Independently poor

Back when I was an obnoxious Silicon Valley yuppie, one of the dot-coms I worked for at the end of the 1990's was clearly going nowhere, so I quit. I didn't have any job lined up. I had some savings from stock sales from the previous company I'd worked for, enough to live on for maybe a year, but nothing major. I was going to try my hand at doing odd jobs-- consulting gigs. The other guys were horrified: "How could you quit with no job lined up?" My soon-to-be-ex-boss said, "Oh, he's independently wealthy." No, I was quick to point out, I'm independently poor.

That's how I feel now, although my expenses are a lot lower now than they were then. I kept that dot-com money mostly intact for almost 10 years, and a huge chunk of it went into buying and converting the van. Whatever remains of it, is my insurance in case the van gets stolen or wrecked. With that, and a little bit of alimony, I am, once again, independently poor.