My Friend Died

My friend died last week.  He was 82 and was someone very special in very many ways.  In our small southern city/town he was a force of good who had a hand in some of the best things to have ever happened here.  I and many others loved and admired him and will miss him greatly.

But he also was the first early retiree I ever met, long before it was a thing and long before the FIRE movement existed.  You see, my friend retired in 1986 at the age of 49 and spent the next 33 years of his life living with, in his own words, “work shifted to the bottom of his list of priorities” and with “seeing all of this world” shifted to the top.  I did not know him well until about 20 years ago when I started running with his morning distance running group.  But after that I spent a lot of time with him volunteering at charitable and civic organizations, running marathons and making annual trips to watch baseball in Saint Louis. 

My friend, before early retirement, was the stereotypical picture of the hard driving corporate executive.  He had started at the bottom of the insurance business but through hard work and talent had risen near the top of that world with hundreds of agents spread across many southern states reporting to him.  He was a big deal in that world and made a considerable amount of money.  He worked long hours, travelled constantly and made work one of the very top priorities in his life.  The thought of retirement was an unpleasant thing in his mind, something to be staved off for as long as humanly possible.  He was a good father and husband but balanced that with a fierce commitment to his career. It is very likely he would have stayed in the 9 to 5 corporate executive role until he reached conventional retirement age or maybe even longer, until tragedy struck his family. 

He and his wife were out of town on a trip when his teenage daughter, who had stayed home under the supervision of an older brother, was killed in a car wreck.  She was a great kid with a future full of possibilities, and then she was gone in an instant.  Grief is much too weak a word to describe the impact this had on my friend.  Devastation, that comes closer.  He was wrecked, displaced from his former life and adrift.  He was a man of strong faith but how does faith explain things when you have to bury your child?  He grieved and he healed, to the extent that you ever heal from that kind of loss, and he stopped.  He stopped his routines, stopped going to work, stopped seeing what used to seem so important as mattering anymore. 

That could have been the end, he could have sunk into despair and found comfort in a bottle, opioids or by doubling down on being a workaholic, but he didn’t.  He stopped and thought and pondered his future.  He still had two sons, a wonderful wife and the rest of his life to live.  He decided it was too precious to waste, that he was going to be intentional about his life and trade his time only for things that had value.  He shifted around his priority list, he kept family and friends and faith at the top of the list, but he moved work way down toward the bottom.  And he began a new life. 

He could do that in part because he had saved and invested wisely and had already amassed a nice portfolio. Plus, he enjoyed dabbling in real estate and entrepreneurship, so he had several sources of passive and active income from what were favorite hobbies of his that did not feel like work at all.   His health was OK at that point but like many men of that generation he was a smoker and did not exercise. 

After quitting his job his next big life change was to change his sedentary lifestyle into a very active one.  He started slow but added running, weight lifting, tennis, hiking and biking to his hobby set.  He refereed high school and college football games.  And because he was an “all in” kind of guy he committed himself seriously to fitness.  Over the next 25 years he would run 82 marathons, including marathons on each continent on the planet.  He would even run back to back marathon races on a Saturday followed by another on Sunday.  He climbed over 30 mountains, at least one on every continent.  He lifted millions of pounds of weights, cycled all over the world and changed his diet to one designed for health.  He quit smoking and became as healthy a person as I’ve ever known, who could run and cycle with the best of them well into his 70’s. 

He determined that travel was one of his priorities and he made his way to 106 countries across the globe.  He had a huge map on his office wall with push pins at every location he had traveled to, it was completely covered with pins!  His wife made most of those trips as well and she was as fit and strong and adventurous as her husband.  Their trips included a wide group of active friends of all ages that grew with each new person they met.  Their unrelenting optimism and curiosity about each new country was infectious and drew others to them. 

Besides health and travel my friend was incapable of seeing a need without trying to meet it.  He was a giver and plugged himself into local nonprofits and his church to find ways to help kids who lived in poverty have a better chance of succeeding.  He had decided that spending time helping others, especially those who desperately needed help was another one of his top priorities.  And because he was financially independent, he did not have to spend his days working for money, he could spend them working to help others.   He also could afford to give generously to support the causes he believed in. 

He helped inspire a program that provides five years of free college tuition and fees for every graduate from our local public school system, money they can spend at any college in the country, not just local ones.  It isn’t need based or awarded on academic merits, it goes equally to rich trust fund kids and impoverished ones, academic all stars and struggling students. 

I could go on, its hard to condense 33 years of exceptional living into 1500 words.  And it should be hard, I hope if someone tries to write my life someday, they’ll struggle with having too many good things to include.  I’ve just scratched the surface when it comes to my friend. 

But what if?  What if tragedy had not blindsided him and knocked him off the predictable path of his life back in the 80’s?  Would his life have gone on to be so remarkable, would anyone remember him after he passed?  Would we have cried at his funeral?  I don’t know, my friend chose to become a different man with different priorities because of that accident.  And most of us will not have that experience, and without it most of us might just keep living the same, safe, boring existence. 

I never considered retiring at 49, I was 59 before it occurred to me that I had done all I wanted to do in the corporate world and that my priorities needed to be shifted, much like my friend did.  But I’m very grateful I did, my life has been much fuller and more relaxed and just plain fun the last four years.  I’ve also been able to give back to help others less fortunate than me. I have time to truly engage in helping people since my days are not spent earning money anymore.  I highly recommend it and so I highly recommend the prerequisites that are required for you to have this choice.  You have to control lifestyle inflation, save and invest aggressively and guard your health to make this work.  And most of all you have to stop and take a hard look at your priorities and make sure they reflect the life you want to live, for the rest of your life.

I’m posting this in honor of my friend.  I’m hoping that his story will encourage others to look for more than just a bland boring life.  Hoping it will encourage you to seek and reach financial freedom so that you can live your best life with the freedom to set priorities that make your heart happy!

What about you?  Have you decided what your priorities in life are?  Is career high or low on your list and are you OK with that? 

Have you ever had a personal role model that inspired you to be better than you are, like my friend has inspired me?