This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lucy Puttergill, a 34-year-old based in South Africa, about her time working at a high-paying job at JP Morgan. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I never intended to go into banking. When I finished university, I wanted to travel. I got a job in client services at Citi, a global bank, in 2011. I thought it would be temporary.
I started working in a towering office building in London, and I felt completely out of my depth. My salary was £45,000. That was pretty good for a recent college graduate. I thought, I might as well make more money and then I can travel.
I knew from day one that banking wasn’t for me. But I kept putting off leaving.
I felt like I had to prove myself
I tried to resign in 2013 to travel for a few months and work in consultancy. But Citi offered me a different role on the trading floor instead of sales. The role seemed to be the pinnacle of the “boss lady” I imagined myself as when I was younger.
I accepted, partly because I felt the need to prove I was clever enough to do it, even though I had no interest in financial markets. I don’t know who I was trying to prove that to.
In 2016, I was about to move into an area I didn’t want to work in when JP Morgan headhunted me. I left for a role there in equity derivatives.
My career masked my insecurities
I like the prestige of banking. I worked in great teams, and I thrived on the stress. I enjoyed having money to spend on posh restaurants and taking clients for meals. At JP Morgan, I’d start at 7 a.m. and finish at 6.30 p.m. I had an incredible boss and team, I enjoyed the work and I was earning six figures.
But I was young, insecure, and had very little romantic luck. My career inflated my ego and my sense of myself as an important person. It was a mask for those other insecurities. I was crumbling inside.
I was obsessed with spending money
I realized I was becoming someone I didn’t like. I became obsessed with buying expensive items to numb how unhappy I was. Some days, I’d order £500, which is about $625, worth of clothes online before I even got into work. I wouldn’t want them and would send them back.
I was grateful. I had lots of support, and I was getting paid a lot. But I didn’t have any meaning in my job, and I felt like I was moving away from my true self. I couldn’t admit that to myself for years because I’d always been told by the world that the life I had was aspirational.
I snapped and resigned from JP Morgan
When I was approaching 30, people around me started getting married and having children. I thought to myself: “If I don’t get married, for example, is this career enough for me to feel like I’ve lived a full life?” The answer was no.
I went on a yoga retreat in Italy in May 2019. The day before I flew home, I found myself in a café in floods of tears. I thought: “I can’t go back to that life.” It was crushing.
I asked for a sabbatical. My manager was amazing, and they let me take four months off. I traveled around South America, where I met lots of people who helped me see that there are different ways of living.
I was surrounded by people who weren’t impressed by my attempt at being impressive. When I told one person about my career, they responded by saying: “You wasted your 20s by working.” I realized I’d missed out on so much fun because I was working so hard. It was brutal.
I went back to work in January 2020, but it was difficult.
I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore. I resigned in February and left in May. It was terrifying. I was so worried I would end up without a roof over my head.
I moved to Mexico
I spent a few months figuring things out. I spent less money, partly because of the pandemic but also because I had less desire to buy random clothes. I started feeling I had a deeper sense of purpose and stopped linking money with impressiveness.
I had been stuck in golden handcuffs, but I was lucky that I didn’t have some of the financial pressures other people have, like children. My expenses were lower because I wasn’t doing much during the pandemic, and, then I moved to Mexico City in 2021 for a few months, which had a lower cost of living than London.
I moved to Cape Town, South Africa, in October 2022. The city revolves around the mountains and the sea, and there’s a much better work-life balance than in London.
Money is a worry
I posted about my experiences on LinkedIn in July 2020, and many people messaged me about my work, asking for coaching. After that, I decided to train in trauma-informed coaching with Gabor Mate and started coaching people who reached out to me.
I’m earning nowhere near what I was in banking. I feel much more stressed out about money than I used to. But I get much more of a sense of purpose from my work and feel like I am supporting people. In banking, I used money as a way of feeling like I was living, but now I’m much more fulfilled, I don’t need to go to fancy restaurants.
I’d never go back.
If you left a high-paying career and would like to share your story, email Ella Hopkins at [email protected].
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