Job change complete

It’s amazing how time can move so quickly. I can’t believe it’s been two whole months since I last wrote. As a matter of fact, looking back, I’ve neglected to write much about anything thus far this year which is quite disappointing.

Let it be known that nothing has changed - we’re still committed as ever toward achieving financial independence and much has happened these past few weeks. I’ll be quickly reviewing those events during the next few days and then make it a point to get two or three quality posts in a week moving forward.

Please take note that I’ve updated our balance sheet on the right and will explain the changes very soon.

The first order of business to address is that I did, in fact, find a new job. Oh, I know, I said I would keep this blog updated with my progress as I went through the job search process. Well, that obviously didn’t happen.

Truth be told, I greatly enjoyed my brief stint of retirement. I wanted to spend at least one month off before having to rejoin the workforce and I got just that - one month.

I would like to offer one bit of advice for you hungry job seekers out there - get your resume on monster.com or one of the other big job search sites. And by that I don’t mean uploading your resume and calling it a day. Take the time to build your resume using their online resume-builder tool and make sure you adequately list all of your professional skills. By doing this you will make it much easier for employers and recruiters to quickly find you.

After getting this advice from a friend I decided to give it a try and was inundated with so many phone calls and emails during the first day I had to temporarily disable the service because I wasn’t quite ready to start working again so soon. But now that I know how easy it would have been to find a job using this method, I’ll certainly utilize it again in the future. (On a side note, the wife is now thinking about making a job change and we’ve already discussed going down this avenue with her in the near future.)

But I didn’t land my new job using a job search service. It actually came by the way of a referral from an old coworker which turned out to be (almost) exactly what I was looking for.

As a brief refresher, our goal was to find something that would further my professional growth and better help in accomplishing our goals towards achieving financial independence. The primary requirements for the new position were greater challenges and responsibilities, higher income and a full 401k package with an employer match which would allow us to contribute more in tax-deferred savings.

My new position is a senior development role within a small software company and satisfies all of the above requirements, except for the 401k part (so far).

The good news is that I’ve increased my annual salary from $60,000 to $80,400 which will greatly help in accomplishing our financial goals for this year and the new position comes with much greater challenges and responsibilities than the previous.

The bad news is that the company provides no additional benefits such as a retirement savings plan and medical insurance. But there is a silver lining to this cloud – the company wants to provide these benefits and I’ve been allowed to look into retirement plan options for the company. I hope to get something in place by the middle of this year so that there will be enough time to get the maximum deferment of taxes this year.

In my next posts I’ll talk about my experiences shopping around for personal medical insurance, the wonderful world of health savings accounts and my search for the best retirement plan for the company.