The Rat Race: What it is and How to Quit it

The rat race is a soul crushing way of pursuing a goal that has no end in sight. The most common rat race is working a 9-5 job that is never ending. No matter how much you get done today, there is always more to do tomorrow, the next week, or the next decade. That’s no way to live. You are a capable person who has the power to break free from the rat race prison and live a life on your own terms.

Don’t listen to the 99% of the people out there who says that early retirement isn’t possible. If you listen to what the 99% of people say, you’ll become just like them. Become the 1% who does something interesting and different with your life. Who does something that others only dream of doing and does not think is possible.

Every message and propaganda piece that you read or hear today has to do buying the newest things in order to keep you happy. The government’s and companies’ interests are aligned in order to keep consumers spending. The more consumers spend the better the economy and power a government has. It’s time to break free from all of the propaganda that’s out there.

Acquiring more things or even experiences is not going to make you permanently happy, but rather temporarily happy. How many times have you thought “my time is worth much more than this thing I bought?” How many times have you wished that you weren’t in the rat race and instead working on a passion project instead?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve wished for it quite frequently.

It’s one thing to be happy working, but it’s another to be miserable working. Most of us aren’t engaged with our jobs, anyway.

What is The Rat Race?

The rat race is a race that has no winner at the end of it and ends up being a pointless pursuit. It’s a race that keeps churning out small rewards such as cheese during the race and has no ending. It’s an endless feedback loop where your sole purpose is to get more cheese and leaves no room or time for your wants and hobbies.

A nightmare way of living that actually happens in the real world.

We’ve all been there at 4:30pm on a late Friday afternoon. Your boss asks you to run some numbers or finish a report ASAP “because it is urgent”. You look out the window and you see the sun shining and see what a gorgeous day it is outside. How you wish you don’t have to sit at a cubicle wondering when this is all going to go away.

I’m in that exact spot right now. I’m constantly wondering how life would be different if I don’t have to work. How much better life would be if I can just walk away and never look back. However, what gives me hope is the fact that I am slowly getting to escaping the rat race. With a net worth north of $300,000 at the young age of 26, I know I’m going to reach financial independence.

It’s not if I’m going to reach it, the question is when I’m going to reach it. This means that I will have a choice later down the road. The great part is, ANYBODY can reach it. Below are the reasons why you should finally hand in your two week notice for good and move on with your life and the steps you should take to get there.

To bigger and better things.

Why Do You Want to Escape The Rat Race?

First step is to figure out why you want to escape the rat race. One way to do so is to DESTROY that social share button for the Google algorithm and post to your favorite social media! If you’re looking to leave the grind, then your friends should know how to do so as well.

Let’s share the information so everyone can have the option to do so if they want to.

1) Work is Soul Crushing

It’s no surprise that passion comes from mastery of a subject. If you are generally good at your job and still don’t feel fulfilled, that’s a big problem. Our number one purpose in life is self actualization. Therefore, when you are good at something, it should give you the motivation to continue doing it. If the opposite happens, then there’s something wrong.

There’s an imbalance and it means you are in the rat race.

The Sunday test where you check whether you dread going back to work can be negative from time to time. Work is not all peaches and cream. However, when you start failing that test 80%+ of the time, then you know you are being crushed. They’re not just taking away your free time. They’re taking away your will to live a happy life.

The paycheck can be good and all but after a few years, it becomes old. The joy you get from seeing more money pop up in your bank account diminishes every year. There’s no more things that are motivating you to keep working. That’s a telltale sign that you are racing in the rat race. It’s soul crushing.

2) You Help Someone Else’s Dreams Come True

The rat race means that you are helping someone else’s dreams come true. You’re working 40 – 60+ hours a week to help someone else become richer. While that is good in order to pay the bills and keep your family afloat, it isn’t what you want in life. You want to help fulfill your own life goals.

The problem is you need to eat and put food on the table for your family. There are no government programs that pays for someone’s living expenses while an entrepreneur starts a business. Therefore, you don’t feel like you have the willpower to quit your job. At the same time, you just can’t help but feel that you’re not building progress in your life goals.

