I recently resigned (100 percent amicably) my position on the Board of Vox Media, the company that I co-founded over 10 years ago as SB Nation. As part of that resignation, I am selling a large percentage of my remaining equity holdings, which means that I have now achieved a level of financial security I never could’ve imagined.
Ironically, it still won’t make me a one percenter. That would require assets of $8.4 million. But it’s more than sufficient to take care of my family through two college educations and retirement. It’s enough to help out our extended families.
This has certainly been a long journey for me, first arriving in the United States as a war refugee from El Salvador at the age of nine. As violent as El Salvador was, much of which I carry to this day, I was still ripped from my comfortable circle of family and friends, from my home, my pets, my school, and thrust into a hostile environment where I didn’t know the language, I was thin, weak, looked years younger than I actually was, and was bullied mercilessly. That psychological violence felt worse to me than El Salvador’s physical violence.
My parents were working class—my mother working as a secretary when those still existed, my father moving furniture in the warehouse of an office furniture company. Both worked their way up to middle class status at a time (the ‘80s) when that was still possible. Money was tight, but they provided, whether it was piano lessons or subscriptions to two newspapers (never realized how expensive they were until I went to college and got my own).
But money was tight enough that college looked like a tough sell, so no problem, I joined the Army, at a time when that was still possible without getting shipped off yet another war of choice. To this day, that was still the best decision I’ve ever made, making everything I’ve done later in life possible. It gave me confidence, taught me to be a leader, and gave me the ability to go to college.
I always worked 2-3 jobs to either learn skills (running the school newspaper at Northern Illinois University, or working as a legislative aide to a state senator in Boston) or to make ends meet. It was never a problem for me, I enjoyed it. So don’t see this as complaining. It was just who I was, someone who loved to take on new challenges, learn new things.
This was a very bohemian time for me, out of necessity not choice. A coffee table was a cardboard box with a tablecloth over it. It worked! Good enough. I even considered becoming a full-time student, maybe collect PhDs as a “career”. Instead, I went to law school.