It wasn’t supposed to happen this way
Six years into one company, I was laid off. I won’t pretend that moment felt like freedom. It felt like the floor had moved without warning. Going back to work after layoff felt like the only reasonable next step — so that’s exactly what I did.
Within a month, I’d found a new role. Not because I panicked — because that’s just what you do, isn’t it? You update the resume, you take the calls, you say yes to the next thing that looks reasonable.
Going back to work after layoff — and why it didn’t fit
I want to be honest about something most FIRE stories skip over: I went back to work after my layoff. I sat at a new desk, learned a new system, met a new team.
And within a short while, I knew. This wasn’t the wrong company or the wrong boss. It was the wrong chapter. I had already lived a version of this life — the meetings, the politics, the slow erosion of a Tuesday — and I didn’t want to keep living it just because I could.
What made leaving possible the second time
Here’s the part that actually matters for this blog: I could leave, cleanly, without a backup plan or a countdown clock, because the financial groundwork was already done.
Decades of saving from age 22. SGX investing from 35. Two investment properties, paid down over years, not decades. A bond portfolio and voluntary housing refunds to my CPF OA, quietly compounding in the background the whole time I was sitting in offices I no longer wanted to be in.
None of that was built for this exact moment. But it was there when I needed it.
FIRE isn’t the absence of work. It’s the presence of choice.
I think this is the part people misunderstand most about financial independence. It’s not a promise that you’ll never work again. It’s a promise that if you do end up back at a desk — whether that’s going back to work after a layoff or simply by habit — you get to leave when it’s wrong, without waiting for permission from your bank account.
That’s what walking away the second time taught me. The first exit was done to me. The second one, I chose.
If you’re standing where I was
Maybe you’re mid-career, financially stable but not yet free, and you’ve quietly wondered what you’d do if the choice were suddenly yours. My answer: you’d probably do exactly what feels true to you — but only if the money question is already settled well before that moment arrives.
That’s the whole point of building this now, before you need it.
If you’re currently navigating a layoff yourself, LifeSG’s guide on retrenchment support is a good starting point for understanding what’s available to you.
If you’re just getting started on that groundwork, my Start Here page walks through exactly where I’d begin if I were doing this all over again.
— Eunice
My Fifty Freedom | Build the wealth that buys back your time