Why We Chose Early Retirement: A Realistic Approach to Financial Independence

As much as I love writing about tax strategy and financial topics, I thought I would write about something a little more personal today. This past weekend I attended a family wedding and saw relatives that I haven’t seen in a long time; most of them had heard through the grapevine that my husband and I “early retired” from our W-2 jobs a few years ago, and a lot of them had opinions about it.

One of them accused us of being “reckless”, a few said we were “brave”, and a couple of them said it was “awesome”. All of those are probably at least a little bit true, but honestly, I feel like we were being “realistic”.

As most of you know, my mom passed away 16 years ago, when she was only 55. Out of my group of six childhood friends that I am still close to today, I am still the only one who has lost a parent.

My husband Brian lost his brother when he was in college.

Having those early losses shifted our perspective about the amount of time we may or may not have on this earth. We went from “oh, we’ll have plenty of time to do all the things when we retire at 65” to “oh crap, we need to do all the things now while we still can”. Both of those experiences were horrible to go through, but in a lot of ways this new perspective has been a gift. It’s given us the bravery and resolve to forge a different path for ourselves.

That same group of childhood girlfriends and I have been talking for years about taking a weeklong trip to the Greek Islands, and we had finally decided next year would be the year. But lately life keeps intervening, and one friend suggested we push it to our 50th or even 55th birthdays. To me, waiting feels uncertain; since I lost my mom around that age, those birthdays don’t necessarily feel like a ‘given’ to me. And the odds that all of us will be alive, healthy, and free enough to take that trip together aren’t improving with time.

When Brian and I made the decision to step back from our jobs, we felt like it was time to get off of the hedonic treadmill of “more, more more” and make do with “enough”.

There’s a useful retirement calculator I recommend that incorporates expected longevity into the calculations; for me, as long as the chance of me being broke is lower than the chance of me being dead, I’m going to call my plan good enough!

At age 70, this person has a 16.6% chance of being dead and only a 3.6% chance of being broke, so their plan is probably good enough!

Society teaches us to optimize for more: More income. More stuff. Bigger houses. Fancier titles. More years before we finally begin living.

But the relevant question is when “more” stops improving your life.

Wealth is recognizing when you have “enough” to start choosing time.

Something to reflect on as I close this out: What are you postponing for ‘someday’ that might be worth doing now?

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