mrs MP, who was fast asleep next to me). I told myself that my case was different from this or that unemployed friend, that I had crunched these numbers dozens of times in FI Planner and Excel spreadsheets. And that, well, in the worst case, I could find a job again.
“Oh really? You think you’re smarter than your loved ones? The job market is tight right now, you know?” my brain shot back…
And two milliseconds later, one of the two little devils (I lost track of which was which at that hour of the night) started listing the stores I had walked past that week, where I’d seen job ads: Migros, Coop, Stocker. And otherwise, why not welder (seen at the recruitment agency, and I heard on the evening news that it’s in high demand these days!).
And suddenly, a flash of lucidity: “But wait, the real risk isn’t taking the leap. It’s never taking it, isn’t it?”
And above all: “Hey, seriously, I can and will be TRULY FI, I have almost CHF 2'600'000 in net worth. This is the moment to be brave, let’s go!”
That calmed me down enough to sleep for 1-2 hours, then wake up again and ask myself the very same questions over and over.
Let’s just say that when the alarm went off at 6am on Tuesday morning, it stung…
Especially since I still had THE most critical thing of this whole phase left to do: calling my boss, and saying the news out loud (not just in my head haha)…
Tuesday, 9:15am: I click on “Join meeting”…
By a quirk of the calendar, my boss wasn’t in the office that day, but she could talk to me over video.
I have to say it helped me a bit to be able to talk through a screen rather than face to face.
9:10… 9:11… my heart speeding up… 9:12… sweaty palms, and I start switching into autopilot, rehearsing what I want to say, in which order, etc… 9:13… 9:14… argh, just rereading this, my heart starts racing again as if I were reliving the scene (even though it’s behind me!)
9:15. That’s it. I click on “Join meeting” in Teams…
My mind goes blank for the first 2-3 minutes (which felt like an eternity) as we went from “hi, how are you” to me explaining that I was going to hand in my resignation. We talk about it, openly. It all went very well. I didn’t have many doubts about that part, it was more about myself, the stress of making it all concrete. Of hearing myself say that I was resigning…
9:35, we hang up (it was “just” the announcement, the paperwork and everything that follows I’d sort out with HR later).
And there, a huge smile spreads across my face. Along with an urge to shout it to the whole world! But I tell myself I’ll write all these feelings down in a corner of my blog drafts, for this very article you’re reading right now.
And all the fears of the night before seem to have evaporated. Literally. It’s crazy. You take action, and bam, as usual (I know this from having lived through other similarly stressful situations), everything becomes clear. What a crazy machine (in the positive sense as much as the negative one) this human brain is!
On Tuesday evening, I have a great dinner, and I’m 100% present. I have a big grin on my face in the shower. I try to let it sink in. And then I fall asleep like a baby, at peace, looking forward to the next day to start telling my teammates!
Wednesday to Friday: every announcement peels off a layer of fear
As I head to the office on my usual train, I replay the conversation with my boss. Including all the positive things she told me, and the fact that she was going to miss me…
That did me good, ego-wise. Of course, you realize that you matter. And even if you knew she thought it, well now, it’s been said out loud. And that feels good.
Arriving at the office, I realize that I have a really cool team at work, and I know from experience with my previous employers that this isn’t easy to find… so I had a little dip that dampened my excitement… because it’s all the harder to leave a job like this without wondering whether you’re making a mistake…
And then I think back to my FI dream. And to all those not-so-rosy moments at work that I won’t have to face anymore. And I’m pumped again!
So I grab each of the colleagues I want to tell, in person, at the cafeteria, before posting a message in our WhatsApp group.
Got 5 minutes for a coffee in the conference room right now?
Not suspicious at all, you know haha! But from my tone, they can tell it’s not to give them grief about work. Still, they’re like “Hmmm… what’s this all about, what do you want to tell me?”
I don’t beat around the bush, because I hate suspense myself, or when someone dances around the point.
And every time, it’s the same thing with a few variations: disappointment and sadness (for me too, by the way), then they tell me the good they think of me (which is weird, because I’m sad but happy to hear these positive words about me…). And then come the “Oh, but don’t worry, you’re not done with me, we’ll stay in touch and keep seeing each other outside of work like we already do”.
My analytical side immediately sees a fear of being rejected by the group in there. But in the moment, whatever I know about all that, I need to live it. To say it. To hear it.
In fact, one of the things that reassures me even more is precisely hearing:
And whatever happens, you can always come back and work here!
All of this continues on Thursday and Friday.
And at any moment between two meetings or at the end of the day, my brain, in threat-detector mode, throws at me: “But, is it really that simple? Did I calculate everything right? Because, yes, I trust FI Planner, but the data I entered, did I forget anything?”
So I double-checked our financial data on Thursday evening when I got home. And yes, I had entered everything correctly. And no, I hadn’t forgotten anything. The annual expenses are right. Our cash is right. Our stock market investments are right. Everything is right.
The detector calms down. Until next time haha. But I can feel that the fears ease as I talk to people about it, and as it becomes tangible.
And, even though I’ve been writing down all my feelings in a journal so as not to lose a single crumb of this transition and be able to retell it to you here, deep down I feel an urge to shout out my joy of being FI that’s getting stronger and stronger…
Sunday: screaming in the forest
The following Sunday, I take the chance to stretch my legs between two showers. It’s cool out, but after all those heatwaves, it feels good to feel the cold on my skin.
