Most of the energy that vibrates within the hearts and souls of the FI and FIRE community resonates with frugality, aggressive savings rates, economic life hacks and safe withdrawal rates. It makes perfect sense because this community, while diverse, is also over represented with millennial and Gen X members. FIRE was never a thing in my baby boomer world and in fact most boomers are simply befuddled with the concept of walking away from a perfectly functional, if not fulfilling job until you hit 66. The only real exceptions were military or government jobs that provided full retirement after a 20 or 30 year hitch and even most of those men and women started a second 9 to 5 career right after leaving with that fat pension.
I decided to retire in my 50’s, barely still in my 50’s, and while that sounds like conventional retirement to most in the FIRE community it was very early for someone who was in the corporate officer ranks of a Fortune 500 company. Most of the chemical and mechanical engineers I started work with hoped to someday manage a large department or perhaps a facility. Only a few attained that and even fewer of us made it to the promised land of large stock options and bonuses. Of those most of the ones I knew personally worked past normal retirement. My old boss for instance announced his retirement recently to be slated for 2019. He’ll be over 70 then and that is about average for people in his position in our industry. In good years he makes the better part of a million dollars depending on profit related bonus and stock deals. Unless he is totally incompetent with money, and I know he is a very level headed guy, he has been FI for at least the last twenty years. His net worth is probably north of ten million at this point in his life, so why is he still working?
I think I know, because if you had asked me seven years ago I would have told you I was planning on working until I was 70 myself! Stay with me millennials, it may help you understand your own parents a little better. Work was a game. Now I don’t mean it was all fun but that the point of games is to try to be the winner. Who ever played Monopoly (or Call of Duty, OK?) with the goal of losing? In my day work was viewed as the same thing, a win or lose proposition. Not something to tolerate until you could escape it but as life’s grand challenge and one where winning got you the nicest houses, the coolest cars and the biggest bank accounts. Some of us wanted all three of those and others, like me, were naturally frugal and just saw the money as a way of keeping score, not much different than Monopoly money. Or maybe golf is a better metaphor. I hate golf, I’m a good tennis player but golf is so much better for drawing comparisons to life. Nobody goes out to play golf intending to lose. They know their ability so they don’t expect to shoot par probably but they still compete with themselves and their friends. And if they are not very good they usually keep on playing anyway. They do not generally find themselves in a place where they feel “GI”, Golf Independent, and that it is OK to walk away from golf forever.
And there is this, and this is where I will sound elitist and privileged. The boomers that did choose early retirement were often losers at the game of work. Like golfers who were totally inept (me) the work game was such an unproductive and unsatisfying string of personal defeats that they finally couldn’t stand it anymore and they just dropped out. The winners were the competitive people that blew by their rivals. The ones the rest were jealous of and sometimes hated. And here is the crux of my message. Winners do not quit their game willingly. Can you imagine Tiger Woods walking away from golf when he was the best in the world because he was financially independent? Or Tom Brady retiring from the Patriots five years ago? Why would a hot shot engineer or CEO who feels he is in the top 1% of the world’s players in his game walk away before he has lost a step. And while pro athletes wear out their bodies in their 30’s knowledge workers usually are pretty much as smart at 70 as they were at 35.
And that is why FIRE never caught with most of my generation and why slightly early retirement is about the best we can manage. Most of my friends will work until 66-70 because we do not understand the nature of work in the same way you do. In retrospect I think you have a healthier view, particularly if you are really adept at work. There is even a cliché for the trap that talent can be for the high earner’s mindset, golden handcuffs. If you are really good at work then you stand a chance at making a lot of money and having your peak earning years be in your fifties and sixties. So the only way out of your 9 to 5, which for the elite workers is more like 6:30 AM to 7 PM, is to walk away from the game while you are still an All Pro player. How often does that happen in the sports world? Never. Similarly it did not happen in my generation very often in the world of the corporate elite.
I only got out of my golden handcuffs because of this community and the way it confronted me with the stark reality of my financial independence. I very easily could have become my boss and faced another decade of long hours at a job that I found increasingly unpleasant. I am so thankful to the bloggers and podcasters in this space for building a place in my head that made retiring early seem acceptable and perhaps even noble and admirable. The message of trading working for money to spending your time on what is truly significant to you, to me, took about two years to grow to fruition in my mind and heart.
