I have an unusual side hustle/hobby job in my slightly early retirement. I assist some large companies in one specific area of their business as a contractor/consultant. I make one year deals which I have to renew at the start of each year. I enjoy the work but I do not really like the marketing part where I have to convince them to sign up for my services. Because of this, my entertainment employment gigs are fun for eleven months but a real pain for that first part of the year. The work itself is very part time most of the year and gives me the social and networking outlets that make me feel connected. It also makes me feel productive in a way my volunteer work doesn’t, and my recreational hobbies are more fun when I do not do them all day every day. So, what is the problem? It is that my hobby job is only fun 90% of the time. Poor me!
Then I think about the other things that occupy my time, like my volunteer work chairing a college board of trustees. Zero pay, lots of meetings, heaping piles of government bureaucracy and bickering board members to placate. Honestly, I would have to rate it as fun only about 10% of the time, the exact inverse of my paid side gigs. But it is important, it is a low cost, two year school that almost everyone attends for free. It teaches not just standard academic courses but things like welding and computer technology. It has been the only ladder out of a hole of poverty for hundreds of people in the time I’ve been there. I gladly do it because it matters, even if it is hard and often tedious.
The charitable foundation I chair is probably 50/50 on the pain/fun scale. It directly spends millions each year helping people who are struggling. And it is free of most of the red tape and inefficiency that seems embedded in academia. But we still have over 100 employees and anyone who has managed a large group knows that some people will always find ways to misbehave even if they are saving lives for a living. I think it is one of the best non-paid charity gigs anyone could ever have. Like the college it makes me feel like I’m making a difference. But still, half the time it is not fun, just necessary.
My recreational activities like distance running, tennis, off roading, fishing, hiking, bushwhacking, skiing and traveling are probably fun 90% of the time. But even having fun has some decidedly unpleasant potholes now and then. The bushwhacking to find waterfalls is tremendously satisfying but there are days when the falls cannot be reached without taking foolish risks of falling to our deaths. Those are days we limp back to the car bruised and bleeding having failed to reach our goal. And sometimes the fish don’t bite, the outboard motor won’t start or the boat trailer gets a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. But usually, 90% of the time it is good day when we are recreating. Until I started to write this it had not occurred to me that I have about the same level of enjoyment with my consulting side gigs as I do with my recreational hobbies! But I suppose that makes sense to me because in my previous life as a 9 to 5’er I also had fun most of the time at my job, and a great day at work was just as fun as a great day on the lake.
I know some people cannot relate to that because they rarely have great days at work and I’m sorry for that. Spending that much of your life doing something that doesn’t light you up very much, or maybe never does, is tough. I suppose it is one big reason for the FIRE movement, the pressure to escape, at least for those who hate their jobs. But work was always a favorite hobby for me even when I worked six days and played one. Now that I play six and work one it is still all good, neither better nor worse than my previous life. Strike that, it is better now, just not by an overwhelming margin.
What about you? Some of you are retired, some early retired and some years away from being in the financial shape to consider retiring. Have you started to think about what your weeks will look like when you no longer go to work? Or if, like me, you only work about a day a week what else will you do? I thought a lot about it for many years before I triggered my exit strategy. I cultivated the contacts and skills I would need for my side gigs, because they were not part of my previous job’s core competencies. I also set up my volunteer positions because, while they aren’t as much fun as the rest of my life, there is value in doing things that help others, even if they are hard and sometimes tiresome things.
But the thing I did that was most important of all was to invest time and creativity into my marriage. And my wife did that as well, much more even than I did. I can’t imagine being in this wonderful time of life alone instead of with the person who has been my best friend for over 40 years. I have a good blogging friend who recently lost his wife and my heart goes out to him. Thoughts and prayers for you, my friend Steve.
Sure, it annoys me that she easily outruns me on our distance runs and it is getting very difficult to keep beating her at singles tennis. On the other hand, I’m also pretty proud that she can outrun the other guys, and when I get to play doubles with her as my partner, I really appreciate her skills on the court.
