a new chapter
phil de la motte
Something New
Today marks a new chapter for me as I close out a 25-year career in tech and embark on something new and different. TLDR; I'm not retiring… I'm going the entrepreneurial route and opening a financial planning practice aimed at helping tech professionals achieve financial freedom and work-optionality faster.
This was a two-year long decision-making process. As I entered the third chapter of my life, I began asking questions about what I wanted to do next. While I find tech to be challenging, exciting and lucrative, it’s also demanding and stressful. I began exploring alternatives that might be more personally fulfilling.
The second mountain
The path I'm most familiar with in tech is to grit your teeth, hold out for as long as possible, then retire in your late 50s or early 60s, either by choice or by RIF. Privately many peers in my stage of life shared how it was difficult to let go of the financial rewards even though the work was no longer rewarding. I was struck by what David Brooks said in his 2019 book "The Second Mountain" about the healthy mid-life perspective change many experience after achieving their first mountain goals like finding love, raising a family, and building a career. They begin re-evaluating their life's purpose and exploring second mountain opportunities.
Admittedly I’m not particularly motivated by the money anymore, but when I talk about the things I'm most passionate about, I feel re-energized and excited to be helpful; I don't want to simply retire and travel. I want to keep working, but doing work that I love, with people I care about, in a healthy and balanced way.
A New Purpose: Helping Others
As I considered where I derived the most enjoyment, a new purpose emerged with striking clarity. Serving others through smart financial planning. I have the most fun when I'm helping people one on one, using my analytical skills to offer useful advice, and seeing my efforts directly benefit their lives. And I've been a self-proclaimed personal finance nerd for decades, studying everything I could, putting it all into practice for my family, friends and colleagues, then celebrating their success. My ideal role is helping other tech professionals like me put solid financial practices into place so they can achieve their own financial freedom and work-optionality. After all, there aren't many 65-year-olds in tech. It’s a high-pressure industry and few last to full retirement age, so we need to maximize the incredible financial benefits while planning for a limited career shelf-life.
Fortunately, as I modeled our own financial plan under various scenarios, it began to look more and more like my wife and I had reached the financial escape velocity needed to give me optionality in my career. We didn't win the lottery, and we weren't particularly lucky; for us it came the boring way, by controlling expenses, saving aggressively, avoiding unnecessary debt and taxes, and a holding a balanced passive portfolio for decades.
3…2…1…Blastoff!
Rather than launch a solo practice from scratch, I've decided to launch my practice as part of Prospero Wealth. Eric Franklin has built a unique model for collaborating with new practice owners, and they represent everything I feel is the future of financial planning. They're 100% focused on serving a narrow niche, in this case, tech professionals and their families. They’re small so they can adapt quickly, offer specialized expertise, and know all their clients personally. Finally, they’re a fee-only fiduciary, dedicated to offering the best possible advice without any bias or interference from commission-based sales. In short, both of my adult children are engineers in tech, and this is exactly the kind of financial practice I would recommend they work with! For me it was a no-brainer.
Going forward, one of the things I'm most looking forward to is writing useful advice via blogs and LinkedIn groups for my peers in tech. I've been doing this internally at F5 for years and the feedback has been very encouraging. A colleague at F5 messaged me on Teams recently "Thank you SO MUCH for producing this info - I wasn't sure what to do with my stash of RSUs, but your slide deck really helped me make a decision I feel good about." For me, that’s where the fun is.
If you'd like to hear more from me as I begin developing this content, much of it specific to F5, join my list:
And if you'd like to chat, DM me on Linkedin or pick a time slot on my calendar.
Here’s to second acts!
