My story that happened years ago, not with FU money but with a FU budget.
I had been working at a rural hospital an hour and half away from home and was completely miserable. The hours were okay, basically 4 days a week, being on call 2 of those nights, I just stayed there at the hospital on those nights, so I drove round trip just twice a week. The pay was good, the job itself was good. The boss was not. My boss was supervisor of the department, and being a small rural hospital, was my only co-worker in the department. Basically we both covered our department.
This woman was the type that you had to wait to see what mood she was in to know what kind of day you were having. Mercurial moods, and extreme self-absorbed. Not one person mattered on this earth more than she did. Walk on egg shells. You get the picture. She also gave her management jobs to me, passing them off as her own to the CEO. I was completely and utterly miserable and thought I had to put up with it. I mean, we had bills to pay, right? About that time I really got in to Dave Ramsey, and was on fire to get out of debt. My job had a good salary, just thought I would put up with what I had to to get out of debt so I could have FU money and leave that place.
Well, things don't always work as you plan. It was affecting my health, losing weight, stomach pains, and all for what? Once I started working on my budget I started realizing what my actual costs were with keeping that job, and what I was earning after it. The job didn't sound worth it. Got really motivated and started really looking into how I can reduce the budget more and more. And the more I was seeing I really didn't have to stay at this place, the less able I was to handle working for this particular person. Actually, there was a string of employees that had left before me, and I had heard from other workers that the director wasn't sure why this was happening. Once I figured out that I really didn't need to stay there, the fire was lit.
I walked out on a day I literally could not take it anymore. Boss left for lunch, I wrote up a huge letter to the director detailing why I was leaving, the toxic environment, the work being passed on to others, put the letter under his door, put my badge and key on the desk, and left 2 minutes before she was due to return from lunch. Hopped in the car and called my (late) husband to tell him and his immediate response was "Woohooo!!!!!".
Not only were we okay on one income because of the FU budget, but we thrived! While at home for the next year and doing things at the house to save money and putting every extra penny on debt, we were able to get rid of over $30k of debt, on one income. I went back to work somewhere else after that year closer and for better pay and we managed to get rid of $26k more debt in 6 more months, debt free baby. This was over 10 years ago.
Things have changed since, but I still work towards always maintaining and FU budget, because no job is worth the amount of shit some bosses put on a person. I try to live like a single minimum wage job can still pay the bills, everything else is gravy.
