Musings on the 2nd Year of Early Retirement

First and foremost, this post is actually right on time and closely aligns with the actual day I retired 2 years ago, unlike last year’s musings that took me an extra few months to get around to. So you’re welcome my dear readers! Hahaha!

Getting back on track, I really can’t believe it’s been a couple years since I left my full-time career and stepped into early retirement. A lot has changed in those 2 years, and even within the past year, but some things have also remained the same.

I still worry about money way more now than when I was working. In last year’s musings I observed that I thought way more about money in early retirement than I ever did during my working career. Although I had always trusted the math, believed in the 4% rule, and knew logically that I had a high probability of success, my emotions seemed to get the best of me once I stepped into retirement. I started thinking about money way more and even started to worry about it often. Not too much changed in Year 2 – I still can’t shake my emotions and haven’t fully come to peace with money. I think some of this is due to the irrational fear of running out of money, either through stock market declines or overspending. Another part may be due to the fact that I haven’t fully acclimated to not receiving a steady stream of income, which I used to receive in the form of a W-2 paycheck from an employer for 20 years. The good news is that the intensity of this fear has started to subside as I’ve gained more experience actually withdrawing money from my portfolio (by selling assets) and even watched my net worth increase as I’ve done this. There is also a sense of relief realizing that I’ve actually made it through 2 years of early retirement & my family has come out fine financially.

Sometimes I feel guilty about not earning an income. This one is two-fold – I feel guilty both in comparison to my wife and also in the context of society as a whole. Although I am retired my wife still works, so technically this makes me “Wife-FI”. (The caveat is that she could actually quit if she wanted to and we could still support ourselves, but at the moment she’s choosing to work). To be honest, I currently spend way more time working than my wife if you add up all the hours I spend podcasting and working on this blog, but I also make ZERO money doing it. Although I enjoy what I do, I simultaneously feel bad that I devote so much time to these discretionary endeavors while “sending my wife to work at a job she doesn’t love in order to earn a paycheck for our family”. I know this sentiment isn’t true at all, but many times it feels that way. In terms of societal impact, although I am highly productive and feel like I’m doing some good in the world via podcasting & blogging about Financial Independence, it sometimes feels like I’m “wasting an opportunity” by not working full-time & earning a paycheck, especially during my peak earning years and compared to most of my peers. Having said all of this, any guilt that I feel is fairly infrequent & fleeting.

I’ve been doing too much. Early in retirement there were many times I felt directionless because I went from a highly-structured career to all of a sudden stepping into a new life where I had time freedom and a seemingly infinite number of choices of what to do. Luckily, I quickly fell into a routine that provided a good balance of scheduling & impact, where I had enough time to be productive, yet still had enough space to rest, recharge, and just think & reflect. Unfortunately this period of harmony didn’t last and I started to add more & more activities into my life, thinking that “more” equaled “better”. I lost any separation between work-life & home-life, replacing a boss at an employer with myself, always feeling schedule pressure to get things done and always pushing myself harder & harder because there was always something more to do. Soon I was busier than ever working on weekends and/or staying up really late just to keep up. It quickly started to feel like I was working a full-time job again, but perhaps even worse since I wasn’t even getting paid a cent. I was on the path to burnout until one of my friends helped me realize that I should be more protective of my time. I re-evaluated my schedule and started trimming things that weren’t quite as meaningful to me. Although this is a fairly recent change, I am already experiencing early positive returns – I feel more free, I seem to have more openness, and I am already much more calm. I am so much happier than I have been in a while, feeling like I have so much more creativity since once again I have a little more time to think, to write, and most importantly to just be.

