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FU money is your ticket out of a bad work situation. If you realized you should quit your job as soon as possible, FU money is the way to make it happen. It is the way to freedom.
FU money is a pot of money that you know is there backing you in the event that you decide to suddenly leave your current job. FU is for the situation where your supervisor goes back on their word to honor your leave to attend your sister’s wedding, your supervisor calls you on your off day again, you are told you need to work beyond your paid hours, or you experience discrimination of any kind.
In general, the higher the amount of FU money you have, the lower the threshold can be for intolerable work conditions. For example, if you encounter blatant discrimination and your supervisor does nothing to resolve the situation, FU money to support you for a month is probably enough to get out of there. If your employer is a little bit shady with compensatory time, the threshold is probably higher than that.
Where to Keep FU Money
To an extent, your emergency fund or the buckets you overlap with your emergency fund are your FU money. However, the more you grow your net worth throughout all your accounts, the more confidently you can exit a suboptimal employment situation. If you have a liquid* net worth of $600,000 and your FI Number is $1 million, you are not going to put up with unfair treatment from a supervisor. Your net worth is the biggest safety net, and it gives you the power to demand the rights every employee deserves.
Using FU Money to Leave a Job
FU money is what emboldens you to leave a job when the conditions are not right for you. Patrick would not have felt confident leaving his job when his employer tried to force him to commute to the office two days a week for no valid reason without FU money. FU money gave him the power to take a stand to demand certain job conditions and leave his employer when they refused to meet his demands.
Patrick also got to work from home for an extra eight months after his employer “required” employees to return to the office two days a week because he had made himself an indispensable employee, saving the government millions of dollars by litigating some high-dollar tax cases. This gave him a long planning runway so he could work on his business plan while still receiving the salary of a GS-15 employee.
Even if you do not get a time runway from your employer due to your indispensability, your FU money gives you a financial runway to either find other employment or start your own business. If you have a large enough sum of FU money and are not in a rush, it may even provide you with the year you want to sail around the world while you contemplate your next move. The more money you have, the more time you have before you need to figure out how to make an income for yourself.
Using FU Money to Improve Job Conditions
While I have not had to use money to leave a job, it has helped me while at a job. Employees tend to think employers have all the power in the employee-employer relationship, leading to employees living in constant fear of termination or even just disappointing their employer. In reality, employees hold a fair share of power themselves.
FU money can bolster that power and provide you the courage to use it. While working for a former employer, some of us needed to work overtime at a particular time of year. Instead of giving us overtime pay, the employer claimed we would be able to “make up the time” with compensatory time that had to be used during the next pay period. Our contract stipulated that compensatory time could be used anytime within the calendar year—giving us a three-month period to use the compensatory time before the end of the year rather than just the following two-week pay period. Further, our supervisor called one of my coworkers to convey this information rather than answering emails because “it was easier.”
Ultimately, our supervisor organized a team meeting to discuss the issue. In my opinion, this was to again avoid written documentation of an ad-hoc policy that conflicted with our agreed compensation structure. At that meeting, I demanded that we receive written confirmation that we would be able to use our compensatory time at any point during the remainder of the calendar year, per our contract, and made it explicitly clear that a phone call was insufficient. Before the meeting, one of my coworkers was near tears because she was counting on using the compensatory time later in the year (and experiencing tight finances) for her upcoming wedding. While the flexible use of our compensatory time mattered to her even more than it did to me, she did not feel like she had the power to stand up for herself.
Having FU money allowed me to hold my employer accountable to me and to my coworkers in the same situation. We all received our compensatory time and all used it when we wanted to use it. When you have FU money you suddenly get to stand up against injustices towards yourself and your coworkers. Further, you may be the only person on your team with the financial stability to resist. If your own well-being is not enough reason, use your FU money to hold your employer accountable to your coworkers! The more FU money you have, the lower the threshold is for taking a stand.
*Liquid assets are ones you could use without selling them for money. For example, the equity we have in our home is not a liquid asset because we would have to sell our home or open a home equity line of credit to use it. Our brokerage accounts are liquid assets because we could transfer the money immediately to use it to buy something. A liquid net worth is just the total of all your liquid assets, excluding any illiquid ones like your home, car, or piano.
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