Ep 11: One Year After Being Fired_ My Life on One-Third of My Salary

One year ago, Sable received an unexpected email that changed everything. Within moments, a successful career she loved was suddenly filled with uncertainty, administrative leave, and the possibility that life as she knew it was coming to an end.

In this episode of The Bougie Expat Podcast, Sable reflects on the one-year anniversary of losing her government job and shares the deeply personal journey that followed. She opens up about navigating uncertainty, managing fear and chaos, making the decision to accelerate her five-year relocation plan, and ultimately building a completely new life in Panama.

This is not just a story about losing a job. It's a story about resilience, reinvention, and discovering that the life waiting on the other side of uncertainty may be better than the one you planned.

Sable shares what it felt like to leave behind a predictable salary, relocate to a country she had never visited before, rebuild her financial life, and learn that living well often requires far less than we imagine. She also discusses the emotional and practical realities of creating a new routine, finding community, embracing a slower pace of life, and turning an unexpected ending into what she now calls her "lemonade life."

This episode is for Black women over 40 who are facing career transitions, considering moving abroad, recovering from unexpected life changes, or wondering whether it is possible to create a meaningful and financially sustainable second act.

In This Episode

• One year after unexpectedly losing her job
• The HR meeting that changed everything
• The shock of being placed on administrative leave
• Living through months of uncertainty, hiring, firing, and ambiguity
•  Why you get to decide how to respond to chaos
• Accelerating a five-year relocation plan to move to Panama
• Facing the reality of age bias and career reinvention
• Why Sable chose not to return to traditional employment
• Moving to a country she had never visited before
• The importance of trusting your resilience and problem-solving abilities
• The reality of arriving in a new country with no friends or support system
• Finding a home under budget and building a new life
• Transitioning from a predictable salary to multiple income streams
• How relocation completely changed her spending habits
• Building a new daily routine and redefining lifestyle priorities
• Eliminating major expenses and living comfortably on less
• Discovering the benefits of a slower, more restful life
• The unexpected health improvements that came with relocation
• Learning that living well often costs much less than expected
• Building community, friendships, and a fulfilling social life abroad
• Reflecting on one year of creating a completely new life
• How losing something important became the beginning of a "lemonade life"
• Why you'll never know what's possible until you take the leap

