Tag Archives: Early Retirement Freedom

My Early Retirement Was Never About Retirement

Financial Independence, Financially Free, Retire Early, Retire Often, , ,

Sometimes we have to adapt to difficult and changing circumstances. As people are being forced to reevaluate their retirement plans and careers, it’s easy to get hung up on the perceived safety of coloring within the lines of traditional definitions and norms. For many it may look impossible to figure out a way to financial security. Maybe a mental shift is needed and perhaps my retirement story will provide ideas. Even though what I did was characterized as early retirement, my leaving my career at the age of 51 was never about retirement. 

Everyone has a mental picture of what retirement is. I had a retirement image too and I knew that someday I would reach an age that the traditional definition of retirement would materialize. But that vision of retirement was decades away. My early retirement wasn’t that. Not even close. I wouldn’t accept that there was just one way to go. 

My Early Retirement Was Never About Retirement

Image Source 

I Retired Early But It Was Never About Retirement 

I do understand why I got the heat I did about my early retirement not being considered retired. I’ve gone with a different solution to counter the dregs of youthful work life. I wanted to ditch the rat race much earlier than waiting until a traditional retirement age. So I adopted a “retire early and often” mindset. I then created and executed a plan to achieve it. Taking a different direction where I wouldn’t have to wait until old age or having a million dollars in the bank. 

My Employment Liberation Motivation

After decades of relentless and unrewarding work, living under the threat of downsizing and the resulting financial ruin it could cause me and my family, I was motivated to reach a point of employment liberation. A financial condition where I never needed to kiss Corporate-keister or if forced into long-term unemployment have to rely on stingy safety nets to survive.

By the time I decided to work towards early retirement I had already made an interstate relocation to keep my job. Then came the long days in the office, 24X7 on-call duties, business travel, and constantly increasing workloads. There were harmful economic market bubbles and the recession that cruelly added more grief by providing easy excuses to further hammer workers. Sacrifices were made for the workplace promises of something better later. But as I and many people know, you can’t count on corporate world promises. 

What My Early Retirement Plan Targeted

I knew from day one of my financial plan that I was going to retire early and often. I later found a retirement definition that better captured that same mindset: Retirement is the absence of needing to work, not the absence of working.

It all came down to deciding that I’d commit to saving enough to cover living expenses and be free to pursue opportunities of interest and passions. I would welcome paid work in my early retirement but only on my terms. I’d only accept work that meets my criteria and always free to walk away at any time without threat of financial ruin.

What I Did To Reach Employment Liberation

Instead of trying to save a million dollars or more, which at my salary would take me well into old age if ever, I decided to go a different route: 

  • Create a sustainable happy lifestyle without wasteful spending. A frugal lifestyle that may not have included months of exotic travel, expensive cars, or second homes. But it also didn’t include feeling like we were living a deprived life. It was all about simpler living. 
  • Ramp up savings to save enough to cover that lifestyle in retirement. 
  • Maximize income with eyes wide open to leverage wins in the corporate world’s game. 
It started with cutting waste from our budget. 

We adopted a smart frugal and balanced lifestyle. It does take time and practice to figure out what a sustainable and happy frugal lifestyle is. We perfected it during our journey to early retirement. It was the lifestyle we wanted to live before and in retirement. 

Next was eliminating all non-mortgage debt. 

That effort further reduced our cost of living, that reduced our required budget, which equates to less needed saved for retirement to support it. 

Redirect excess income into savings.

It was then all about ramping up our savings to hit the portfolio target sooner than later. Once expenses are cut more money is freed up to invest. There was nothing extreme in my early retirement story. Just the same basic stuff everyone else in personal finance talks about. 

Always recognize opportunities to increase income and continually gain marketable skills. 

This is an effort that we all should do in our careers. Increased income results in more money to save. Increased skills adds to increased income opportunities now and after early retirement. 

My efforts also required me to better play the corporate world’s game. 

I focused on what management valued. They happily load us down with important but non-valued work. All the things we worked hard to do but meant nothing to management during our evaluations for raises and advancement. Tasks that management seldom loaded onto their pet employees. 

That stuff ate time. Usually eating into our personal time and always taking time away from game winning opportunities. I used their own values to decrease my efforts on that segment of responsibility and put all effort into their home run values. 

I then used their own values to challenge any of their objections to my work priorities. It was clear that the issue comes down to every personal success I could leverage into better raises for me equated to management taking some credit and reward too. 

How I Viewed My Portfolio

I did run my numbers through a retirement calculator to get a feel for my success chances. As for how much I saved, I didn’t have the luxury of shooting for a sizable portfolio that would perpetually generate enough passive income of dividends and interest to totally live off of. I knew I’d also spend down assets as part of my retirement funding bucket strategy. 

I simply thought of early retirement as a condition of unemployment. Whenever I saved money I thought in terms of how many days, weeks, months, and years of being unemployed would be covered. This thinking continued even when working in my targeted retirement gigs. I looked at my earnings that same way as I set the money aside to increase my net worth. 

I just had a different early retirement vision.

It was always my plan to retire early and then freely pursue opportunities of interest that were outside of what my first career allowed. Once that itch was scratched, I would then go on to the next one when the opportunity to do so presented itself. 

I was also content to sit out doing any paid work at all. It was an early retirement plan born of the hope for freedom through employment liberation. That and being shielded from the economic cycles and the corporate world decisions that seem to always mess with the working class. 

I didn’t have the luxury of a fat salary to pad a huge portfolio. 

Although it sounds wonderful if you have the bucks, I never even considered an early retirement of nothing but pure leisure and neverending travel. To tell the truth, that wouldn’t appeal to me regardless of money. We travel as much as we want to but enjoy where we live. I didn’t have to work in my early retirement to live our lifestyle. But I planned on being open to opportunities. Knowing I would most likely take on a paid gig at times. 

Wrapping up-

What having this mindset and plan did was allow me to take on rewarding work in retirement that I wanted to learn and do. Since I stayed on a budget funded by my portfolio, I funneled all earnings back into my net worth. After 11 years of portfolio funded early retirement, with a few working adventures thrown in, I now have a fatter portfolio to go along with my ability to live a better and freer lifestyle. 

Retiring young means still having all of the energy, spirit, and discipline that brought us success in life and career. I’ve found that we’re happiest when we can direct that energy towards something we value. I simply took what I had saved, created a way to access it to fund our frugal living lifestyle, and freed myself to accept opportunities when they were available to me. My early retirement was never about retirement as it’s hardly what many would call a retirement. Not unless the same retirement mindset that I have can be accepted. There’s always more than just one way. 

Celebrating My 11th Year Of Early Retirement, Although…

Financially Free, Living in the Moment, Retire Early,

Wow, today is my 11th early retirement anniversary from when I walked away from a long telecom career. It has been quite a ride, although I would be fibbing to say year eleven was a stellar year of early retirement living. I hope to soon look back and say at least I survived the pandemic of 2020. Not just the virus, but also the numerous other assaults on reason and humanity over the year. I will also look back knowing we did what we could to help others so it might be a little better. No, my 11th year of early retirement has nothing to brag about. There was a lot given up even within our frugal early retirement lifestyle. But with all of that, there are still some 11th year blessings to celebrate.

Celebrating My 11th Year Of Early Retirement, Although...

Image Source

It Wasn’t Great But I’m Still Celebrating My 11th Year Of Early Retirement

There are things that were cancelled or I had to stop doing this year. 

Hiking – 

We would hike the trails near our home 5 days a week. Just pick a path and go out for an hour or two. Normally we would see a handful of other hikers. But with lockdowns and the fortunate who could work from home, the trails were packed with people. Many without masks huffing and puffing. We grew tired of trying to avoid being too close to people and gave it up. 

