Escape The Clock

Have you ever felt trapped by the clock?
Wake up. Get ready. Get to work. Go through the motions, take care of business at home, go to bed. Rinse and repeat.
That was my life for twenty years. I had a good family, a good job, and my health. I also gave whatever scraps of time were left over to the people I loved most, running on fumes from a long day.
I spent that career as a program manager at Microsoft and Google, building step-by-step roadmaps so that large organizations could reach complicated goals. It took me longer than it should have to realize the same approach works on a household. So I built one. A twenty-year program to leave at 45.
I left at 43. The mortgage was paid off. Passive income covered nearly all of what my life costs.
This book is that program, written so you can run it on your own numbers instead of mine.
You will work out what your life actually costs, and what number would let you stop. You will set milestones with real dates on them, clear your debt, and widen the gap between what you earn and what you spend. You will learn how to invest on a long horizon and shift that strategy as your date gets closer, and how to reach your retirement money before the traditional age without wrecking the years that come after.
The last part of the book is about the thing most books in this space leave out. What you do once the clock is no longer yours. Purpose is harder to plan than money, and it takes just as much thought.
There are no shortcuts here and no judgment about how you spend. Just a structure, and the numbers that go into it.
If you are in your 30s, 40s, or 50s and you are willing to sit down with real figures, this will work.
Your time is the only thing you cannot earn more of. Here is how to get some of it back.

Daniel C. Rodgers, WMCP® spent two decades as a program manager at Microsoft and Google, leading complex programs for some of the largest companies in the world. He left corporate work at forty-three, two years ahead of the twenty-year plan he had written for himself.

He started deep in debt after putting himself through school. He left with the mortgage paid off and passive income covering nearly all of his cost of living. The approach he used became Escape The Clock.

Since retiring he earned the Wealth Management Certified Professional designation and now hosts a weekly conversation with planners, retirees, and specialists about building a work-optional life. He also writes fiction.

He teaches financial literacy with Financial Beginnings and volunteers with Motley Zoo Animal Rescue. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.