The Importance of FU Money in Social Work

Matt Anderson, a guru on burning out from the child welfare system, talks about “values fatigue” in social work and being an effective change agent. He emphasizes the importance of knowing “what hill to get fired on.”

Many jobs have this feature, where you know from Day 1 that your employment will probably end dramatically. Like joining a presidential administration or becoming a stunt double. To do anything dangerous, including social systems change work, it helps to have a fallback. “Fuck you” money.

The basis of all negotiating power is maintaining outside options. If you have no financial alternative to keeping your job, what leverage do you have to push for change?

Squirreling away a financial reserve isn’t easy. The average BSW graduates with around $30k of student debt and a $45k post-tax salary. Here are some starting points to turn your ethical resolutions into credible plans:

1. Mentally separate your fixed costs and variable costs of living. Your fixed costs are things like student debt and retirement saving. Variable costs include your grocery bill, rent, and utilities.
2. Find your fallback job now and adjust your variable costs to live on that second-best job’s salary.
3. Grok the time value of money. $0.04 saved at age twenty will be a dollar by retirement. At age thirty, it’s $0.08. At forty, $0.16. At fifty, $0.32. Your savings potential per dollar earned shrinks exponentially as you age.
4. Go to the online FIRE community for help. That’s “Financial Independence / Retiring Early”. It’s an active community of people trying to save aggressively, even if their motivations don’t match yours.