Library – 

I really enjoy spending a little time at our library once a week. I had a routine to browse the DVD section for new movie releases and score a few for the week’s entertainment. First they were shut down and then once opened under restrictions I decided not to go back until vaccination. 

Social life – 

I missed my daily trip to the local coffee shop for a cup and social interaction. Once socially distanced indoor service opened up during the summer I would mask up and have a seat when there were few inside. A small taste of pre-pandemic life. But many times that meant going when nobody else was there for a break out of the house but not so social. Still, I wanted to continue supporting the business and when crowded I would simply settle for take out. 

Events – 

Our community has many free events. Concerts, car shows, Oktoberfest, art festivals, county fair, etc. I attend many and volunteer at some of them. It is one of the special things that make early retirement fun and a bonus for living here. This year they were all cancelled and a couple that went ahead were heavily limited and restricted.

Travel –

All of our travel was cancelled. Our yearly travel includes seeing extended family to stay connected. That really hurt. We did a few day trips June through September. Mostly to the mountains or small town destinations where we could sightsee and avoid crowds. For the most part we avoided going out and about anywhere public on these outings. 

Sit down restaurant eating, movies, and shopping –

Our last sit down restaurant meal was Valentine’s Day. Although we don’t typically eat out or go to movies all that much, we miss being able to freely do it. Occasional takeout was a less eventful substitute. Although we aren’t big shoppers, being able to just drop into grocery without much thought was missed. We’ve relied on online order and pickup and every trip into grocery for small needs took crowd analysis and run-ins with the infectious undead, I mean unmasked.

Lost friends –

I did lose people I knew or who were friends through death or beliefs. There were a couple of people who couldn’t accept my mask. My thought is that they were free to believe what they believe and to risk it all by having-at-it. But somehow my decisions to mask in public and heavily limit my social interactions were an affront to their existence, worth verbal attack and shunning. They at least gesture that I’m number 1 when they see me in town. 

There are plenty of reasons for me to celebrate early retirement year number eleven

No forced dangerous work –

I can imagine how things would have been had I still been in my first long career. A dark corporate mindset that loved to pick winners and losers based on measures other than performance or even job responsibility. Seemed I was constantly chosen for all the dangerous or less savorable duties. Sometimes under threat when challenged. I felt fortunate that I didn’t have to endure what many had to during this past year. Deciding between risking their health or losing their income. I feel for anyone whose work wouldn’t or couldn’t protect them from this plague. 

No threats to shelter and food –

Because of FIRE I never had to worry about making ends meet, unlike far too many others. Being debt free, frugal living, and having a long-term sustainable early retirement budget aligned with my savings meant uninterrupted sufficient income. 

Saved a lot in spending that allowed us to help our kids – 

Without travel or recreation this year we had extra room in our budget to help our kid’s families. They took income reductions and had added expenses when food and some service needs costs went up.

A couple of months working at my daughter’s new place –

My youngest daughter spent the lockdown with a teenager and two hounds in a 2 bedroom rented condo. That was enough for her to decide she wanted a home of her own. She was fortunate her lease was up and she jumped early after restrictions were eased to find a house. She scored an older home that needed some maintenance for a price within her budget. I was able to spend 2 or 3 days a week during August and September getting reacquainted with my tools, ladder, and old guy homeowner skills. It broke up the mononanty of pandemic life and helped her get to a good place. I also won the approval of her neighbors who were happy to see the place being fixed up. 

The ability to donate –

With so many in need we were able to up our donations for the socially oppressed and needy this year beyond our normal church and supported charities. We feel the unfairness of the power dynamics and the pandemic’s impacts. I’m still trying to grasp this crazy situation where those that work for a living get hit worse than the stock market. I get that the market looks ahead, but that doesn’t help those in the now. I don’t celebrate the situation but that we had the ability to do what we could. 

Freedom to believe in God, medical professionals, science, and decency –

This 11th year taught me a lot in how much freedom is within our own minds. I consider myself financially free but it means nothing without health, love, and life. How different my 11th year would have been had I been mentally imprisoned by conspiracy theories and idol worship. I’ve the freedom to not worry about what others do or believe, nor feel I’m a victim of “the others”. I’m the master of my own domain and don’t require anyone’s approval, acceptance, or membership. 

My 12th year early retirement planning

I don’t know what the future will bring. There is a lot quickly changing both near and far. I do know what I plan on doing at the most basic level. The rest will be a let’s see what happens first. If I’ve learned anything in these 11 years of retirement it’s the importance of embracing flexibility.

Vaccine –

I will freely choose to get the vaccine as soon as my number is called. I believe the rest of my year will bank on accomplishing that first. 

Masks –

Even after being vaccinated I plan that I will be wearing a mask until the 4th quarter when enough people have been vaccinated and COVID-19 trends look good. I’m hopeful events will start up again and I will happily attend them while being masked. The same goes with hiking, going to the library, shopping, and all the other little things that I enjoy doing. 

Limited travel to see extended family –

I am hopeful that I and my family will be vaccinated by this summer so that we can get together once again. Other than that I think we will wait for any other travel plans. I suspect as things safely open up that the overwhelming pent up travel demand will make things tough to get a decent deal anywhere. If I’m wrong about that then I will reconsider.

Hair –

I haven’t had a haircut since last February. It has gone far beyond shaggy to long and I’m reintroduced to my mid-1970s teenage long hair life. I fully embraced the bandanna headband, channeling my inner Tommy Chong while open top convertible cruising all summer. I see this next year going with more of a Viking look. Half up ponytail and maybe some micro braids. That is as long as my wife keeps her sense of humor. 

4th quarter normalcy – 

I am hoping for, thus planning for, pandemic numbers and facts to be great by 4th quarter 2021. Then full maskless life can once again safely make sense.

Continue my same asset allocation –

My portfolio asset allocation has been maintained through rebalancing and will continue doing so as needed. The market has escalated in hopes of a rebounding post vaccine economy, pent up demand, and a new presidential administration. Let’s hope it’s right.

 

Yes, my 11th year of early retirement was nothing fantastic. But I still feel blessed. I’m not planning on a fantastic 12th year either because of Rona and its damaging impacts are far from over. When I look back at this 11th year I will think about a mentality parallel between people ignoring pandemic safety recommendations and the basic FIRE principles that would better their lives. Basically you just can’t save everyone. And that’s OK. We all should have the freedom to choose our own path as long as we don’t drag others down with us if things don’t go our way or later cry about it. 

My early retirement journey was born of both crucible and hope. Something that this past year offered in abundance. Perhaps this pandemic and everything that has happened will cause us all to rethink our future and plan for a better life. Then do something to make it happen.

My Ten Year Early Retirement Anniversary: What’s Next?

Early Retirement Lifestyle, Retire Early,

I sometimes find it hard to believe that my ten year early retirement anniversary has come. Time passing quickly is a reality of my early retirement story. Never a boring moment.  It all started on Thursday December 17, 2009 when I walked out of the only life I knew. 31 years of life working in a career that I sometimes loved and a lot of times hated. If I am honest with myself it was for the most part an abusive relationship. 

I planned and purposely saved for 10 years to retire at the young age of 50. 

Then just as my FIRE goals were met a devastating recession struck. It felt like a sign from the almighty that I must remain in employment bondage, a feeling that fed once conquered early retirement fears. So I hesitated going forward with my escape plans as asset values across the board began their long drop with no end in sight. 

I stayed on the job.

I basically retreated back into the arms of my abuser and continued putting money away into what seemed like a black hole. It took another year before there were signs that the financial freefall had ended and a bottom found. A year that included weekly layoffs and piling ever more work obligations on the survivors. Oh how I begged for layoff and a sweet severance package, but always denied. Nope, I was destined to remain their beast of burden.

