If you’re working toward early retirement, here are four things you might not have planned for once you reach your goals.
After five years of meticulously managing our budget, doubling our income, and paying down $300,000 of debt, my partner and I reached a financial goal I thought would take us at least another 10 years.
This means that even though we were in our thirties, we have enough money invested to make work optional, according to the calculation traditionally used by the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement.
For us, our FIRE number equates to $1.2 million, which would cover modest living expenses of about $4,000 per month. It’s not a lifestyle that would be lavish by any means, but we have the mental peace to know that we could afford basic home, food and health expenses for the foreseeable future.
Hitting this number, however, did not end our financial freedom journey. Instead, it kickstarted us into our next phase of money management; improving our tax and drawdown strategies, detaching our identities from work, and learning how to truly relax for the first time in our adult lives.
You should also know that there are other unanticipated challenges with reaching your retirement goals early that I’d like to help you emotionally and mentally prepare for.
Detaching From Cultural Expectations Of Career Success
As first-generation Filipino Americans, both our parents stressed to us that success would be a high-paying, stable blue-collar job with a 401(k) and a clear, linear career path.
Now, without the pressure of having to work as hard as we had in the past, we’re both excited to try new kinds of work that we have intrinsic interest in. My husband is exploring childhood hobbies like collecting and trading comic books. It has been rewarding to treasure hunt, meet and support the small-business owners who run these shops around the country.
I’ve taken my interest in creating personal finance content on social media and courses to writing articles and becoming a more seasoned stage speaker. A few years ago, I never would have dreamed of calling myself a speaker or a writer because I was more focused on making money than on honing my skills.
Knowing that we have the cushion of a basic retirement in our savings gives us more confidence and time to explore what different careers can be a fit for each of us — without the pressure to stick to them if we find they don’t suit us.
Letting Go Of The Forever Home Concept
We’ve started to reinterpret our version of the American dream. We’ve moved to a new neighborhood every few years, and we dream of owning multiple small apartments around the world, rather than just one big home that we buy and pay off for 30 years like our families did.
After reaching our FIRE number and paying down our 4-bedroom home in Charlotte, North Carolina, we bought a smaller condo in the mountains of Asheville, a two-hour drive away. We learned that we didn’t really miss the maintenance a larger home requires and enjoyed our weekends exploring nature instead of the aisles of Home Depot.
We ended up selling both the larger home, and the condo and are finding that less lawn and household items to maintain better fits our definition of retirement. We’re currently renting and absolutely love the freedom that comes with being able to move to a new place without much hassle.
Redefining Retirement Beyond Travel
This past year, my husband and I gave ourselves permission to slow down investing and re-route those funds toward vacations, restaurants, live music and expanding our board game collection.
With both our jobs becoming fully remote, we tried becoming digital nomads, something I had long fantasized about, even before the pandemic.
It’s been a lot of fun, except for a twist we didn’t see coming: we found it all to be incredibly exhausting. Waking up in a new city every few days isn’t as thrilling as I thought it would be. I learned that I actually enjoy sleeping in my own bed, cooking my own food and most of the board games have gone untouched. When we go to concerts, I don’t look forward to big crowds and long lines like I did in my younger years.
I’m ashamed to say that I still sometimes find it hard to take a simple walk, read for pleasure or sit by a pool because I’m so used to being “productive.” One simple way I’ve worked on re-defining retirement is by keeping an “off screen” journal, encouraging myself to schedule downtime that doesn’t include a television, computer or phone.
I’ve recently performed my first (and last) stand-up comedy set, rekindled my love of hip-hop dance and am exploring my local city as though I’m a tourist, to see what else I might want to spend time on other than what I originally thought.
Learning To Put Health And Mental Well-Being First
According to a survey by Zety, 47% of respondents feared retirement more than poor health. To be honest, our financial freedom journey started because I was on the verge of a mental breakdown and burnout. Hitting our FIRE number not only gave us financial room to breathe, but literal room to breathe.
Now, I have more time to focus on the basics of healthy living — sleeping normal hours, exercising regularly, eating intentionally, visiting my therapist regularly, and spending more on medications and supplements that I used to ignore. When either of us have gotten sick, we no longer rush back to work right away.
Now, rather than centering our time around maximizing productivity and achievement, we’re learning how to prioritize rest and relaxation for the first time in our adult lives. I’m learning that there’s so much more to this journey even after you reach your financial goals, and it continues to be a work in progress.
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