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Transcript

Sable 0:00

You have to realize that even if someone else is trying to put chaos around your life, you get to decide if you want to feel chaotic. So when I finally kind of decided, you know what, I am going to move. I'm going to move to Panama. It was a five-year plan, and I thought I'm going to execute that plan right now. One of the things you always have to realize, each one of us has a skill and a wisdom that we are going to carry no matter where we go. And mine for myself, I know that I'm resilient. I know I'm creative. I know I don't give up easy. And so I knew I could, and I knew I was a great problem solver. I would figure it out. She's done waiting. She's done shrinking. And she's done building empires in rooms that were never designed for her. This is the Bougie Expat, the podcast for black women over 40 who are ready to reinvent their lives, rebuild their income, and relocate with intention. If you're done settling in corporate, tired of environments that no longer feel aligned, or quietly planning their next move, you are in the right place. Hosted by Sable, live from Panama City, Panama. Seven countries, four continents, one move she made in five months at flat. Income strategies, exit plans, a life designed to actually fit you. Without starting over broke. Let's get it. It's one year later, since I found out that my job ended unexpectedly. And so today I want to share with you not just about that moment for some of you who've not heard about that moment, but also I want to share about what I've been doing over the last one year. What was my thought process? What was happening during that time? And how did I get to the decision that I am today? So let me just kind of go back a little bit about how this happened and when it happened. When I got the email that said I was going to have an HR meeting, I knew for sure that this wasn't your ordinary meeting, simply by the name of the person who had called the meeting. But I didn't know exactly what the outcome was going to be. And so when they announced that we were all on administrative leave, effective immediately, every single person that was on that call in that room was on administrative leave, I almost for a moment breathed a minute of exhale, like, oh, relief, we're on leave. But until all the questions start coming from our colleagues that sounded more like this is the end, then I realized, oh, this is not what I think it is. Because I was kind of relatively new to the government. I had not been with the government for a really long time. So since then, so when I heard that, I thought, oh, we were just going to be on leave, and then they would bring us back, or they'll give us new assignments, but not that our employment was actually going to terminate. And it did. And during that time, I had to decide what did I want to do with myself. Because even this termination wasn't a straight shot. Over the next seven months, it was pretty a lot of ambiguity, a lot of hiring, a lot of firing. You were fired one day, you were rehired, you um were on leave, don't touch your computer, touch your computer, you're off of leave. So there was a lot of uncertainty. And one of the things you have to realize is that even if someone else is trying to put chaos around your life, you get to decide if you want to feel chaotic. So I had to find a place where I can center myself and not get caught up in the chaos. And sometimes that comes from news cycles, that comes from friends, it comes from reading every single email that's coming your way, or whatever it is, even though the storm is happening around you, you could be in the center of the storm and not let that storm actually rattle you. And that is what I had to kind of decide. Because during that time, there was a lot going on, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of lawsuits, a lot of conversations. And but in the midst of that, you knew that perhaps at the end, this was going to be the end, right? So we didn't know for months what it was gonna be. Um, but we knew that it wasn't sounding too good. And especially once our agency was absolutely closed down, we knew that yeah, this was coming to an end. We just didn't know again how and when. So I want to say to you, whatever stage you're in your life, whether it is you're with a job that you absolutely love, a job that you hate, a relationship that you hate, whatever it is, even if the chaos is around you, you get to decide how you want to manage and hate handle that chaos. You get that decision. You can't necessarily stop and control the other person, but you can control yourself. So you have that, and that's kind of what I decided. So when I finally kind of decided, you know what, I am going to move. I'm gonna move to Panama. It was a five-year plan, and I thought I'm gonna execute that plan right now. I didn't move immediately because, of course, like anything, you have to pack up yourself, sell yourself, decide what you're gonna do with yourself. What are you gonna do when you get there? What are you gonna do with money? How much money do you have? Do you have enough money? What if you never make any more money again, right? Because I also had to take into account that yes, I have over 20-something years of human resource experience, international, change management, all the things. I also realized I do live in a society that is age bias. And understanding that, do I really want to compete in a market that was already exasperating other professionals who were posting open to work all over the place after 18 months? So, do I want to do that? Or at this age, do I now want to say, you can slow down? It is okay. Because if you're like me, you've probably been working since you were a teenager, had some kind of after-school job. I did. After school babysitter, daycare center worker, I was retail worker. They say one in eight of Americans have worked at McDonald's. I was one of those. Probably you might have been one of that one in eight, too. And so, understanding that, I knew, yeah, that's probably not what I want to do. I want to do something different. And so I left. But even leaving and going, I didn't know a lot because I had never been to Panama before. So that was gonna be my first trip. My first trip with all my things packed, with my moving out of my house, packing that all up, you know, just kind of almost burning the bridges behind and moving forward. But one of the things you always have to realize, each one of us has a skill and a wisdom that we are gonna carry no matter where we go. And mine for myself, I know that I'm resilient, I know I'm creative, I know I don't give up easy, and so I knew I could and I knew I was a great problem solver. I would figure it out, and so will you. You are thinking about doing something and you don't have all the answers, but I'm confident that you can figure it out. It just takes some time sometimes of being quiet. And so off I went. I get there and I started looking for in a place to live. And also, that's one of the things you have to allow. Sometimes what you expect, your expectations of what you're gonna see, is not also how things are gonna roll out. And so I thought I was moving into I knew it was a city, but here we were, high rises everywhere. And I was like, okay, never done this before. And so you have to take yourself to places of hey, am I up to doing things I've never done before? What does it look like for me to be in a place where I don't necessarily speak