Signs it was time to go.

It was what happened in a management staff meeting that pushed me to conclude it was time. Just another in a long line of asinine comments from the CEO and new financial insults for the non-executive class. Recession or not, I just couldn’t serve under those overpaid bullying assclowns and delay my freedom plans any longer. So after a year delay I pulled the trigger at the age of 51, regardless of the recession’s end not yet being called. 

I celebrate this anniversary because retiring early and walking away towards freedom is one of the best decisions of my life. 

My Ten Year Early Retirement Anniversary: What’s Next?

Image Source

My Ten Year Early Retirement Anniversary: Reflections of this adventure and what’s next

Minute 1: Walking Out Of The Door For The Last Time

Freedom at last, it was finally over. I could feel a weight being lifted off of my shoulders. I don’t think my situation is much different than anyone else who has been in a professional non-executive position for a long time. Your company relies more and more on you to support important but unshiny legacy operations. Things they can’t seem to value when it comes to salary but lose their minds when there are problems or delays. All the crap that’s difficult to recruit and keep new people to do. 

In my case that included a 24X7X365 tethering by pager. I get it, that’s business and we do it or get canned. It’s a devil’s bargain. But that damn pager interrupted my life day and night through holidays, vacations, and weekends. Even when it never screamed. It had a mental weight of 100 pounds and demanded that it always be accommodated. 

Then there was this, something that drove me to this huge milestone- There was so much more I wanted to learn about and do in my life. I felt employment liberation as I walked to my car and drove away into winter’s early sunset.

The Decompression From A Career Mindset 

It takes time to detox from the corporate world. Retirement  can be a mind warp after spending a lifetime in a system of career obligation with only little breaks allowed. I thought I had it figured out. But the system of education and work is so good at conditioning us to be productive first, personal life second, that it took time to shed it. A few weeks in and I was happily enjoying the freedom to do what I wanted to do or do nothing at all without feeling guilty about it. 

That opened the door to my reinvention by replacing living productive as defined by my career mindset to instead living with purpose as defined by my interests and passions, no matter how silly or serious they were. Although I had always believed that I would be open to working in retirement under my terms, I used every minute of 5 months off to fully reset my brain before accepting an opportunity. 

Expanding My Social Circle

At the time of my retirement I had lived in my town for 13+ years and I didn’t really know anyone very well. My social circle was 99% work related. Saying that now sounds sad, but it’s true for many people. So I made working on my social circle a top priority. I uncomfortably opened myself up and pushed myself to be more social. It started by frequenting a locally owned coffee shop that I used to only visit on weekends with my son years before. It became my social outlet and is where I’ve made many new good friends in town. 

I also took advantage of opportunities to take free classes offered through the library, town, or local businesses and had a blast signing up to volunteer around town. Volunteer opportunities that ranged from single track hiking/mountain biking trail maintenance to pulling beer tap handles at town sponsored events. 10 years later and I still volunteer.

Making new friends and increasing our social life is something that adds happiness to anyone’s retirement. Looking back at this time of my ten year early retirement anniversary, expanding my social circle and being more connected to my community are my most valued retirement accomplishments. 

Embracing The Retirement Definition- It’s The Absence Of NEEDING To Work, Not The Absence Of Working

I have had fun and learned a lot doing my retirement gigs. They were much more enjoyable than my first career. The first opportunity was very close to home in a smaller company working in a field I had long wanted to learn about. It had far lower responsibilities than my first career which was great as a retiree to step back and just enjoy the ride. It was my first taste of working while retired on my terms regardless of money.

Then came my encore career. Another field and industry I had an interest in learning and experiencing. It actually paid more than my first long-time career which allowed me to do something I had never planned to do, clear my modest mortgage. 

Through it all I saved and invested all earnings from my paid retirement adventures. But in all cases when I learned and experienced what I wanted out of any gig or I could tell there was BS bucket deposits being made, I leave and return to retirement leisure regardless of salary. There have been a couple of other short retirement gigs during the past ten years and who knows, maybe some more in the future too.

Leisure Freak – What Started As An Internet And Website Building Lesson Turned Into A Fun Retirement Activity

While working in my encore career the younger analysts and developers always talked internet lingo. I decided I wanted to learn what it takes to build and run a website. Leisure Freak was then born. I never intended to be a blogger. In fact, I didn’t even know what a blog was.

I built Leisure Freak simply as an informational site but quickly learned the lords of search engines require blogs to build followers, backlinks, and social media feeds in order to place. I admit that I am not very good at it. There are just things I prefer not to do or worry about.

I do as much on Leisure Freak as I want. I have enjoyed my online relationships with other bloggers and have learned a lot about how the internet works. It’s amazing to see how talented people can earn a good online living if they strike gold. That’s certainly not me, I’m just happy that it pays its own way. It has been a fun ride so far. 

The Early Retirement Dream Of Travel

As far as travel goes in early retirement, everyone’s dream is different. The last thing I enjoy doing is jumping on an airplane after a decade of flying all over the country an average of a week a month during my career. We have done the fun and typical Hawaaii travel but what I have really enjoyed is road tripping. It’s budget friendly, on our timeline, and we travel as much as we want to. I do enjoy reading about other’s exoctic travels but it hasn’t been our thing, so far anyway. 

Money Reflections

I feel I should say something financial on my ten year early retirement anniversary. There are all the warnings about portfolio performance and withdrawal rate dangers during the first ten years of retirement. How what happens during those years determines long-term viability. Well, I have been receiving distributions in the 4.5% range from my portfolio since day one to fund my lifestyle. I have also plugged all gig earnings back in when I’ve worked, never considering any paycheck as extra spending money.

During the past ten years the markets have climbed and real estate has recovered. Since I escaped back 10 years ago my net-worth is up 35% even with it paying out the funding for my early retirement lifestyle these 10 years. 

However, it’s important to note these three noteworthy points: 

  1. I did not start with a million dollar portfolio.
  2. My retirement began in the very early stages of a recession recovery. 
  3. I leveraged any earnings from my short retirement gigs. 

Just saying.

It seems to work out when setting a reasonable withdrawal rate against a diversified investment portfolio. Then just letting your planned retirement lifestyle of purposeful spending do its thing. Yes, my withdrawal rate has been higher than what most recommend. But it isn’t forever. I fully expect to receive my earned Social Security benefit. If not, then it will fall on my plan B. 

So I Hit My Ten Year Early Retirement Anniversary, What Now, What’s Next?

For the most part it is retirement as normal. I will be living and doing a lot of what I have been doing. Monitoring finances and making family, friends, health, hobbies, fun, travel, giving back, all the good stuff of life my priority. Then there is utilizing the skill of saying NO to unwelcome obligation to work, people, or anything I don’t want in my life.

But there have been some areas I’ve been thinking about going forward:

I’ve been wondering, when does early retirement end and regular retirement begin? 

I don’t know why this was something my brain latched onto and it’s silly for sure. I have come to decide that early retirement ends at age 65 when I can finally end my high health insurance payments and go on traditional retirement Medicare health insurance. What does it matter? I like saying I’m in early retirement. I see it as a badge of honor.

It’s a huge accomplishment for me. A low income kid pulls off FIRE with no connections in the corporate world or connections in other influential areas of authority. I’m a nobody and that is just fine with me. I just worked my way into middle class by doing what others didn’t want to do. All the way to stealth wealth. Well, it’s my own definition of wealth, having just enough to beat the system and walk away young while still on top. 

Time to reach out and reconnect.

Once I retired my old work pals and I had little in common anymore. It could be too that they were a little pissed about my escape. I’m sure the overlords punished the remaining by dumping my work responsibilities on them. There are yearly Christmas greetings between some of us but today I can count on one hand those from that career that I am still close with. Some have since retired themselves while others still toil. I think it’s time to reach out and reconnect with some of my old work pals. Feel it out and see if there’s anything still there. 

