I tend to agree with him that people put forward the positive and downplay or under-report the negative things about their retired life. That's the nature of people, and it's amplified on social media.
My thoughts about his points, one by one...
#1. He says he's driven by goals and purpose, but yet he did not seem to have thought through the question of "What will be my goals and purpose, once I retire?" -- beyond writing and skiing. That seems like a pretty major oversight on his part.
It also sounds like, as a couple, they did not think through, in advance, what it would be like to shift from accumulating to spending down. Again, that's a pretty big oversight. One of the first things I learned about ER is that the people who do best in are the ones who prepare for it, by thinking these sort of issues through.
#2. He was very emotionally attached to his job and the people he worked with. I don't think most people headed for ER feel that way -- at least not to that degree.
And then 7 months later, they move to a completely new area. That meant not only saying goodbye to his beloved work and colleagues, but saying goodbye to a house full of memories, and saying goodbye to family and friends. That is a complete social uprooting and upheaval, and a huge amount of loss in a very short period of time. Most people would be plunged into grief by all that.
#3. Of course "life became chaotic." That's a massive reordering of your life in 7 months.
Then he says, "Yes became our default answer to every offer. In the process, we had little time for ourselves, our relationship and the activities we moved to the mountains for." When you divest yourself of a beloved job, colleagues, home, family, and friends within a short space of time, you are going to lose your sense of who you are and what you need. I'm not surprised they lost their bearings.
I'm a little surprised that he didn't anticipate that. He said he did lots of reading of ER blogs. Granted, most retirement blogs focus on the financial piece, not the emotional, social, or psychological pieces.
#4. He says he is "too busy." That's because he is saying "yes" to everything and has lost a sense of priorities. And that is because he abruptly tossed aside so much that gave his life direction, meaning, purpose, direction, satisfaction, attachment, etc. I mean, that is going to happen, if that's how you retire. It's like you're stripping yourself down, psychologically, to the bare minimum and expecting increased ski and blog time to compensate. That's not how people work.
#5. This is a good point -- that priorities won't change (e.g., if you're not volunteering now, chances are you won't be volunteering all that much after you're retired).
Overall, my sense is that he was prepared financially but completely unprepared psychologically. He greatly underestimated the impact of the losses he would incur and the challenges he would face.
And yeah, as someone already said, he's not really retired anyhow. He's working hard on being a writer. I wish him luck. He's not ready to write a book about how to retire, that's for sure.