Off to the forest.
And there, I catch myself looking far behind me, then ahead, then left and right. Not a soul around.
And out it comes: “Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
To the point of hurting my vocal cords, since I hadn’t exactly “warmed up” my voice for it.
And on it goes: “Yes, yes, yeeeeeeeees! Holy %&@^ I can’t believe it, this is it! YEEEEES!”
It’s incredible how good that felt. I was so at peace on the way back. A calm and a serenity like never before. Truly.
Getting close to our neighborhood, I could feel that blissful smile on my face. And I thought back to those doubts, “But did I count everything right?!”, and I reminded myself of Thursday’s check of my numbers, and the doubt vanished instantly, the blissful smile growing even wider.
I made myself a good coffee when I got home. While waiting for it to finish brewing, I was thinking about the next morning between 5 and 7am (before starting my workday), when I would write my resignation letter (it still feels strange and a bit “scary” to write that word as I type these lines haha!), and I was happy.
But the calm I got from screaming in the forest was so pleasant that I told myself:
What if I used this moment of inner calm, with (almost) no doubt left, to write it, this resignation letter?
So I sat down at my computer. I opened my word processor, and I started writing it…
Me, writing my resignation letter on a Sunday evening with a small smile... and a drop of sweat, let's be honest.
Writing this last paragraph, I realize that I had never really imagined that moment before, whenever I thought about the big day when I’d be FI. I pictured more what I’d do afterwards, but not the “fateful” moment itself.
Well, in the end, it only took a few paragraphs. And the feeling was odd, actually, along the lines of: “Really, that’s it? Hey ChatGPT, am I forgetting anything? Because sure, I’m resigning, but hey, I’m FI too! Oh, no, nothing more… well, OK then :D”
A side note taken from my journal that day, where I literally wrote:
It’s funny how the word ‘resignation’ doesn’t scare me anymore compared to seven days ago.
The following Tuesday: handing in the letter, without trembling
So my resignation letter was ready, with the date of January 31, 2027, written in black and white.
And yes, I was going to live up to the title of my book, several months ahead of my 40th birthday as a bonus.
But still, it’s crazy to think that you set a life goal back in 2013, and that now, well, just as you planned it, this is it, you’re quitting your job. And you’ll never take another one. Because you’re FI. I’m FI!
And the Tuesday deadline arrives (I didn’t want to do it on the very last day of the month, which fell on a Saturday).
Even though I had already announced it out loud, this was the second time (after writing the letter itself) that I was writing down what I was about to do, in my email: resign.
Normally that’s fine, you change jobs, so you resign, and then you move on to your new job. But what nobody knows/knew at my job is that I was resigning to become… FI!
5 minutes later, my email draft is ready. I attach my resignation letter. I reread it. OK, looks fine. And anyway, worst case it’s an internal email, it’s not my tax return. And so I click on… “Send”.
I can still see myself reading the confirmation message “Message sent.”, lifting my hands off the keyboard to rest them on the armrests of my office chair, and pushing my chair back with my feet… as if to physically take a step back from what had just happened.
And once again, that blissful smile.
Heading home from work, after officially handing in my resignation, I felt a sense of “rebirth”, as I wrote in my journal:
Anyway, this feels like a rebirth, like the ones I’ve been through several times in my career, every time I changed companies. It feels good!
And my AI self-coaching routine replied:
And the word you’re using — rebirth — isn’t trivial. Except that the other times, you were being reborn inside the same system [of salaried employment]. This time, you’re creating the system [of FI].
Amen :D
And now, well, all that’s left is to wait 3 months… Well, wait, not really. I think I’ll be publishing more often under the “Journal” category in the coming weeks, because I’m excited! If you want to get the next part as soon as it’s out, the newsletter is right below (or at the top right) ;)
Conclusion: the worst moment is between the decision and the first word
If I had to keep just one thing from this week and a half, it’s that every action (the decision, then the announcements) peeled off a layer of fear.
That said, it mustn’t be an illusion, like, you quickly scribble two sums on the corner of a napkin one evening at the restaurant, and you slam the door on your job. Because then, you risk ending up with a panic attack in the middle of the night!
So, validated numbers first (shameless product placement haha, FI Planner is there for that), and the decision second. And if you want to understand the math behind it, it’s all in Calculate financial independence in Switzerland.
And when your brain starts looping again at 3am, what worked for me comes down to three moves:
- Double-check the numbers once (not ten times)
- Say it out loud to one person (to make it real and concrete)
- Act quickly (so you don’t ruminate on the same questions for too long and for nothing, because that waiting is a pain you inflict on yourself)
And as a result, it strengthened my muscle for taking action even more, whenever I’m in “doubt” mode or my brain is “going off in all directions” again.
Try it, and you’ll see, it becomes addictive.
And you, if your numbers tell you you’re FI, what’s still holding you back?
PS: if you’re wondering why I now say FI rather than FIRE, I explained it in this article: Thoughts from my interview with JL Collins.
PS bis: seriously, I can’t believe it, I’m FI, can you imagine?!? Hold on, let me pinch myself (ouch!) to check I’m not dreaming. Nope, not dreaming haha! This is so cool!!! And it makes me so happy to share this article with you.
Last updated: October 29, 2026