Forgive my corporate tormentors.

I was able to disconnect from my past corporate life in major fashion. I never looked back. That might have played into my distance with ex-coworker pals. But I do take too much pleasure in mocking and disparaging certain aspects of management and corporate culture. Especially one particular CEO, now a convicted felon. Sometimes a little anger slips in. Especially when I read or hear about some of the same BS I endured happening to others either in the corporate realm or government ranks. My wife says I have some kind of corporate world PTSD because I get triggered and feelings of the past come out. I need to work on that and forgive but not forget. I will keep the mocking. 

Evaluate and take action regarding my changing interests and passions.

There are things that I pursued during these ten years of early retirement that I see my interest and passion fading. I now feel like going in different directions on parts of it. I think that is a natural occurrence. I’ve already identified some aspects that I was once ravenous about that now feel like I have held onto longer than I should have. I need to move on. Plans are already being made. There are things to get rid of and even sell to make a clean cut to create the space, both physically and mentally for the new.  

Preparing for a changing financial picture during the next 10 years of retirement.

There will be a lot of things associated to retirement finances happening during the next 10 years. I will see Medicare, Social Security, and even RMD at the end of this next decade of retirement. There are plenty of opportunities for tax and withdrawal strategies between now and then that I will be working on. 

celebrate 10 years of early retirement

Image Source

Well, that was a fun rambling. One thing is certain for what’s next- I’m looking forward to breaking from my Friday-only beer rule today. Yes, I’m having a ten year early retirement anniversary celebratory craft beer this evening at my favorite coffee shop. Right where I am likely to come across people I now know and feel blessed to have in my life. Prost!

Dreaming of Retiring in Your 40’s? These 5 Tips Can Help

Retire Early, Retirement Plan,

To retire at an early age of 40 something is a dream cherished by many. With a proper strategy, the financial planning hurdles can be tackled to create a substantial pool of retirement savings. Right from choosing the best retirement plans to cutting down on unnecessary expenses, saving for retirement requires knowledge and insight. If you too are working towards retiring in your 40’s, the 5 tips described below can prove helpful. 

Dreaming of Retiring in Your 40’s? These 5 Tips Can Help

Image Source

1 – Lookout for Taxes

It’s important that your investments are tax-efficient. You can save as much as is possible for you in 401(k), IRAs and other such options. With these options you can save more and grow your savings faster so that your retirement fund gets a boost. You can even benefit from the employee-sponsored 401(k) where your employer matches your contribution in your retirement account. The traditional 401(k) allows you to make either pre or post-tax deductible contributions and earnings are tax deferred until withdrawals/distributions. On the other hand, the contributions you make in a traditional IRA account are generally tax deductible and withdrawals or distributions are taxed. IRA vs. 401(k) is a perennial question. The best retirement plans are those which suit your financial health and the type of retired life you wish to live. 

 

2 – Save Half or More of Your Salary 

Generally, a majority of college graduates enjoy the peak salaries during their 40s. If they choose to retire at 40, they are curtailing savings by not contributing towards the retirement accounts during peak earning years. Besides, retiring at 40 also means you would have no access to Social Security or Medicare for at least 12 years into retirement. This would leave you with one less source of income and one more bill to foot during retirement. Also, the Social Security benefit will be reduced due to the lower average earnings when you actually attain full retirement age. Hence, if you want to retire early, you need to save 50% or more of your salary every year. 

 

3 – Invest Smartly 

Compound long-term growth investments are what you need if you wish to retire early. Otherwise, you may never reach your retirement savings goal or can run out of money during your retired life. Choose to be as aggressive with your investments as is possible for you. You also need to start investing as early as possible. Remember, the longer your investments have time to grow, the more likely it is that they would match the stock market’s long-term average return. 

 

4 – Avoid Unnecessary Expenses 

You can save money by cutting services which you pay for but do not use. Consider cancelling the subscription to that magazine which you never read, or the gym membership if you haven’t gone to the gym in months. The more such unnecessary services you cut off, the more money you save. 

 

5 – Get Rid of High-interest Consumer Debt

It’s best to free yourself entirely of any high-interest consumer debt or at least maintain a low debt-to-income ratio. Few debt obligations for real assets such as a primary residence or rental properties are exceptions as long as their monthly debt payments are low. If you plan on retiring in your 40’s, a 20% or lower debt-to-income ratio is advisable. 

 

Pro-tip: Your lifestyle expenses before retirement have a huge impact on your retirement savings. Minimalistic lifestyle can help you save more and faster for retirement. Besides, maintaining a simple lifestyle will attune you to a comfortable lifestyle post retirement even with fewer funds. 

 

The risks associated with early retirement cannot be completely mitigated. However, you can be foolproof with you plan. You can also seek professional help to test your investment portfolio in order to ensure that you are on the correct path.  

 

This informative post was contributed to Leisure Freak by Rick Pendykoski.

About the author:

Rick Pendykoski is the owner of Self Directed Retirement Plans LLC, a retirement planning firm based in Goodyear, AZ. He has over three decades of experience working with investments and retirement planning, and over the last 10 years has turned his focus to self-directed accounts and alternative investments. Rick regularly posts helpful tips and articles on his blog at SD Retirement as well as MoneyForLunch, Biggerpocket, SocialMediaToday, WealthManagement, SeekingAplha, and NuWireInvestor. If you need help and guidance with traditional or alternative investments,  visit  www.sdretirementplans.com.

Binary Early Retirement Is Nonsense

Financial Independence, Financially Free, Retire Early, Retire Often,

What seems to be an issue with some folks when it comes to financial freedom and early retirement is it’s either this or that. You’re either financially free and retired or not. Basically, If you choose to do any kind of paid work or activity then you are no longer retired or financially free. Give me a break, what a crock! Binary early retirement is nonsense. Having financial freedom means having choices without financial worry when using our common sense. Yet people just can’t shed outdated notions about early retirement and the financial freedom that allows for it. Especially those binary early retirement loving critics who haven’t experienced it for themselves. That said, let me say I do see why they think what they think and I hear their criticism. Simply, there are long entrenched traditions regarding retirement. However, let me explain where I am coming from. 


Binary Early Retirement Is NonsensePhoto by Franck V. on Unsplash

Why Binary Early Retirement Is Nonsense

After nearly 10 years of early retirement through financial freedom that has included a stepped down position, a highly paid encore career, a lucrative retirement side hustle, a fun little short-term retirement gig, and this early retirement focused website, I speak from REAL experience. I claim and truly believe I’ve been retired and financially free through it all. All the way back to day one in 2009 when I ditched my long career. I live it and I have enjoyed the hell out of it. I’ve even increased my wealth at my pleasure, on my terms, and at our corporate world’s expense (yes, I have a particular attitude toward the corporate world). A total win-win!

 

I use the terms “highly paid, lucrative, and increased wealth” above to get the attention of any financially focused binary early retirement believers. 

But the reason I can honestly say that I was still retired and financially free the entire time I was getting paid working is I had the financial freedom to accept worthy opportunities I was interested in doing without regard to pay. I also had the financial freedom to quit doing them as soon as my interest ended, regardless of what they paid, and I certainly did. 

 

Financially free early retirees still have all the energy and drive that got them there. If they choose to work pursuing their interests and passions they can still consider themselves retired and financially free. 

They can then add any earned income to their portfolio, donate it to charity, or use it to help support a cause or hobby they want to continue pursuing. That’s the freedom lifestyle earned through executing a successful spending, debt elimination, and investment strategy.