the language fluently, I don't have any friends, and I don't know anyone. Am I still gonna be okay? I felt that I was going to be okay. I felt that I was gonna figure it out. So even when I got there and all those things were there, I didn't know anyone, I wasn't familiar with the landscape of living, I figured it out. I found a place to live under my budget. I gave myself a budget before I had left, I gave myself a budget, and I found a place underneath my budget, which I was pretty happy about. But with all of that, you then have to now kind of just start on your living. How are you going to live? And what changed is having moving from a salary that was very predictable, you knew it was gonna hit your account, to where, okay, you have some cash, you have some income streams coming in, but how do you spend that wisely in this season? You have some money that you know my mailbox checks are gonna come no matter what, but that are not enough to sustain me. Definitely not at the lifestyle I was accustomed to living. And now you have some other checks that are coming in, which I kind of call kind of like uh stable income. It can it comes every month, but at any time, like investments and things like that, the market can go down or whatever, and it can change. And so that really changed for me. But what I found is I didn't need to spend as much money as I used to. I didn't have to buy work clothes, I didn't have work transportation, I didn't have the uh after work cocktails. So there was a shift in how my money was being spent. Absolutely, moving costs money, it costs lots of money. So I don't want anyone to think that, yeah, because they hear people say, Oh, I took two suitcases and I moved, and that was it. All that stuff that was in your house, you had to get it out of there. So there's a lot of expenses, right? So I can talk about that some other time. But what I want us to think about is oh gosh, go away. What I want us to think about is the fact that your spending is going to change how much you spend and what you spend on. And you get to decide now, perhaps maybe some things that you used to spend a lot of money on, you don't have to. And so some of my habits absolutely traveled with me, you know, some of my beauty uh rituals absolutely traveled with me. Um, I used to go to a gym and pay for a gym. I don't do that anymore. I live someplace where the gym is already present, and I have lots of opportunities to go out, but I don't have to explore all of them. And so your routine changes a little bit, but you get to build a new routine. That is the coolest part. You get to build a new routine, and which is what I did. So I have a routine, I go out, I still work out, but now I do it in my building where it's totally free. So I've saved a lot of money there. I live in a place where vegetables are very inexpensive, seafood and uh fish is very inexpensive. Those are basically the only thing I eat, and so that also helped me really reduce my budget. And so when I talk about spending, I don't have a car anymore. I was upwards of like a thousand dollars a month on my car expenses. Now I'm $2, $3 Uber rides when I decide to go somewhere, and I don't have anywhere do I have to be every single day. So there's a whole shift in how much money I spend, why I'm able to live off of like one third of what I was making, and I don't feel broke at all. I don't feel like, oh my gosh, I'm missing out on things that I used to do. Now perhaps maybe I used to take quarterly international trips. I have not done that since. Um not so much about the money, I think. I haven't even thought about it as much. It's almost like I feel like I'm living, where am I going? You know, like I'm already living such a rested life. And that is also what I've also gotten. A life more of yeah, I would say rest. Um, not as much stress and that I'm in um that is around me, so much so that my blood pressure has dropped drastically. When I went to the doctor, they actually tell me my blood pressure is left. So those are the kind of things you don't really necessarily think about that, you know, you're in this shock mode that you lost, you know, something that was important to you because I absolutely love my job. I love what I was doing, but you also don't realize that so many other benefits that are gonna come to you with this life that might be ahead of you. And so why my salary has changed, my expectations and what things and desires of what I want to do has also changed because there's a new set of things for me to do, and I get to pick and choose which ones I want to do. The ones that I want to do, if I cannot afford them, I get to figure out how I can afford them. So far, so good. Not too many things that I want to do that I necessarily can't necessarily afford to do. So what surprised me the most is how I live so well off of less. I didn't, if anyone told me like this was how much money I was gonna have a month and I had to live off, I was like, no way, I'm gonna be starving and eating Indo Me or you know woman noodles every day, but that is not the case. And so I want you to think about like so many times I hear women say that the reason why they can't relocate is because they don't have enough money. You really don't need as much. I'm not saying that because I went to one third. You will find out you don't need as much. So I get to really enjoy my life. I do walks every Friday. I'm in a walk-in group, I work out, I've met a lot of people, I have a great community that I get to connect with. I um am finding new activities, karaoke bingo things that I probably would have never done. And I do that so I can engage in the community, in the local community, and also the language. So I want you to think about that, even though you're moving, things are changing, I want you to remember that you're starting a new life. I started a new life one year ago today. If you tell me this is what my life was going to be about, I've been like, how is that even possible? If you tell me this is what my income was going to be, and I would still be have a good life, I would say, how is that possible? But it is possible, it is absolutely possible. We just have to make a decision that whatever we're handed, if they're lemons, absolutely we can make lemonade. And so I would call this my lemonade life. I have taken a situation that it seemed so drastically sad, and I was able to make a really cool glass of lemonade. And so I say to you, if things around you are chaotic and you're worrying about what the other side would look like, you will never ever know until you get to the other side. You have to make a decision to take the leap to go to the other side. I don't care what everybody tells you about how great it is, I don't care if people tell you how tough it is. You have to make that decision and see for yourself. You will be surprised how much resilience, how much creativity that you have when you are in that situation. You just gotta take the leap. If you're not sure if the leap is for you, call me. I'll love to chat with you. I'm Sable Yabushi girlfriend. Until the next time, live an elevated life. That's a wrap. And if this episode resonated with you, go ahead and follow the podcast and share it with another woman who's ready for her next chapter. And if you're ready to move beyond thinking and start building your exit strategy, I invite you to join me inside my live experience at the Elevated Exit Masterclass. You'll find the link in the show notes. Until next time, make your next move a bougie one.