You feel stuck at a job that you dislike working hard for someone else to be happy. Doesn’t that sound like something you want to avoid at all costs? It doesn’t sound like the good life, does it?

3) Life is Better than Work

If you had a choice to do anything in the world right now, what would you do? Wouldn’t you rather spend time with family or work on a passion project or hobby? Your life is so much more enjoyable and better than working. Your time is much more valuable than working hard for someone else for $50,000 a year.

If you’re living in America, there’s a good chance that you’re living to work instead of working to live. The workaholic culture is apparent and while it is a good quality for a person to have, too much investment in it is bad. One of the biggest reasons why you should want to escape into a life of bliss is because your life is much better than work.

How to Escape The Rat Race

There are numerous ways to escape the rat race as outlined below. It is a long process to undertake and no shortcuts like Gamestop investing or lottery winning is necessary. The steps below are tried and proven ways to achieve freedom and while it may be difficult, it is more than worth it to pursue it. Your life and happiness depends on it.

1) Find Your Motivation

Choose from the 3 reasons outlined above or come up with your own reasons why you want to escape the corporate life. Without any intrinsic motivation, no amount of encouragement from a random guy on the internet (me) will help you get there.

Maybe you’re remembering the time that your boss yelled at you or maybe you’re remembering the time that you missed a friend get together to finish a report. Whatever the reason may be, find the reasons to convince you to escape and quit it.

Nothing can happen if you half-heartedly put effort into doing it. You’re going to be frustrated at the slow pace of results and quit halfway. The way to go all-in on the idea is to find great motivation to keep going and achieve your goals.

2) Start a Side Hustle

The hustle culture these days is really bad. “Work weekends and nights!” “It’s your fault you’re poor because all you do is nothing after coming home from work!” It’s a pretty awful mantra that still sacrifices life and pleasure for money. However, you know what’s even worse?

Having to continue working for your employer because you have no other choice.

I religiously work on a side hustle, like this blog, and I intend to go all-in on it for a year or two and see what happens. More so than that, I get to help my readers with their financial situation and help make their dreams come true as well. I estimate that I put in an extra 15 – 25 hours a week at my blog on top of a full time job.

One day my efforts will maybe pay off but if it doesn’t, that’s completely ok. I am still glad that I have tried and helped others as much as I can.

3) Cut Back Expenses

Did you buy a decorating piece that you haven’t used in the past year that one time? Did you buy new when the like new condition worked just as well? Every dollar that is transferred from your wallet to another is one unit of power that you’re giving away.

Money represents freedom. Is it really worth it to give away one unit of freedom and power for that chocolate bar? That’s a ridiculously expensive price. A dollar is not as inconsequential as others believe. Be conservative with your money spending habits instead of liberally spending your money.

The more tools you have in your war chest, the easier you can win the war. Cut back as much as you can to the bare bones budget. Then slowly move yourself up to adding fun money to your budget. There’s always room to cut down on more expenses. Find where you can cut back too. $5 here and there makes all the difference in the world.

4) Make Your Money Work For You

Invest your money. Where you invest is completely up to you, though I do like a broad index fund like the S&P 500. However, I’m not a licensed financial advisor, do you own research. The first five years of contributing will not make you feel like you are doing anything.

When I first started investing, I used to get excited at a 1% jump in the stock market. One hundred basis points! How great is that? I checked my investment accounts and felt happy at a $100 earnings for that day without having to do any extra work. While that is a good amount of money, it really isn’t anything in the grand scheme of things.

These days, a 1% increase in the stock market means approximately $1,800 that I made. That’s a meaningful amount of money that makes me feel like I’m making good progress. It took me five years to get here. There’s nothing that stops you from getting to the exact same spot, either. All I did was max out my 401k and HSA and invest in a braod market index.

5) Splurge Once in a While

Only a single person in the FIRE community reached financial independence by cutting back down to only the essentials. That award goes to Early Retirement Extreme who only lived on $7,000 per year in living expenses before retiring (around $9,000 today). For the 99% of the FIRE fanatics like me, they’ve HAD to spend on extra stuff in order to continue the FIRE journey.