 

It’s the absence of NEEDING to work that defines retirement, not the absence of working 

 

That’s not just some catchy concept, it defines retirement perfectly. Reject the outdated and rigid notion that we work until we can afford to retire and then never work for pay again. Why be financially free and then put limits on our freedom? 


Everyone’s vision of financial freedom and early retirement is different 

What’s common among them is that they have enough of a portfolio and/or passive income to be able to pull off their desired version of FIRE. A version which may or may not include any paid work. 

 

If doing any paid work in early retirement turns you off then don’t do it. I’ve freely chosen not to be in the paid work game since the summer of 2016. But, if the right opportunity presents itself I wouldn’t binary label myself retired and not pursue it. That’s the beauty of financial freedom.

 

There’s no call for trolling or shaming anyone who engages in a paid activity in their early retirement. Nor any other dictates of binary early retirement where it’s this way to be considered early retired or you’re not. Don’t let others negative opinions who unproductively criticize dissuade you from your own early retirement vision. Take away ideas from financially free early retirement stories and live your own vision. 

 

OK, I feel better now.

 

My Ordinary Early Retirement Story: Nothing Extreme To See Here Folks

Early Retirement Lifestyle, Retire Early, ,

It’s a world where extreme anything gets the attention, even when it comes to early retirement. News flash! Early retirement isn’t only possible for those going extreme. I just lived a normal ordinary life and found a way to financial independence. Mine is an ordinary early retirement story. Married, 3 kids, house, and a long career that started at age 20. A career where I worked my way up from entry-level call-center representative to lead engineer. During all of that there were side gigs, night school, all the ordinary boring stuff we do to keep our heads above water and trying to get ahead.

The ordinariness of my early retirement story doesn’t end there. I didn’t retire early in my 30s or 40s, I was 51 years old. Young by traditional retirement standards but hardly extreme or a sensational headline. A total snooze. Nothing to see here folks, unless maybe you are also ordinary and interested in the possibility of retiring earlier than most.

My Ordinary Early Retirement Story: Nothing Extreme To See Here Folks

My Very Average And Ordinary Early Retirement Story

When many early retirement stories are centered around highly educated middle class folks making big bucks and deploying super saver strategies to retire really young, mine is a more unremarkable common man’s story. I grew up in a lower-income family. My father worked hard but was economically limited by his 6th grade education, my stay at home mother made it through the 9th. I was unable to snag a scholarship so college was out of reach. I did what most did in our socioeconomic situation, I got a full-time job right after graduating from high school.

In a nutshell…

Marriage

Married my high school sweetheart just before I turned 19. We just celebrated our 42nd!

1rst Home

Bought a new 980 square foot starter home a year later in the less than desired side of town with a FHA loan and a low 8% interest rate. We put in a lot of sweat equity to help cover the minimum down payment. They offered stuff like that back then in the late 70s.

College

Working full-time I took night college classes when I could, mostly paid for by work tuition aid benefits. I sure couldn’t afford to pay for it on my own with what I was paid.

Little bandits show up

At age 22 become a parent. We had 3 kids two years apart. All little blessings that we freely gave all our love and money to. Sure glad my job offered healthcare benefits.

Making it work

Childcare costs is and has always been a financial killer. My bride gave up her secretarial job and became a stay at home mom until the kids started school. I worked 2nd jobs and side hustles to make ends meet. Well, the ends almost met.

Debt issues

Incurred too much debt along the way when kids were young as we tried to get by. It was a struggle and a royal pain to manage until my wife could start working again. The same sad story for a lot of ordinary people.

Finally, saving for retirement

Started saving in a newly promoted  company retirement thingy called a 401K when I was 27. Something new that had a little company match to go with it. What an amazing concept!

Job mobility traffic jam

Stayed at the same telecom company 31 years through thick and thin, slowly advancing through the ranks. It took 17 years from my start as a service rep to becoming a network engineer. I don’t know if this means I have superpower patience or I’m just stubborn.

Move or lose your job

At age 37 I reluctantly accepted a corporate restructure inspired interstate relocation to keep my job. Moving my family to stay in my line of work was good for my career but a personal life regret.

Taking financial control

At age 40 became personal finance aware. I wanted something more out of life than constant corporate and employment obligation. Met with a financial planner aligned with my early retirement goal of retiring 10 years later at age 50. Things got real.

Hardly a salary superstar

I worked hard and was respected in my field, even nationally, but could never hit the 6 figure salary club. Talking with my peers from other “like” companies nationally I was fully aware that I was a chump. My company just salary-treated long-time employees differently, in a bad way of course.

Damn recession

October 2008 was my target retirement date but the deep recession caused me to flinch and delay my early retirement. I’m told that recessions will do that to a lot of people. Well, maybe only ordinary boring people.

That’s it, I’m done!

Late 2009 I decided the recession had hit bottom and the economy was going to eventually climb out. It was time to stop wasting time and retire at the age of 51 to live life on my terms. I gave a one month notice and started making preparations. Company lawyers chimed in as if I cared and f’d with me as much as they could. Turning in my pager to end the years of being on call 7 X 24 X 365 took a huge weight off of me and I felt taller as I left the building for the last time. Now who’s the chump!

Pursued some interesting opportunities

I believe that retirement is the absence of needing to work, not the absence of work. So I carefully chose some great retirement gigs. That’s nothing that retirement traditionalist will get excited about. Staying open to opportunity in early retirement is far from being an extreme topic that causes a buzz anywhere. In fact, I think a lot of early retirees understate how common it is to work and earn money doing something they enjoy in their retirement. So I’ll call this secretly ordinary.

Here are a few of my boring ordinary financial impacting moves that worked in my early retirement favor….

Debt and Savings

Sorry, but I had no secret investment strategy. What can I say? Automatic payroll deductions, compounding interest, reinvested dividends, stock growth, consistent dollar cost averaging, it works when given enough time. My motto – Saving anything is better than saving nothing. I started only saving the minimum for the full company 401K match and concentrated all extra money on debt payoff. Once debt free I stayed debt free other than our modest mortgage. I just piled all extra money into maxing out the yearly allowable 401K contributions and ROTH IRAs. Soooooo ordinary….

House

No house flipping, moving up to larger or better homes every X years, or leveraging equity to build wealth. I have seen some exciting stories of people who have successfully done that. Nope, not me. I just bought a house that I could afford without stretching finances too impossibly far and still meet our housing needs. I always boringly considered a house as a stable place to live and being a hedge on inflation. What did that get me? I’m in our second lifetime house free and clear.

Education

We didn’t have student loan debt to worry about. My wife went to community college to get a secretarial certification and I worked full-time. We paid for her tuition and books as we went. I took night classes and employer promoted remote learning courses when I could.

Later in life we had to make decisions and set limits as to what we could sensibly cover for our kids education. My son was an artistic hands-on guy so he went to a trade school to pursue his interests. Our daughters attended 2 year community college. One did go on to additional education. We paid as we went and nobody was saddled with long-term student debt. Is it just me, does anyone still choose this route anymore?

Frugal Living

The lifestyle we created to control spending and maximize savings is what I call frugal. It’s far from extreme. We never allowed lifestyle inflation to creep in after there was more money coming in over the years. We basically practice purposeful frugality since starting our FIRE journey and we’re constantly making tweaks. Others may disagree with my kind of frugality. I read some more extreme frugal efforts people use to reach employment liberation at super young ages and I am impressed.

What I did was push against our frugal threshold limits so our lives would still be enjoyable and keep our budget sustainable. Hacks here and there, coupons, have the patience to wait for sales, stop wasting money on nonsense, etc. Nothing extreme, just average normal stuff someone can do when they ditch blind consumerism. It does add up to big savings over time. I sure won’t win any frugality contest nor attempt to enter any. The funny thing is, when adding frugality, our lower cost lifestyle becomes a habit and ordinary.   