It takes me longer to get some things done. Last year I had many thoughts surrounding the idea of time such as how it felt irrelevant/skewed and how it went faster. I think both of these were attributed to the fact that I was acclimating to a fairly schedule-free world after having spent 20 years working where my time was highly regulated. This year I experienced a different time-related mystery – I noticed that sometimes certain tasks would take me longer to complete than I expected. With more free time I would’ve naturally assumed that I would get more things done. But in reality it was ironic that although I had MORE free time, I would actually get LESS done (in terms of sheer quantity), because it took me longer to finish something. For the longest time I couldn’t quite put my finger on this paradox until one day it actually started to make sense. When I was working, my life was rushed and I tried to do a million things at once – yes, I got things done but they were probably only completed to a satisfactory level where I emphasized quantity over quality. Now that I had more time, instead of making snap decisions, I had the space to think through things more and make higher caliber decisions, where I emphasized quality over quantity. Note: I later found there was a term for this called Parkinson’s Law that stated “work expands to fill the available time”

I am more comfortable with my new identity. Although I never strongly associated my identity with my career, whenever someone asked me “What do you do (for a living)?” I would instinctively answer “I’m an aerospace engineer.” However, during my 1st year of retirement this standard call & response started to feel a little awkward. I knew that my engineering career was in the past, but I didn’t know what my new identity should be. I also didn’t want to continually tie my identity to a job and even wrote about how I intentionally try to keep the topic of “work” out of conversations. Because podcasting took up such a large portion of my time and I felt that I was making a positive impact on others via this medium, I experimented with saying that I was a “podcast editor & producer”. It definitely felt weird at first to say this, especially as imposter syndrome crept in. But it got easier & easier over time as I continued to step into this role more confidently and finally accepted that I truly was a podcast editor & producer. Surprisingly people show way more interest when I talk about podcasting and I frequently hear “That’s so cool” or “Wow, I’ve never met someone in-person who does that”. To be honest, it’s quite flattering.

I still appreciate the little things in life. Over the past couple years I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of cool things such as traveling with my family for weeks at a time, attending numerous concerts both near & far, and attending key FI events such as EconoMe & Camp Mustache. While all of this has been extremely fun and each can be considered a huge & epic event, I still enjoy the small things. I still enjoy making lunches for my kids, driving them to/from the bus stop, taking them to their after-school activities, coaching their sports, and volunteering at school. Most people may classify these activities as insignificant or boring, but I value them for exactly what they represent – little bits & pieces of time that I get to spend with those that I love, all while doing it on a schedule that I choose. Most others who are working full-time don’t get nearly enough of these opportunities, and I should know, because I used to be in that situation myself.

I observe others my age and I’m thankful for all the time I get to have with my kids. Mostly through volunteering at my kids’ schools and coaching my son’s sports teams, I’ve been around a LOT of other parents this past year. In parallel I’ve noticed that oftentimes I’ll see these parents only sporadically. The majority of time these absences are due to a conflicting work schedule with most parents lamenting the fact that they cannot be there more often. Because I do have time freedom that allows me to spend more of it with my kids, I often take it for granted. However, when I do see parents of similar age who really want to spend time with their kids but cannot due to work, it makes me truly appreciate the unique opportunity that I do have.

My wife and I survived another year. Perhaps the most important update is that my wife & I made it through another year without killing each other. She still only works part-time (4 days a month), so we are home quite a bit together. But much the same as the previous year, each of us has our own daily routine so we’re not always in each other’s business. Our relationship has continued to grow and I still look forward to those spontaneous, yet random conversations that we always get into simply due to the fact that we are both home together. These discussions are still my favorite part of each day.

Even after 2 years of early retirement, I am still decompressing with absolutely no desire to return to work. I’d heard that most people entering retirement experience a decompression phase that typically lasts anywhere from weeks to months, but in more limited instances perhaps even years. Well, at this point I guess I clearly fall into that last category because I’m heading into Year 3 of early retirement and feel like I’m still trying to recover from my working career. While I’m still exploring the exact type of life I want to lead from here on out, I can definitely say that I am not bored at all and I’m having fun experimenting & trying to figure out what my next steps may be. Not too shabby for being one of those people who “retired FROM something” instead of “retiring TO something”.

Well, that wraps up this year’s musings, so definitely check back next summer for more insights into my early retirement journey. My plan is to continue chronicling these musings annually for the foreseeable future in hopes that at the very least they’ll be entertaining for most people, but perhaps at best they may even provide insight, knowledge, and even encouragement to others who are on a similar path. And if you haven’t read them yet, please be sure to check out Part 1 & Part 2 of my 1st year musings to see how things have changed in just the past year.

No matter what ups & downs come along, no matter what life throws at me, I am grateful every day to be in this exceptionally fortunate position where I get to experience early retirement.

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

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