2. Ash
ASH
“You know what time it is! It’s the first of the month, which means—”
A goofy siren blares across the orange lacquered table, making me jump even though I knew it was coming. Grinning, my co-host Jenny keeps her finger on the mic’s mute button while we watch her son, masked like a goblin, warble through the garage we’ve repurposed as our recording studio.
It’s a familiar game: self-deception. We turn trash cans, bicycles, and oil-stained concrete into a studio, and I turn my anxiety into passion, performance, and podcast ad dollars.
Jenny hits another button, and our prerecorded voiceover booms, “Net Worth Update.”
She motions for Wyatt to quiet down, and my mic light flicks on.
“The market’s been on a tear. Three new all-time highs in the past month. This is why we say: always be buying. You don’t need to predict the market when you’ve got time on your side.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jenny taps her nails on the table. “Get to the numbers, Ash.”
“All right, all right.” I wake my laptop and pull up the summary tab of my spreadsheet, where five tabs of meticulous tracking collapse into one clean snapshot.
“As of market close today, my net worth is two million, three hundred fifty-seven thousand, four hundred twenty-two dollars and sixteen cents.”
Jenny groans softly. “You lost them at ‘hundred.’” But her expression hovers somewhere between awe and pity, like she can see the number’s doing nothing to settle me.
I sigh. “And yet I still get nervous ordering guac at Chipotle. Childhood money trauma, people. Don’t recommend.”
“You’re doing great. Way ahead of the game.”
“Congratulate compound interest,” I say. “Because if I retire at forty, that’s a long time not to work—”
“We hope.”
“Exactly. Which makes FIRE even more important,” I say. “I’d rather spend whatever years I get with options than grind it out until sixty-five.”
Jenny twirls a finger in the air, reeling me back in.
“Anyway.” I scroll to the bold green cell where a party cat GIF loops on cue. It feels off-key pretending my financial future isn’t teetering on a cliff. “I’m… 47.15 percent of the way there. Freedom date: eleven years from now, when I turn forty.”
“Over two mil, and still less than half way. I don’t get you Fat FIRE people,” Jenny says, her gaze flicking to the folded letter beside my microphone.
I smooth its creased edges with my thumb, absorbing the lesson with each pass: life’s a bitch. What wrecked Pawpaw wrecked my parents, and it’s the reason I run this hard in the first place. Lately, though, it feels like I’m not outrunning much of anything.
“How about you?” I ask, looking away from the letter in case that will keep my family’s bad luck from crawling across the table. “Even that stock-picking monkey did well this month.”
“Somehow, I’m not offended. All right, my net worth at market close today…” She glances at her laptop. “Eight hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars.”
“Even?” I tease.
“Dude, no one cares about your dollars and cents. Spare the people.”
“Hey, I give every dollar in my army some credit.”
She rolls her eyes. “Well, my little army’s almost at the finish line. Lean FIRE with a kid in San Francisco. Tell me that’s not a circus act.”
It might not be. A paid-off Outer Sunset house courtesy of her parents makes her freedom number only half of what mine is. The four-grand I owe for rent each month alone nukes any shot I have at lean anything.
“Congrats to you,” I say, trying to keep the bitter out of the sweet. Watching Jenny get close should be inspiring. Mostly it makes me want to run harder. “How’s it feel to be over eighty percent there?”
“Surreal. We started this podcast to stay motivated through the years where nothing feels like it’s moving. Now we’re in the home stretch, and it’s… amazing. Wish they taught this stuff in school.”
“Right?” I say. “When we met, you told me every dollar I invested would turn into fifty-eight. Imagine being twenty and knowing each dollar could grow into eighty-eight.”
“And… we are now the least relatable humans on the planet.” Jenny glances at the clock.
Twenty-six minutes. If we go over thirty, half our listeners will bail.
“Alright, what’s on tap for this week?” I ask, beginning our closing segment.
“Normal week for me. Quick trip to my in-laws, then San Diego for work. Auto-investments hit Friday.” Jenny’s son leaps and flails near their bikes, and her eyes flick to the floor. “And my son’s school play is this week… which I’ll miss, because I’ll be in San Diego for work.”
Her voice falters.
“That’s the motivation,” I say, painfully aware that time like this doesn’t come back. “Think of all the afternoons and school plays you’ll see in a few more months.”
“Balance,” she sighs. “I just wish there was a mom instruction manual.”
I turn to Wyatt. “And who are you in the play?”