Paying for early retirement

I faithfully followed the aggressive but realistic 10 year early retirement plan created by my CFP when I was 40. No sensational or extreme story here other than I consistently stuck to it.  There was also a diminished retirement benefit that I earned and rolled into an IRA along with my 401K. I used a SEPP 72t IRA arrangement to avoid early withdrawal penalty to fund my early retirement. Unremarkably, with my ordinary life and financial status, there was no million dollar portfolio to retire early on.

Health insurance

Oh yes, the golden handcuffs that weren’t real gold. Even though a company merger did its best to destroy a lot of my company’s retirement benefits earned if you survived 30 years there, I left with a grandfathered but non-guaranteed retiree medical benefit. (I have to say that my staying there that long, given all the corporate BS they dished out, is the most remarkable thing in my story.) It allows me to buy into the employee health plan but is a “Use it or Lose it” benefit. It went up to $1,340 a month for 2019 and can be killed any year going forward.

I could save money by going on the ACA. I choose to stay with my retirement health plan as long as it lasts or until we become medicare eligible because the ACA is under constant political threat.

Retire early and often

I’ve had some awesome retirement gigs since my first early retirement that really worked out for me. Far beyond anything I envisioned. They were rewarding on both personal and financial levels until they weren’t and I just retired again. My lifestyle was funded by my SEPP 72t IRA so anything I earned was reinvested and I cleared the modest mortgage balance that I initially retired with.

As for now, I have run through my pursuit-list of paying gigs I wanted to learn and do. I still keep my eyes open and continue exploring all of the new things that pop up in the world of opportunity. I’m happily on the sidelines until the next passion driven interest comes my way. I think it’s a cool attitude to have about early retirement, but I get why others wouldn’t.  

My Ordinary Early Retirement Story: Nothing To See Here Folks

As You Can See, A Totally Boring and Ordinary Early Retirement Story

That’s it folks, my only claim to fame is I figured out a way to retire early within my ordinary life limitations and blessings. No big event, major breakthrough, windfall, extreme measures, or financial success secret.

I do read incredible FIRE stories about people who retired in their 30s or 40s. They travel the world, make money online from anywhere they want to, live on a sailboat or in an RV, amass millions of dollars, etc, etc. Their stories are very inspiring and fascinating. I have picked up some great early retirement ideas to use from them. But given what I enjoy and want in life, I’ve filed the more extreme and sensational elements away as unrealistic for me to actually pull off or even really want to do.

All I wanted was to simply ditch the rat race and stay living in my community near my kids and grand kids. A life with the same lifestyle I had always lived, but with more freedom to focus on what I value and enjoy a little more travel. No grand lifestyle changes or unnatural feeling lifestyle downsizing. Just the right early retirement for this ordinary average guy.

Mastering the Skill of Doing Nothing in Retirement

Non-financial Aspects of retirement, Workaholism, , ,

Retirement is an amazing time. I find it both interesting and amusing that I had to put effort into doing nothing in retirement. Before retiring it seemed it would be a no-brainer handling time just doing nothing. But in reality, after many decades of serving the employment masters, there is a whole slew of conditioning geared toward productivity that has to be unwoven.

The “doing nothing” definition flips after retirement and for me it is a humorous mind trip. There is doing nothing from the working stiff perspective and another point of view from the retirement side of living. That’s because from our time in school and throughout our working lives, doing nothing has been given a bad reputation. Well not anymore. Doing nothing in retirement is a useful skill.

Mastering the Skill of Doing Nothing in Retirement

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

I’m Always Looking For Ways To Improve My Early Retirement

The truth is we can be way too busy in retirement. It’s easy to over commit and cram in as much as we can. Especially early in retirement. You can’t really grasp that until you are retired and living it. It doesn’t matter how many times you heard it from other retirees before entering the retirement zone yourself.

I have written about how I stay busy and how rarely I catch TV or anything close to being sedentary before 5 PM. Like it’s something to be proud of and a measurement of my early retirement success by having no chance to ever be bored. But something was missing. I now admit that it took my having a few years of early retirement under my belt to wise up. It took me a little time to learn how to be better at doing nothing. I jokingly call it a retirement skill because it is something that you get better at with practice.  

Skillfully Doing Nothing In Retirement

First off, having some structure in our retirement is a good thing. But sometimes we just trade one over-structured lifestyle for another. One that leaves no room for just doing nothing. I find it a little funny that I can become the most demanding boss I’ve ever had.

Part of the problem is all the cautions about having the non-financial aspects of retirement covered. Those constantly drummed warnings about people who retired into misery because of boredom. It’s best that we know what we plan on doing with all of our free time. Those cautions really do apply.

But there should be another caution in the retirement for newbies handbook: Beware of overdoing it with the commitment of your hard-won free-time. Our brains seem oddly wired to be productive and we can try to overcompensate once our initial retirement honeymoon of leisure ends. Mine sure did.

Four Steps To Mastering the Skill of Doing Nothing in Retirement

Step #1- Start by Recognizing the Health Benefits of Doing Nothing

It sounds strange but doing nothing is actually doing something. Doing nothing allows for us to have down-time from a busy retirement schedule to improve our mental and physical health. This is an important step because it all starts here for reasons that became clear to me in later steps.

We took breaks when we worked. The reasons for those breaks still come into play in retirement. Those of us who retired early are an ambitious lot. It’s something that carries on into retirement.

Doing Nothing will:

  • Allow time to clear our head and rest.
  • Improve our mood and wellbeing.
  • Lower our heart rate.
  • Increased our brain health.

I didn’t immediately embrace the concept that doing nothing would have health benefits. But I had to acknowledge that over the ages meditation has been shown to bring peace to one’s health and mind. Meditation is the ultimate form of doing nothing.

I now listen to my mind and body for signs that it’s time to step back and start a little retirement do nothing time. My doing nothing episodes lasts as long as it needs to. I just jump back into my busy retirement schedule when I am ready to step back into it.

Step #2- Embrace The Idea That it’s OK to Spend Time Doing Nothing

I had to ask myself: Why was my occasionally doing nothing OK when still working but not now?  Why did I let it bug the crap out of me now that I am retired? Taking a break is necessary, even in retirement. When I was a worker I used to spend whole weekends doing nothing. Especially after a busy and stressful work week. I would even proudly brag I did nothing over the weekend. That was my time-out from being under “The Man”. I’m now the boss. What is different now is that in retirement I get to decide when and take as long as I want or need to do nothing .

After decades under the control of the corporate world it’s no wonder I struggled with this aspect of freedom. It was too easy in retirement to push myself beyond a leisurely pace to fulfill my passions and interest goals. I was at times stressing myself out and it was a total mind-warp. I now know that the skill of doing nothing had to be learned through practice after all the years spent in the working mindset. This is the necessary mind-shift I had to complete from my worker self to my retired self. I had to reconfigure an ingrained doing nothing belief system. Retirement means never having to earn approval for downtime.

I gave myself permission by saying: Dude, you have already recognized the health benefits of stepping back and doing nothing, just let it rip. I made a mental flip to embrace doing nothing as valued and stopped caring about what others think. When I’m on a do nothing day and asked what I have been up to I smile and admit it instead of trying to always have something productive to answer back with. Remember, most everyone still working already thinks retirees are doing nothing anyway, no matter how we answer.

Step #3- Control The Productivity Beast Within

There is only so much time in a day and I had to stop prioritizing my chosen activities based on its productive merits. Productive purpose seemed to always come before purposeful fun. It was like one of those vacations where everyday there was something fun scheduled to do. Running from one thing to another where there was no down time to just enjoy a day of leisurely sloth to slow down. When the productive vacation ends you’re run down instead of rested and feel like we need a vacation from our vacation. Just because something should be fun, if we don’t pace ourselves, we end up turning it into something else.

