Musings on the First 1.25 Years of Early Retirement (Part 2)

CONTINUATION OF MUSINGS FROM PART 1…

It’s okay to have no PURPOSE or WHY going into retirement. From the majority of FI podcasts I listen to, I keep hearing the message “you need to retire TO something instead of FROM something”. Frankly that’s always been a little scary to me. I’ve always been someone who disliked my job and I was one of those people running away from it… but to what, I didn’t know. As I neared retirement I thought I would naturally figure it out and come up with my “TO something” before I actually left my job. As my retirement date crept closer & closer and I still couldn’t come up with anything, I started to get anxious. What calmed me down was talking to Jordan Grumet (aka Doc G), who said that I shouldn’t be so worried – I had earned the right to take time to decompress & explore what would make me happy and perhaps find my “purpose” or “why” in the future. This struck me because it felt completely counter to what I had been hearing from others in the FI community say was necessary. Throughout my first year of retirement I experimented quite a bit with different activities & interests, both self-serving & in service to others. Although I’ve started to settle into a routine, I feel like I’m still searching for my “purpose” or my “why” and I’ve learned to be comfortable with that.

My wife and I haven’t killed each other yet. This is always a positive, at least in my book. I’ve heard so many other retirees who have a hard time transitioning to spending more time at home because either they or their spouse are not used to it. For most of our adult lives, couples tend to spend the majority of their day apart since one or both partners work away from home. When retirees start spending more time at home, it could feel like they are encroaching on the other partner’s space. I was slightly worried about this myself since my wife only works part-time (4 days a month), so she’s been home alone most weekdays for the past 10 years. I honestly had no idea what she did all day, but I was fearful that once I retired I would somehow interfere with her daily schedule and she might be resentful. The good news is that I’ve been focusing on my own daily routine (taking the kids to the bus stop, exercising, working on podcasts, blogging, taking my kids to after-school activities) so much that I keep busy and (probably more importantly) don’t crowd my wife. This allows her to keep doing whatever it is that she does, allows me to do my own thing, and keeps us from getting on each other’s nerves.

In fact, we have a better relationship now than when I was working. Of course this is just my own opinion; you’d have to ask her to see if she feels the same way… Although we are home together most of the day, each of us spends the majority of our time doing our own things as I just described above. However, because of the fact that we’re both home it still provides us the opportunity to spend way more time together than we previously had when I was at the office all day, 5 days a week. The best part of my day is when we spontaneously strike up a conversation about whatever’s on our mind at the moment (whether it’s an issue to solve, vacation planning, random thing we saw on Facebook, etc), talk about the subject in-depth, then when we’re done, realize that sometimes a couple hours have passed. These are discussions that would’ve never happened before, either because we didn’t have the time and/or we weren’t physically near each other when a conversation topic popped into our heads.

Community is as important as ever. For those who have read my Core Belief # 3, you already know my thoughts on community, so I won’t bore you here with repetition. I will say that aside from keeping myself busy doing things I enjoy, keeping in touch with others has helped me keep my sanity. I know that many retirees battle loneliness, especially those who are single, since much of our social interaction comes through the workplace. Research has shown that social connection is important for health & well-being. I am married and have kids, so that alone seems to provide most of the social interaction I need (especially being an introvert), although it’s always nice to interact with others for more variety. Since retiring I’ve been trying to embed myself more in the FI community, both locally and globally, which has been great, even trying to play a larger role in organizing meetups in my local ChooseFI group. I think the most rewarding & beneficial relationships though are the ones I’m cultivating with other early retirees, since they understand exactly what I’m going through and can empathize. Luckily, I also have a neighbor who is an early retiree, although he’s not part of the FI community (he retired after 20+ years in the Coast Guard). It’s always interesting to hear his thoughts on early retirement and observe how he chooses to spend his time.