He reacts to the attention like an actor being handed the spotlight, bicycle spokes and toy-filled metal shelves becoming a seven-year-old’s stage. Puffing his chest, he rips off his goblin mask to hold his hands up like claws.
“The Big Bad Wolf!” he bellows before resuming his frantic dance around the garage, now in character.
“What about you?” Jenny asks, letting me choose how honest to be.
Thinking about tomorrow drags my gaze back to the folded paper, my pulse picking up at the sickening sense that this has nothing to do with what happened to Pawpaw and everything to do with what’s happening to me.
“I’ve got a meeting with HR tomorrow,” I say. “So next week is… uncertain. But thanks to our sponsor, The FI Escape, I’ll be at their California retreat this weekend. Jenny can’t make it, but I know a lot of our listeners will be there.”
“Thanks for listening. Share this podcast with someone you love, and help them achieve financial freedom. This is Jenny.”
“And I’m Ash, closing out this episode of Skinny Fat FIRE.”
Our mic lights click off. The show’s over, and there’s nothing left to distract me.
“Tomorrow’s the big day?” she asks, lowering her voice and reaching for my hand.
I nod, trying to focus on Wyatt sprinting inside instead of the tightness wrapping around my ribs.
“Big doesn’t capture how much of my life hinges on this meeting.” I squeeze her hand and grab the folded letter to shove it deep into my pocket.
“That nervous?” she asks, staring at my pocket.
“I don’t know how this happened.”
“I’m sure it will be fine.”
“Query can’t afford to pay me what it does and look lenient about HR violations. They’re literally looking for excuses to cut costs and get rid of the ‘old guard.’ I can’t believe I handed them one.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
Her gentle question spikes my anxiety.
“I don’t get promoted. I lose my job. My freedom date pushes back decades. The market tanks. Tech freezes. I can’t find a new job. California slides into the Pacific—”
“Okay, okay, okay.” Jenny places her hands on my clenched shoulders. “Deep breaths, or you’ll self-destruct. I know you don’t want to hear it, but—”
“I know I’m lucky. It’s not like I promoted Chase because we kissed. We kissed after I promoted him… which somehow sounds even worse. I’m screwed.”
Jenny drops her hands and heads to the landing, where she lingers with one hand on the doorknob. “You wanna crack open some beers and wallow? Because if not”—she nods toward the house—“the fam needs tending.”
“Wallowing raincheck,” I say, wanting to rerun the worst-case scenarios three or four more times before bed.
Jenny clicks the garage door opener, and San Francisco fog slips into our makeshift studio. I duck beneath the rising door into the thick gray air, dread settling in my stomach.
“Tell Ben thanks for letting me intrude!”
“Keep me posted!” she calls back.
As I walk the few blocks to the MUNI stop, I pull up my spreadsheet and try to focus on how far I’ve already come. All I can see is eleven more years until freedom. It feels like an eternity.
At the deserted MUNI stop, I pocket my phone and unfold the letter that proves life can always get worse. Tonight, it reads like a warning that if I’m not more careful, mine will be.
I try to will Pawpaw’s collections letter into bad luck instead of premonition.
Deep down, I know better. The Pierce lineage specializes in self-deception.
Different decade, same denial. Pawpaw let debt collectors break the news to his own kid.
My parents made decisions they couldn’t undo because he spent years promising security he never had.
Maybe they felt like this, right before it all unraveled. It’s looking like it’ll take more than Query’s paycheck and the gospel of FIRE for me to hit escape velocity.
What was I thinking? If I’d just been upfront with HR…
Now one meeting threatens to collapse everything I’ve built.
Kissing a subordinate was a mistake, my mistake. But I never imagined someone would report it.
God help them if I find out who it was.
**********
Unrelenting meetings at Query used to energize me. They meant progress and impact, and a packed calendar proved I mattered. Now it’s just thirty-minute back-to-backs from eight to five, broken only by a maybe-lunch if no one steals the slot.
But today isn’t my usual deluge of context-switching. Today’s calendar contains what would usually be a rare luxury: a one-hour meeting. Except this one’s marked Asher Pierce Support, a vague, ominous block that refuses to move.
HR’s ticketing system is a joke. Whoever picked up my case is delusional if they think this is about “support.” Support would mean forgiving my first mistake in eight years and handing me the promotion I deserve. Somehow I doubt that’s on the agenda.
Query used to need me pounding those meetings, building something, fighting for every inch of progress. Now it runs like a machine, and whoever I’m meeting with won’t care what I want, because cogs don’t care: they turn.
I end my one-on-one early so I can walk across campus and find out how much this mistake is going to cost me.