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The 12th Floor: How a GS-8 Retired at 57 with $5 Million (Without Working a Day Past 56)

The 12th Floor is a personal-finance memoir by Giancarlo Sta Cruz, a U.S. Navy veteran and Filipino-American immigrant who works as a GS-8 anesthesia technician at VA San Diego. He maxed his TSP for a decade on a GS-8 salary, kept the spreadsheet for twenty years, and lives with his dog Pepper in a 500 sq ft condo on the top floor of a 12-story building — technically, the penthouse.

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THE FACTS

Author: Giancarlo Sta Cruz
Publisher: Giancarlo Sta Cruz (own ISBN, no imprint)
Publication date: 28 November 2026 · First edition: November 2026
Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9822892-0-9 · LCCN: Pending
Paperback: 6×9, B&W interior on cream paper, 241 pages
Prices: ebook $4.99 · paperback $12.99 (launch promo $9.99 until 12 reviews) · hardcover $25.99 (later) · signed hardcover $39.99
Genres: Personal Finance · Memoirs
Contact: [email protected] · the12thfloorbook.com

FROM THE BACK COVER

“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.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Giancarlo Sta Cruz arrived in San Diego from Bataan, Philippines in 1998 with $100 in his pocket, enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 17, and served as a Hospital Corpsman (1999–2006) in Great Lakes, Okinawa, and Quantico. He bought back his Navy time, climbed from GS-6 to GS-8 as a medical instrument (anesthesia) technician, and built roughly $800,000 in retirement savings by age 44 from a January 2008 TSP start — starting from a $6,236 contractor profit-sharing rollover that fell 37% in its first year. He grosses about $90,000 a year — with on-call and overtime, not base pay alone. The 12th Floor is the book he went looking for: a regular paycheck, twenty years of receipts, no shortcuts.

INTERVIEW ANGLES

The receipts: a GS-8 who maxed the TSP from 2014 and printed the ledger — contributions, match, and the $6,236 seed — to the dollar.
The penthouse: 500 sq ft on the 12th floor of 12, a Boston Terrier, and stealth wealth with a sense of humor. The cover tower is his actual building.
The immigrant arc: Bataan to San Diego; the sari-sari store where he read newspapers at 12 is the book’s spine.
The service arc: corpsman to VA anesthesia tech — the discipline started in uniform; the first TSP dollars came after the Navy.
Pepper: the book is dedicated to him. He eats real chicken, keeps guard duty at the bedroom window, and is available for local segments.

DOWNLOADABLE ASSETS

Front cover — download the cover (JPG), cropped from the locked wrap.
Full cover wrap (front / spine / back, 241 pp spec) — available on request.
Author portrait — the golf-course barong photo from the back cover; available on request.
Press headshot — suit portrait — download the headshot (JPG).
Chapter 1 taster — free through the launch-list signup on the home page.

One-line positioning: “Walden for feds” — with the receipts as proof.

REVIEW & INTERVIEW REQUESTS

Email [email protected]. Advance copies and interview availability open at launch; no embargoed material is posted here.