Month: March 2018

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.

What prompted me to even think about this somewhat morbid topic was reading an interesting post by “Retiring on My Own Terms” in which ROMT countered the argument popular recently in media that instead of saving aggressively people can more easily just work longer/retire later. One of the points he made rather elegantly was that trading time for money is not necessarily a good idea, particularly when your time is limited once you reach a standard retirement age.

Reading that I became obsessed with the concept that there might be an even bigger issue buried in that question. What if the choice of when you retire, whether that be early retirement, slightly early retirement (my choice), standard retirement or late retirement had an impact on not just the quality of your life but also on the length of life, your life expectancy itself? Is it possible Mr. Money Moustache has doomed himself to an early expiration date? What if being a rat on a wheel at a regimented and even unpleasant 9 to 5 extends your life span indefinitely? What if being let out of the cage is something humans are ill equipped to handle, something that will lead inevitably to our early demise? What if post retirement part time or full time work you enjoy, but know in your heart of hearts is unnecessary, is inherently unable to provide the same sense of purpose that a pre-retirement JOB provides? What if volunteer work or endless travel in an RV or a sailboat fails to make you feel relevant? Perhaps things are great until the kids leave and then early retirees sink into a deadly funk? What if Jack Nicholson was right and “you can’t handle the truth!”? Can you tell I love hyperbole?

This is far from a hypothetical question for me. I slightly early retired over two years ago and life has felt very good so far. But life felt pretty good prior to that too. I still work out the same amount, a little more tennis, but the same amount of running. I’m not gaining weight, I’m not sleeping poorly and I am not addicted to anything but it is clear that life feels different. I have not had a single bout with anxiety or depression either and I can honestly say the last two years have been two of the best in my life rivaled only by some early in my marriage, family and career.

I have very little stress but I also have less drive because I do not have many deadlines. The ones I do have are usually self-imposed so they are pretty lenient. In my old life there was a real boogeyman, my CEO, more terrifying than most of my childhood monsters. But now I move at my own pace, and like Frodo, I bow to no man. And it feels good! Undeniably it feels better, but is it better for me? I do not know and that frightens me a little bit. Because I firmly believe we are not capable of objectively assessing our own state of being. So I turned to research for an answer.

And studies show the answer is … whatever you want to believe! Of six reports I looked up one showed that early retirees die early, one showed the opposite, three showed conflicting data that made conclusions impossible and one opined that when you retire makes no difference unless retiring leads to unhealthy behavior, like sitting on the couch and eating bright orange cheese puffs all day. So what is a FIRE devotee to do if there is no great data out there on what is one of life’s greatest questions, “how do I live a long life?”

Here is where I get to throw my twenty-seven cents worth in. And my favorite quotes on the subject. From Vicki Corona, “life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away!” And from Steve Runner, “Life is short, but it should be long enough.” I believe there are two core factors in longevity, one is taking care of your health. That one is the easier of the two. In my case I run and play tennis, a lot. The other factor is much more complicated than getting some exercise and eating right. My personal belief about longevity(outside of good health) is that it is not a pursuable goal. Much like happiness it isn’t won by striving to attain it, it is a byproduct of striving for something else. And there, perhaps, is the answer. Finding your something else, your why, your big hairy audacious goal, your mission, your purpose.

And that, I believe, is the reason the data and the studies show disagreement. Nobody has found a reliable way to measure how closely people’s pre and post retirement lives are satisfying their “Why’s”. Any study that does not correct or normalize the data for an important variable is likely to provide inaccurate results. If somebody’s only or predominate reason to live was wrapped up in their job then it is reasonable to conclude that retirement may well kill them or shorten their life span. That seems to be more of a problem for my generation than with Gen X or millennials. The idea of finding one’s purpose through their 9 to 5 has fallen largely out of favor and barely has a toehold in the FIRE community. But that does not make you any safer from finding yourself in a purposeless life after you escape what feels like indentured corporate servitude. I consume blogs voraciously and even though I’m a boomer I still feel like I understand Gen X and millennials from what they write and from mentoring so many in my career.

It seems to me that the FIRE community is focused on the tech and the hacks required to get to the exit point much more than knowing what they will do when they get there. And that is a mistake, and really the point of this post. If you are on a planned trip to early retirement then start now planning what that life will look like. I think to just assume it will come to you in a blinding flash of insight after you quit your job is risky business that is not consistent with the careful way you are preparing financially. It deserves every bit as much thought and effort as becoming financially independent.

In my case, I recognized that work added a lot of meaning to my life so I carved out a few small consultant part time gigs that I could step right into. This was only possible because I had been planning it for a dozen or more years. No financial need for the income but earning an income always made me feel good about myself and I did not expect that to change, and it has not. It is still one of my “Why’s”. As someone who has been a public figure I like being in the news occasionally and negotiating business deals and my part time jobs let me continue to do that. And I like expressing myself so this non-monetized blog gives me a great outlet. I have a cluster of “Why’s” including several I will not list because the real point here is to get you to think about yours. You probably have anywhere from a year to maybe a dozen or more to plan your exit. You may find purpose in side gigs or in travel or in raising your children together. Maybe your first retirement project will simply be to find your “Why’s”. But I’d recommend not waiting until then. I was much happier starting my slightly early retirement with a plan I had been preparing for decades than I would have been with no plan. Will I live any longer because I’m happy and challenged by the life I’m living now? Seems very likely to me.

How about you, have you spent any time planning or visualizing what life after a full time job is going to look like? Do you think having a plan is worthwhile or would you rather just wing it?