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. 

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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. 

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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!