I stopped assigning productive purpose to everything I do in retirement. It’s alright to do things that have productive purpose but it shouldn’t dictate it’s priority at the expense of doing nothing or even activity done solely for the fun of it. For instance, de-emphasize reading based on educational value. Enjoy reading without assigning or needing a side motive. Repurpose biking and hiking from exercise to fun by slowing down and enjoying the scenery. Taking a nap just because I want to. Turn on the TV and catch an afternoon oldie or movie and tune out for a while. The list goes on and on. Tame the inner productivity beast by understanding that purposeful doing nothing in retirement is different from wasting our valuable retirement time.

Step #4- Everything in Moderation

Warning: Doing nothing can be addicting. Overdose can result in boredom and severe procrastination. Like everything else in life, moderation is required. Doing nothing in retirement can be highly addictive and create unwanted habits. The retirement boredom cautions are very real and worthy of concern. There has to be a balance of productivity and purposeful doing nothing.

 

It took time for me to admit I had a productivity bias against doing nothing and had to adjust my thinking to accept it. I only do what I want to do in my retirement but I still lean a bit towards the productive side of things. There are still goals to meet and things that I want to accomplish that won’t happen when doing nothing. But I also see the benefit of doing what I can to master the skill of doing nothing in retirement.

It’s OK To Have Dark Early Retirement Motivation

Financially Free, optimism, ,

Early retirement is something that doesn’t need much promotion. Thinking about having the time to pursue whatever it is we want to do is extremely motivating and positive. It can push us to do everything it takes to get there. Most early retirement stories and articles concentrate on the absolute rainbows and unicorns of early retirement life and why we should shoot for it. That is if we heed the warnings and do it right. Happy thoughts and outcomes, that’s what people want to see. But let’s not kid ourselves. That isn’t our only motivation to ditch the rat race. For many, they also have some dark early retirement motivation that equally pushes them to achieve their financial goals. And on our last day on the job we truly understand the meaning to the saying, success is the best revenge.

It’s OK To Have Dark Early Retirement Motivation

Image Source

Bringing Dark Early Retirement Motivation Into The Light

After almost 9 years of early retirement under my belt I now feel ready to reveal the obvious.  Not everything about my early retirement desires were about freedom and pursuing passions. Wow! That is so liberating to no longer keep secret. I know I am breaking from early retirement article rules of keeping things cheery and positive or “how to”, “how I did it”, types of advice. But I just can’t keep quiet about it anymore. If I spell it out maybe others who silently suffer with dark early retirement motivation can stop wondering if they are alone or normal.

When Powerless You Can’t Openly Block The Backhand Of Dark Authority, You Make Bricks

I had many great experiences and good runs of decent and competent superiors and peers. But I also had a lot of, way too much of, dark early retirement motivation. If my long career experience in the corporate world was overall fair and rewarding I certainly wouldn’t have considered retiring early. There are very few people who love what they do and where they do it their entire working lives. Few have the privilege of working in an environment of true corporate nirvana where everyone is treated fairly and with respect. At least I have been told that such places exists. But from my experience that wasn’t the reasons people generally loved their corporate life for the long-term. Some lived a charmed existence through connections or power. While others were happy to drink the kool-aid or ignore their plight as unchangeable, expected, and accepted.

I wasn’t any of the above. I had no connections, was considered unprotected, and completely competent at my job. The perfect target for lazy and sometimes incompetent, power-drunk, self-serving managers in a fast-paced technical environment. Throw in a few backstabbing ladder climbing peers and you have numerous opportunities to encounter the darkness of corporate life.

I saw what happened when someone in my same employment class attempted to openly challenge their unfair situation. It never went well. It’s always best to diplomatically handle oppressive or unfair treatment, or at least try to. Sometimes it will work, but much of the time it won’t. And when it didn’t work, it built a foundation of dark early retirement motivation, brick by brick.

Turning The Dark Into Something Positive

When in dark work related situations you either whither, win or lose resisting it, or somehow subversively turn it to your advantage. I watched others lose-it and challenged corrupt or incompetent authority and lost, then paying the ultimate price or just walked off with no clear plan forward. I instead resolved to put my darkness inspired feelings towards what I really wanted- My eventual early retirement freedom.

There is no question that earning income must be sustained to save enough to retire early. I learned to control emotion to outlast and maneuver through or around any dark bullying idiots in power or their sycophants. Being in a position that had executive exposure where some were as “Dick” as they come, proven later with felony convictions, I experienced a couple of close calls when someone, anyone “unprotected” had to pay for another’s blunder.

The dark certainly triggered my freedom journey. It ran beneath the surface of all the great and happy motivations for early retirement. Knowing what I hoped to never continue living with, helped define what I wanted in early retirement. Reaching the point where I could retire gave me personal power. When there is no longer a financial or career threat that can be leveraged against me, I then could turn the tables on the power dynamics in a world that has no shortage of bullying self-serving authority figures and their merry bands of rectal fingerlings to do their dirty work.

Using The Dark Experiences For A Better Early Retirement

I used my experience of the dark in the corporate world to not only help motivate me to retire early but also create what I wanted to retire to. I feel retirement is defined as the absence of needing to work, not the absence of working and I have been able to successfully live it.

Since my first retirement I have experienced some great retirement gigs and a super rewarding encore career. Not that there wasn’t any of the same dark bullying BS going on around me. It’s just when you are doing something because you want to, not need to, they have no power over you. I could successfully decline indecent and unfair demands, deploy being rationally unreasonable in setting my work terms, or just walk away. I learned what I wanted to learn and did what I wanted to try doing. They paid me for my work and it was a win-win relationship. Right up until the moment I decided I was done and retired again.

Having now finished my bucket list of opportunities that I wanted to explore, I am perfectly happy being away from paid work. Especially staying clear of the corporate world. That is until something interesting comes along. I’m always open to opportunities. For me, that’s the way to retire early where only the light, unicorns, and rainbows are welcome.

A Toast To Dark Early Retirement Motivation

Here’s to all the dark I experienced and saw during the 31 years of my first career. It helped motivate me to be an early retirement success- The bullying, manipulation, lies, backstabbing, politics, theft, deception, threats, scapegoating, nepotism, favoritism, cover ups, and even sexual harassment (holy crap she was the worst). I say thank you for providing me all the necessary dark early retirement motivation that I ever needed.   

Finally to the darkest of my past corporate experiences that motivated me to do everything that was necessary to retire as early as possible. Here’s to my team members Don and Jim with whom I shared time in the trenches with. Both kind, dedicated, and competent at what they did. Two decent human beings who after decades of service were corporate downsized before they were ready to retire and ended up taking their own lives. R.I.P., you are not forgotten.

Early Retirement Is More About Pursuing Dreams Than Retirement

Early Retirement Lifestyle, Retire Early, Retire Often,

Yes, I’m an early retiree. But I hardly ever say or think that I am retired. Maybe it’s because of some physiological retirement hangup due to my age. But it’s more likely because I believe early retirement is more about pursuing dreams than retirement. That has certainly been my experience. As I have celebrated yet another birthday, having just returned from one of many planned vacations this year, and look back at my 9.5 years of early retirement, I can’t help myself but reflect on what early retirement has been for me and how I try to explain it.

Early Retirement Is More About Pursuing Dreams Than Retirement

Image Source

I’ve Found Early Retirement Is More About Pursuing Dreams

Mention of the word “retirement” within any context and it evokes different visions for different people. Usually it’s the traditional images of retirement that enters one’s mind. I believe associating that narrow traditional image with early retirement is a barrier. One that keeps many people from taking the necessary steps to successfully retire early. It certainly takes a substantial portfolio to support that image of early retirement. If my younger self knew then what I know now, I certainly would have been even more motivated to retire early. Once you ditch the word “retirement” and all of its traditional imagery, then replace it with having the freedom to pursue dreams, I think early retirement becomes much more attractive. Depending on your dreams it becomes much more attainable too.  

