The spreadsheet on Camila's laptop is titled "Freedom Plan" and it's the most detailed document I've ever seen. Every row represents a month, every column a different financial goal or milestone. There are target savings amounts, investment portfolios, skill-building courses, networking activities, and a countdown to her planned exit date: eighteen months from now. "I've been escorting for four years," she told me when we met at her apartment in Astoria. "From day one, I was planning how to leave. Because if you don't have an exit strategy in this work, you'll wake up one day and realize you can't get out."
Camila's exit strategy is multi-layered and methodical. The financial component is most concrete: she needs three hundred thousand dollars saved before she can stop escorting. That amount will cover a year of living expenses while she transitions careers, a buffer for emergencies, and seed money for the small business she wants to start. She's currently at two hundred and ten thousand, saving between five and eight thousand per month. "The math is simple," she explained. "I know exactly how much I need and how long it will take to get there. That's the easy part."
The harder part is building a legitimate career she can transition into. Camila has spent the last two years taking online courses in web design and digital marketing, skills she can eventually monetize without a traditional resume. She's built a small portfolio of freelance work under her real name, deliberately keeping her rates low to build experience and references. She's networking in those industries, attending meetups and joining online communities, creating a professional identity completely separate from her escort work. "I'm building a bridge to the other side," she said. "So when I stop escorting, I have somewhere to land."
The psychological preparation is perhaps most challenging. Camila has been in therapy for a year specifically to process her escort work and prepare for the identity shift that quitting will require. She's working on separating her self-worth from her income, learning to value herself for things beyond her appearance and her ability to please men. "I've defined myself by this work for so long that I don't know who I am without it," she admitted. "That's terrifying. I need to figure out my identity before I can leave, or I'll just drift into the next thing that pays well without thinking about what I actually want."
Many escorts don't plan their exits carefully, and Camila has watched what happens when women try to leave without preparation. Some return to escorting within months because they can't survive on civilian income. Others spiral into depression or substance abuse when they stop, unable to process years of accumulated trauma now that they're not dissociating through constant work. Some simply age out of the industry with nothing saved and no skills, ending up desperate and broke. "The women who successfully exit are the ones who planned for it," Camila said. "The ones who treated escorting as a temporary means to an end, not a permanent career."
The challenge is maintaining motivation to execute the exit plan while still doing the work. Camila has to save aggressively, which means taking appointments even when she's exhausted. She has to invest time in her backup career, which means sacrificing sleep and personal time. She has to stay in therapy and do the psychological work even when it's painful. "It would be so much easier to just coast," she admitted. "To spend the money I'm making now and deal with the future later. But I've seen where that leads. I refuse to be trapped in this Oriental escorts agency work longer than necessary because I didn't plan ahead."
Another escort I spoke with, Theresa, has a different exit strategy. Rather than building a new career, she's focused on financial independence through aggressive investing. She's put nearly everything she's earned over five years into real estate and index funds. Her goal is to have enough passive income from investments that she never has to work again, in any capacity. "I'm buying my way out," Theresa explained when we talked by phone. "I'm not interested in another career. I'm interested in retirement at thirty-five. That's my exit strategy."
But Theresa acknowledges her approach requires making and saving enormous amounts of money, which isn't realistic for all escorts. "You need to be high-earning and incredibly disciplined about not spending," she said. "Most escorts can't or won't do that. They're seduced by the lifestyle, the designer bags, the nice apartments. I live like I'm poor despite making twenty thousand a month. It's the only way my strategy works."
Both women emphasize that the biggest mistake Outcall escorts make is not planning to leave at all. They've met countless women who've been in the industry for ten, fifteen, even twenty years, who started saying "just one more year" a decade ago and never stopped. "This work has an expiration date whether you acknowledge it or not," Camila said. "Your looks will fade. Clients will want someone younger. Your mental health will deteriorate. Something will force you out eventually. The question is whether you're choosing your exit on your terms, or whether it's being chosen for you."
As Camila showed me her spreadsheet one more time, I asked what she'll do when she hits her financial target in eighteen months. She was quiet for a moment, and I saw fear flash across her face. "Honestly? I'm terrified," she said. "This work has been my entire adult life. It's paid for everything, defined everything, consumed everything. In eighteen months, I'm supposed to just walk away and become someone else entirely.
What if I can't do it? What if civilian escort work feels impossible after this? What if I've been so changed by escorting that I can't function in the normal world anymore?" She closed her laptop. "But I have to try. Because the alternative is staying in this work until it destroys me completely. The exit strategy isn't just about money or career. It's about saving myself while there's still a self to save."
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