Most of my still working friends are puzzled by the fact that I do not have a full-time job. Some of my former coworkers seem uncomfortable around me, as if I must be damaged goods, a former star who blew out his knees and can no longer play the game. It is a struggle to relate how this new world I live in works to people who are still drinking the Kool-Aid I used to love. They are somewhat mollified by the fact that I consult a little bit but when I try to say I just do that for fun now, not for money, they act as if I switched to speaking in Russian or an unknown tongue. It is why I blog, because you people, you understand me better than they do. The FIRE community is very diverse but also very accepting. Even long in the tooth boomers are welcome here. Thanks for that.
Wow! This post really spoke to me. I have decided to completely retire at 61 after going part-time at 56. I do think plenty of people think I am a loser and too old to adapt to the changes in my industry which is medicine. The truth is simply I do not want to and I do not have to. I was good with saving and investing and MMM really rethink a lot about my life and goals.
I actually started that post to be about handing down inheritances and chased a rabbit and found myself consumed by writing about the dynamics of retiring slightly early for people around 60ish. It is a whole different thing than millenials and Gen X’rs deciding to retire at 37. I think that many people like you and me do not see retiring at 55-62 as being a choice but for people that handled money well it is almost certainly affordable. Unfortunately those people are not reading blogs very much and I really think they need to hear this message the way you and I did. Thanks for commenting and for doing life right.
This is a terrific post indeed Steveark! I do notice very few boomers retire early. My father-in-law retired at 62-63 which is just a hair less than the actual retirement age of 65. But every generation has their ideal and that’s
the Kool aid they drink. You were too early on entry I suppose but you did manage an early retirement life and that’s really cool!
You are one of my very favorites Lily, so it is beyond cool when you like something I wrote! I do think there is a mental thing going on with Boomers where they don’t even consider retiring early because it just is not present as an option in their minds unless they are in government service with a full pension where they have been thinking about it their entire career. But every day a few more of us “mature” types are finding the community. The tragic part is Boomers are aging out of this option before they recognize its existence.
As a Gen Xer. I feel caught between boomers and millennials. I want to win the game, but also RE and enjoy myself. I like the way you’ve framed the topic.
Gen X really is kind of like a cross between Boomers and Millennials so that makes sense. It is a real struggle to give up the game when you hold all the winning cards!
Financial independence doesn’t work for a lot of people because they’re taught and live financial dependence. It’s part competition, part societal expectations and norms, part upbringing and part lack of knowledge. I think there’s also this belief that the company you work for has done well for you and you want to do well for the company. That’s prevalent in other generations but I think it’s starting to get less prevalent now as companies are less and less devoted to their employees and more devoted to cost savings.
So true, I use the analogy that companies used to be like families where the stronger members support the weaker but now they are like professional sports teams. In families the members are loyal to each other no matter what. On pro teams the team is loyal to itself and focused only on winning results. Once a player loses a step then they are traded or cut from the team. There is no loyalty from the team to a player, the player is just a means to an end. It is efficient in a cold blooded heartless sort of way, but it is a cruel Darwinian system and that is what the modern business world has become. Very insightful comment!
So glad I ran across your site (from PoF Sunday Jest). Your journey is very relatable to me. Late 50’s, engineering, longtime FI, Breckenridge, off roading, hiking, tennis, … . I got pulled into working again 18 months ago & I am simply flabbergasted when I look into my checking account every so often and there are more paychecks in there. How lucky am I (you)? But, there is a constant pull to spend more time in the Airstream and/or Colorado, so this will turn into more of a part time lifestyle gig before too long. I’ll keep watching your site. Good luck.
Thanks, in an odd coincidence I just spent the last two hours trying to sort out some tax stuff and after a lot of head scratching I found that I had only been paid for five out of six invoices I sent a side gig client in 2017. The missing payment is over $10,000 but I had just not noticed it since that client was paying me through a big law firm and there were a lot of lags in the system. I told my wife I hope we can collect, it has been months since I sent the original bill, and she was kind of “oh well if they do great if not, its only ten thousand!” Believe me in my early days ten thousand was six months pay but now it really is not very important, other than I’d like to be paid since I did the work. We should go on a off road ride sometime or a hike!