Conversations with old work friends are boring/irrelevant. For anyone who has left a previous job, I bet you’ve said to at least one co-worker “let’s keep in touch”. Most of the time we genuinely mean this, but in reality it’s tough. Most of us move on to new jobs and we also have our lives & activities outside of work to contend with, so it’s easy to understand how old relationships can start to fade away. In fact, based on my experience it’s felt like sometimes my work friends were just a matter of convenience instead of true friendships (since we’re stuck working together ~40 hrs a week). When I retired I was one of those people who said “let’s keep in touch” and I did try to make it work… for a while. I would still show up to after-work happy hours once every few weeks and would still text my old co-workers all the time. Eventually I started realizing that the majority of conversations we were having were centered around work. Of course this was no longer relevant to me anymore, plus the more time that passed the less & less I even knew what was being talked about since I was no longer working with these people on a daily basis. But beyond relevance, I found these conversations truly boring. When there was so much else going on in the world, all these people wanted to talk about was how the business was doing, complain about an upcoming deadline, etc. Comically, I met a new hire at one of these happy hours a few months later and although he was a complete stranger to me, I actually enjoyed talking to him the most because we could have a conversation about things beyond work. So unfortunately at this moment, I’ve pretty much lost ties with all my old work friends, which is another reason why my new community has been so important to me in retirement.

It’s still awkward for me to answer the question “What do you do (for work)?” When meeting someone new, 9 times out of 10 this is one of the first questions that comes out of their mouth. If you think about it, this is a very strange societal norm and it’s something that I never gave much thought about until recently. Of course I used to quickly and easily answer “I’m an aerospace engineer”. But now that my old career has gone by the wayside, I still grapple with how to answer this question. At first I continued to say that I was an engineer because it was just too awkward to say that I was retired – I usually didn’t feel like explaining my entire life situation to strangers. After a while I experimented with simply saying “I work from home” or if I was in a good mood & talking to someone who I thought could take a joke, I would say “I’m unemployed” (which is technically true). Another tactic I tried was to just keep conversations focused on other things besides work, discussing other areas of life such as family, travel, hobbies, interests, etc. More recently as I’ve been dedicating greater time to podcast editing/producing and writing here at this blog, I’ve become more & more comfortable with transitioning away from my old identity as an Engineer and into my new identity as a Podcast Editor & Blogger. Although James Clear discusses identity in the context of habits, I believe changes in identity can also be associated with transitions into early retirement or new phases of life. “Changing your beliefs isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. There are two steps: 1) Decide the type of person you want to be and 2) Prove it to yourself with small wins.” Although I had no previous experience or training with podcasting or blogging, both piqued my interest so I just started doing each little by little. Today I feel more confident with my new identity and have actually started answering the question of “What do you do?” with “I am a podcast editor & producer”.

Even after 1 year and 3 months of early retirement, I am still decompressing with absolutely no desire to return to work. I’m not sure if this one is surprising to anyone or if this seems like a given. I’ve heard that it takes many months for people to decompress and/or that others may even get bored and want to go back to work. As for me, I’m good with exactly where I am in life. It may be a different story for those who enjoy their job or those who get bored easily, but as someone who was running away from a career I didn’t like, I’m more comfortable now. Although I’ve been keeping busy, I sometimes feel guilty since most others around me are still working (including my wife). Sometimes I even feel a bit lazy since many others in the FI community say they either have no desire to retire after achieving FI or they are still working hard on other ventures in their life. But I’m good with where I’m at. When an old co-worker recently found out I was retired and asked “Are you bored and ready to go back to work yet?”, without hesitation I responded “Absolutely not. I’m never going back”.

As I mentioned in my first set of musings, there was no huge transition for me into retirement. Because I had a goal, planned everything out, and executed it over many years, moving into retirement was not a big deal – it was just another step in my personal financial journey and just the next phase in my life.

My plan is to chronicle additional musings at the end of Year 2 (summer 2025) and hopefully well beyond. It’ll be interesting to see what changes from year-to-year and perhaps even more interesting to see what stays the same.

I am very thankful for my situation and realize that I have a unique opportunity and the good fortune to experience something like early retirement. Hopefully my thoughts can provide some insight, knowledge, and even encouragement to others on their own personal financial journeys.

As my friend Carl Jensen often likes to say, “Life is Good”.

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