As I consider the path that brought me to financial independence and a happy slightly early retirement it occurs to me it was all about investment. The time I invested in gaining mastery of my engineering and management skills provided us with a high income on just a single career. The money we didn’t blow on cars and fancy houses, but invested, freed us from any money worries now. The time we invested in our family gave us great kids and an awesome best friend in each other. The time we invested helping others added to our sense of purpose and gives us outlets to keep helping people in need. Maybe it was because I had my boat so close to the dock that I barely noticed the change when I stepped aboard retirement three years ago. I know others write about various stages of adaptation they struggled with upon leaving a career behind but I never had any of that. Just an incredible feeling of lightness that came with not being the guy they called when something went wrong at the plant.
Life after the nine to five is not totally awesome, there are still some things I make myself do that I would rather not. But it is indeed mostly awesome, most of the time! But only if you have invested wisely with more than just your money.
Do you think you’ll feel the need to do some paid work of some kind after you “retire”?
If you do, what can you do now to build a path that leads to that work?
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I admire that you have the patience to volunteer time with large teams of people. I do not have that patience. I have not worked a corporate job since May 2000. Large groups of differing opinions are a bit maddening to me. It’s not so much that I have to be right or have my way, but it’s really hard to listen/watch/go along with someone that is 100% wrong. If FI has brought anything to me, it’s that. I minimize the places where I have to have that feeling.
Since the decisions are not technical and generally aren’t going to wreck anything beyond repair I’m never in that position of thinking they are totally wrong, like I sometimes was in my corporate and engineering past lives. But like you I’ve managed to spend most of my time doing things that do not go against my nature because we just don’t have to anymore! I strongly deny that my wife is correct when she says that I always have to be right, I don’t have to be right, I just usually am!
I like your “90% / 10%” rating system. I accepted a paid Board of Director position after I retired last June. It’s a “90% enjoyable” side hustle, mainly because it’s minimally “invasive” (1 conf call per month, and 1 face to face meeting per quarter) and highly compensated.
Also, I couldn’t agree more on the importance of the marriage relationship in retirement. It matters more than almost everything else in retirement. Invest in your marriage, it’s even more important than the financial aide of retirement (and life!).
I’m so jealous, you really have to be a big dog to get that kind of board position! Several of my friends are on those, but not me. I keep hoping someone will offer me one but it isn’t looking likely. My side gigs pay well and don’t overwork me but they pale in comparison, that’s very cool Fritz, I’m not at all surprised. Good comments on marriage. I should have added that even though I did invest in my marriage that marriage is still kind of a crapshoot. I mean most of us were very young, not very wise and I never felt I was that much smarter than my friends who married badly. I was just very very lucky. I do believe in investing in marriage but it probably is not going to fix anything if you married someone crazier than you.
I appreciate your honesty. I don’t think people like to admit how many things in life have their benefits and their drawbacks. That leads to unreasonable expectations for others too. I see it all the time in the military especially. Just like you mentioned the drawbacks of the charitable foundation or your hobby, but the pros outweigh the cons. I just think too often we want things to be 100% positive, and even as an optimist I know that’s just not reality.
You said it better than I did. I don’t think we could even function as humans if we were totally happy all the time. But being an optimist is definitely a plus, because there is no reason life can’t have the balance tilted in favor of the good things.
That is great you had a job that gave you the same level of happiness as your recreational hobbies. Unfortunately I bet that is the minority scenario for the general population.
It is great to see you take on stuff that is barely fun for the good of your fellow man and community. Again a very rare trait and likely one that doesn’t play out often.
I’m not as noble as that sounds. One of those is an appointment from the state Governor and it affords me a lot of great contacts in the political sphere so there is some self interest, even if not a whole lot. The other one, the foundation, lets me work with some great people and it is the rare foundation that has so much money already that we really do not do any significant fundraising. We fund several million in charitable missions just from growth of the endowment. So while it is a lot of work it is kind of a dream of a charity, most of which are focused almost as much on raising money as they are on helping others.