I personally cannot live without splurging once in a while on wants. Total guilt free wants. Without the need to check back to my budget or anything of that kind. I haven’t bought anything wasteful in the past couple of months but I am planning to spend money on a couple of international trips this year. The pandemic can’t be over soon enough!

The same will go for you. Splurging will keep you sane and give you motivation to save money and keep reaching your goals.

6) Negotiate More Pay or Interview Elsewhere

If you’ve been working for a year and went above and beyond for that year, it’s time to ask for a raise. A typical raise is between 2 – 4% while an above average raise is between 6.5% – 8%. A promotion raise should be between 10 – 25%. The last time I received a promotion, I got a 25% raise.

Companies love employees who go above and beyond without asking for anything in return. There is a chance that companies will refuse to give you raises. In that case, it’s time to interview elsewhere and see where your market value is. You could be proven wrong but you could also be proven right.

I am always interviewing elsewhere and seeing where I stand in terms of pay. It’s another full time job in and of itself but I know it’s something I have to do so that I don’t get taken advantage of. When you start out, your day job will be the bulk of your income source. Why not try to increase it as much as you can?

It’s one of the easiest ways you can quit the rat race sooner.

7) Be Patient

You need to understand that financial independence doesn’t happen in a single year. It happens over years and years, if not decades. You need to stick with it. During your journey, you will question countless times when you will ever get to quit the rat race. Some days you will focus on how slowly results are happening instead of focusing on your results actually happening.

In those times, splurge outside of your spending budget and spend more dollars on fun. The next month, you should go back and be more refreshed to reach your goals. Similar to how vacations give you a chance to take a break so you can be more productive in the long run.

I am not a proponent of cheat days but if a cheat day prevents you from throwing in the towel and stops you from quitting, I am all for it. Cheat days not only make you lose the day you cheated but the subsequent days it takes to play catch up. It’s expensive to have a cheat day.

To prevent you from quitting, it’s well worth it.

8) Mentally Prepare Yourself to Quit The Rat Race

The buildup and the anticipation of quitting your job influences you more than the actual act itself. This is when you’re close to the finish line and when you are so close that you can taste the victory. However, you know in your heart that you’re not quite there yet. You see visually see the finish line to the rat race but it’s still a number of footsteps away.

The problem lies when you are two footsteps away from finishing the race yet you still choose to continue the race and set a further race ahead. Why? You’re so used to working that not working feels alien to you. As a result, you feel the need to continue working even if you’ve achieved everything you wanted to achieve.

To solve that problem, mentally prepare yourself to quit the rat race along the way. So that when you are actually close to finishing, you actually do the act of pulling the plug. Otherwise, you may never overcome that alien feeling of not working.

Or even worse, you find out you are afraid to quit and decide to work more decades even if you feel miserable. That’s not good.

Quit The Rat Race and Start Living

There’s no one at their deathbed who was grateful for having ran the rat race. Most of the regrets we have when we are about to die is that we worked too much. Things that seemed so important at the time is suddenly no longer that important. Don’t put yourself in this position.

I read a heartbreaking cancer story the other day and her experience was that nothing really matters once you die. It doesn’t matter whether you were ugly or your friend made fun of you that one time in high school. It’s life. Stop caring so much.

That story hit close to home.

Why are you living a life and providing all this value for somebody else to take advantage of you? Don’t you want to live a life on your own terms, quit the rat race, and do whatever you want? Life is long, so why are we giving away so much of our time away to others who don’t really appreciate it at the end of the day?

The rat race is a cruel harsh reality that 99% of people face today. There are ways that you can break free from the work prison and live a life you love. The average adult only genuinely laughs like five times a day. That sucks. Work to live a life that allows you to smile and genuinely laugh a lot every single day.

You only have one life to work with. Unlike a Microsoft Word document, there are no undo buttons for you to fall back on. Life is precious and something that’s more than worth fighting for. Find the right steps for you to take in order to finally say goodbye to the rat race and live a life of happiness.

How to Quit the Rat Race List:

• 1. Find your motivation
• 2. Start a side hustle
• 3. Cut back expenses
• 4. Make your money work for you
• 5. Splurge once in a while
• 6. Negotiate More Pay or Interview Elsewhere
• 7. Be patient
• 8. Mentally prepare yourself to quit the rat race