THE 12TH FLOOR

How a GS-8 Retired at 57 with $5 Million (Without Working a Day Past 56)

“Walden for feds — a man who went to live deliberately on the 12th floor, kept every receipt, and came back to tell us the pond was actually a TSP account.”

No side hustle. No inheritance. Just receipts.

Giancarlo Sta Cruz is a Navy veteran and GS-8 federal employee in San Diego. A Filipino immigrant who started planning at 20 — broke, on a single paycheck — he is on track to retire at 57 with $5 million. This is the memoir, with the statements to prove it.

THE BOOK · FROM THE BOOK · ABOUT · FOR LIBRARIES · CONTACT

THE BOOK

Forget the $300k salary myths. The 12th Floor is a masterclass in everyday financial freedom, tracking how a regular GS-8 federal employee automated a $5 million retirement on a single paycheck. It’s raw, data-backed, and deeply human proof that the savings rate you choose beats the amount you earn.

He makes $80,000 a year. He’ll retire at 57 with $5 million.

No inheritance. No side hustle. No promotion past the middle of the pay scale. Just a spreadsheet kept for 20 years — and the discipline to fund it before he ever saw the money.

The 12th Floor is the receipts: how a GS-8 anesthesia technician — a poor kid from the Philippines who joined the Navy at 17 — turned an ordinary paycheck into a $5 million retirement, one contribution rate at a time.

You don’t need to be a fed to use this. Translate the acronyms and it’s your playbook: TSP = your 401(k) or 403(b). The C Fund = the S&P 500. The 5% match = your 5% match — and skipping it is a pay cut you volunteered for.

Starting at 5% beats waiting until you can do 30%
72 divided by your rate = years to double
Wealth is what you don’t see

Twelve chapters, twelve rules, and an appendix with every number — year by year, dollar by dollar. Names changed. Numbers real.

For readers of The Millionaire Next Door and I Will Teach You to Be Rich — the version with receipts.

FROM THE BOOK

“What people saw was a guy with a condo, a dog, and almost a thousand CDs. What they didn’t see was the part that mattered — which is exactly why it worked.”FROM THE BACK COVER

“Income is what you earn. Wealth is what you don’t spend.”RULE 11

“The cheapest square foot is vertical.”RULE 12

“Shoot for the stars. Even if you miss, you’ll land on the moon.”CHAPTER 10

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Giancarlo Sta Cruz was born in Balanga, Bataan, in the Philippines, and immigrated to the United States in 1998. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 17 and served as a Hospital Corpsman — Great Lakes, Okinawa, Quantico — before becoming a federal civilian employee. He has worked at the same San Diego hospitals, in and out of uniform, for most of his adult life.

He started his retirement account in 2008 with a $6,236 rollover and a very tiny balance that promptly fell 37%. He kept contributing anyway. Twenty years of statements later, the plan retires him at 57 — and this book shows every line of it.

He lives in San Diego, on the 12th floor, with Pepper, his Boston Terrier — to whom this book is dedicated.

FOR LIBRARIES & BOOKSELLERS

The 12th Floor appears in the San Diego Public Library’s 61st Annual Local Author Exhibit (Central Library, January–February 2027).

Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9822892-0-9 · Publisher: Giancarlo Sta Cruz · 6×9 paperback, $12.99 · Ebook $4.99.

Press kit, review copies, and event inquiries: [email protected]