 

Dreams are meant to be big but also realistic

You have to be a dreamer to walk away from a successful career. The trick is understanding that if you really want it, you need to figure out ways to make it happen. The thing we have going for us with early retirement is youth and energy. That means we are willing and able to pursue dreams and many times some of our dreams will also provide income beyond our portfolio.

My early retirement dream didn’t require me to save a million or more dollars, or even have my mortgage paid off. I didn’t make a huge salary. Trying to first reach that high level of financial accomplishment would have delayed my retirement into old age. My dreams were centered around my family, community, friends, and travel. It was also focused on things I wanted to learn and do. I planned right from the start that I wanted to retire early and often. People I worked with thought I was nuts, but all of this is exactly what my early retirement has been.

Some of my pursued dreams failed and others surprised me when they didn’t turn out to be as attractive as I thought they would. As some dreams were lived, others lost appeal and new ones were born. Early retirement is an amazing adventure.

 

I saved just enough to allow myself to do it

Paying off my mortgage and increasing my net worth beyond having just enough all came after my first early retirement. I had some awesome retirement jobs and a successful encore career. I have taken criticism with claims that all I did was a late life career change, but I disagree. My early retirement dream is based on this simple definition: Retirement is the absence of needing to work, not the absence of working. I cut my lifestyle cost using smart frugal living and saved just enough to fund that lifestyle.

I walked away from forced obligation to being free to go after anything I wanted to. There were opportunities I really wanted to explore and experience. There’s so much I want to learn more about. I knew that retiring early meant still having the energy and drive to accomplish whatever I wanted to pursue. Once I felt I got all that I wanted from the experience and was ready to move on, I would just retire again. I feel I dreamed big but also realistically. It all started with knowing I had just enough to give me the courage to do what I had long-planned to do.

 

Early Retirement Pursuing Dreams

Whatever one’s early retirement dreams are, from being a world travel photographer, an artist, starting an encore career of passion and interest, or beginning a business, to living something closer to a traditional retirement lifestyle, either here or abroad, early retirement is more about pursuing YOUR dreams. Figure out what your dreams are, then do what you can to make it happen. I can personally say that it is totally worth the effort.

Automate Your Home To Retire Early: Does It Work?

Retire Early, Saving Money,

What if you could retire today? Imagine taking that luxury cruise with your family and beginning your golden years ahead well in time, so that you are still in the age bracket where you can remember all about it the next morning too! With smart home automation, all that is very much possible. The amount of money you save with each appliance will let you add more speedily to your 401k account.

And this way you will be able to reach your financial goals set for the retirement way sooner than you had otherwise planned. Improving your lifestyle while saving a good portion of your monthly earnings do seem too good to be true. But the following incredible facts show you exactly how to attain this too-good-to-be-true reality.

Home Automation for Early Retirement: How?!

Running a home does not come cheap. Adding each individual and their specific housing requirements along with the occasional guests, even daily home expense can run a huge tab in the case of a big family. And the families that are growing have their expenses multiply manifolds over the years.

The various ways in which home automation can control the expenditure in a way that gets us to our retirement savings goal pronto are as follows:

Drastic Insurance Rebates

The thing that insurers hate paying the most are those hefty insurance claims. So it only makes sense that they are now offering to slash the premium payment prices by almost a quarter for those with smart home automation technology in place.

According to the CB Insights database, the insurers know quite well that home with smart automation systems are less likely to run into the trouble. The nature of this calamity can be theft, fire damage, flooding issues and various other relevant scenarios. This means that in the long run there will be less claim filings due to these various unfortunate events which will help them save a ton.

This is one good reason to install those futuristic home automation systems in our homes right away. And if we already have them installed at our place like any other sane person then we need to inform our home insurance agency at the earliest to get the available rebate.

Save Electricity, Save Money

High energy bills are the fourth biggest cause of heart attack in case of an average human nowadays. Now, this might not be totally true. But, you can’t say that those towering energy bills don’t make you consider fleeing the country at first.

With the AC, lights and other energy-heavy appliances running round the clock, sometimes by mistake, it is hard to catch a break on them. And that is why it makes all the more sense to get those energy efficient smart home systems that slash our bill prices by at least 50%.

They are an essential upgrade and investment that is not a luxury anymore. If we want to keep up with the changing pace of time and save a good deal on our energy bills then smart home automation is the ultimate answer.

Save Both Money and Water

There is no life without water. Not just the sustenance but even the normal pace of life requires a continuous water supply. By wasting it, we are making survival difficult for our future generations and also doing more damage to our already terrifying water bill margin.

home automation

Photo by zhang kaiyv on Unsplash

In the kitchen, bath and outdoors; everyday we require a lot of water to perform the daily functions up to our satisfaction. According to a recent study done by the EPA, one-third of our total water consumption is outdoors. And out of that almost half of everyday intake gets wasted.

This is a huge number considering how it adds up to form that steep figure at the end of the month. Smart sprinkler system, touchless faucets and the smart shower heads are there to help us conserve water without demanding for any huge sacrifices when it comes to our normal lifestyle.

Smart Thermostats for Better Returns

The closest that humans have ever come to God in terms of their dexterity is with the smart programmable thermostats. They are perfect beyond the scope of human comprehension! And can be used to regulate the temperature of the entire home to make it just right.

The smart thermostats save energy and hence a lot of our hard earned money in the process too. Also, they offer the facility of being controlled from anywhere, anytime. And best of all, they sense our requirements by studying our usage pattern over time.

According to ‘A Secure Life’, 39% of the total energy consumption within a home goes directly towards the heating and cooling processes. The smart thermostats can bring down the heating cost by 12% and the cooling cost by a total of 15% of the original value. A total of 23% of the total energy can be saved annually on the heating and cooling functions combined with the help of smart thermostats.

Smart Haiku Fans

AC might be what we need when it is scorching hot outside. But they alone are not enough to have that breezy atmosphere within our living rooms. For that, we need to get a fan too that is able to keep the air ventilation within our rooms just right.

Haiku fans are the smart luxury fans that work perfectly on their own and even better with the smart thermostats. They can improve the efficiency of the HVAC system of our homes tremendously. You can also use them to maintain a steady well-ventilated state within your rooms.

Another great thing about these fans is that they can sense the temperature of the room and work smartly to bring it up to the preset desired levels. The Haiku fans help in mixing the air at different temperatures present within the room and bring the temperature at each point within that place to the same optimum level.

Conclusion

The smart home technology can help us cut back on our cost of living while upgrading it at the same time. This will help us in reaching our financial goals of the week, day, months and even years in a swifter manner. The retirement in our golden years can shift up a few decades and we can finally start living it up like we always dreamed we would in our golden years!

Savings and smart home technology go hand in hand. Do you live in a smart home? If yes, then when are you going for that retirement world tour? Tell us all about it in the comment section below.

Also, if you know a friend who is obsessed about retiring early and saving pennies, do let them know about this article. They would really appreciate you for doing so!

 

This attention grabbing and thought-provoking article was contributed to Leisure Freak by Pallavi Pandey
Author Bio

A part time contributor at http://bestsmarthometrends.com/, Pallavi Pandey has been making dull topics a page-turner since 2012. She has written extensively about finance, technology, and software in her freelance writing career until now.

Her Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science helps her in comprehending the most complex of topics quite easily. Her core expertise lies in creating engrossing content that puts across the point in the desired format without boring you to death!