I Don't Want To Retire Early!

H

hocus

Full time employment: Posting here.
Joined
Oct 8, 2003
Messages
570
I took the title of this thread from a thread I saw this morning at the Motley Fool board. The kick-off post in that thread was very short. All that the text of the post added to the message in the title was: "I do want to be able to retire early!"

That's me. I view work as one of the great pleasures of life. If there were a law of the universe that said that, if you achieve financial freedom early in life, you must stop working, I would prefer to remain in debt my whole life to having to give up the joys of work.

It's not just me. When I wrote my report on Secrets of Retiring Early, I included a section called "the Goals secret" where I explained that there is no law of the universe saying that one must use financial freedom to leave the workplace behind for good. I said that it is possible to "retire" just from the aspects of wage slavery that do not possess much appeal.

You can "retire" from a work schedule that leaves little time for the other good things in life by gaining the financial strength to be able to set your own hours. You can "retire" from having to follow the dictates of pointy-headed bosses by using your accumulated capital to reduce the risks normally associated with making a transition to self-employment. You can "retire" from doing work that doesn't excite you that you do anyway because you need to do it to pay the bills by using the income from your savings to supplement the smaller income you can earn from doing work you really love. I received a number of e-mails from readers saying that that section of the report was their favorite, that they had never looked at the concept of early retirement in that way and that it made the idea a lot more appealing to them.

I don't have any problem with people who want to save to leave the world of work altogether. But I think it is a mistake to think of the concept of early retirement so narrowly so as to cover only that option. What is really signified by the phrase "early retirement" is "early financial freedom." Some want to use financial freedom to insure that they need never work again. Others want to use financial freedom to do work they always dreamed of doing and to work longer hours than they ever did when they were doing it primarily for the money.

I'm with "DoubtIt," the poster who started a thread with the same name as this one over at the Motley Fool board. I don't want to retire early. I sure want to be able to retire early though!
 
Re: I Don't Want to Retire Early!

If I ever wake up with the sudden urge to get a job, I'll try to fight it off :D
 
Re: I Don't Want to Retire Early!

If anyone had any doubts that a certain poster was nucking futs, the top post on this thread should speed diagnosis.
 
Re: I Don't Want to Retire Early!

***** That's me. I view work as one of the great pleasures of life. [/quote said:
I think your equating, perhaps confusing, work (which is one of life's pleasures) with earning a living.

ERees now have plenty of time for meaningful, pleasureable work.


BUM
Click to expand...
 
Re: I Don't Want to Retire Early!

If anyone had any doubts that a certain poster was nucking futs...

Oh my--Supersized!
 
Re: I Don't Want to Retire Early!

ERees now have plenty of time for meaningful, pleasureable work.

I very much agree, BUMWannaB. There is no such thing as a person who doesn't work. My two-year old works. He has to put away his puzzles when he is done with them. That's a form of work. For that matter, he has to work to solve the puzzles. The only way to fully escape work is to be put six feet in the ground. I hope to be working for a long time to come.

The advantage of early "retirement" is that it permits you to work at stuff you choose to work at rather than having "the Man" call the tune.
 
I think your equating, perhaps confusing, work (which is one of life's pleasures) with earning a living.

If you are saying that you also find work to be one of life's pleasures and that you think it is better not to need to work to cover one's costs of living, then we are in complete agreement, BUMWannaB.
 
Re: I Don't Want to Retire Early!

To avoid confusion, I propose the following definitions...

Work: Any unpleasant activity.

ER: The elimination of any obligation to engage in work to earn money.


IMO, any activity you truly enjoy ain't really work, thus retirement is pointless.

Now, I gotta get back to work.
 
Re: I Don't Want to Retire Early!

I just love the all consuming stress from my paid work!!
Lately not much pay, but who cares.
 
Re: I Don't Want to Retire Early!

There is a woman who is 45 years old. She spends long hours doing work she loves, and is paid $60,000 per year. She is single, and a big-time saver, putting aside close to $30,000 per year. She has over $300,000 in her portfolio. She also loves playing and teaching piano and had considered making it her vocation to teach piano, but decided that the financial risk was too great. She has little energy to teach piano on weekends because she is just too tired from the long hours of her work week. She tells herself that she will be able to teach piano after she turns 65 and retires, but she has a feeling inside that that is too much of a compromise of her piano teaching dream.

Her boss is a friend and knows of her situation. He tells her one day that a job has opened up with similar responsibilities as her own but which requires only a 3-day work week. The $36,000 that the new job pays is more than she needs to live on, so she would be able to continue to add to savings if she took it. She expects that she could make another $10,000 or so per year from teaching the piano if she were able to devote more time to it and have more energy for it. She does some calculations and determines that, combining the amounts she could continue to save, the earnings on her existing portfolio, her piano teaching earnings, her Social Security, and a small pension, she would have enough to leave the world of work altogether at age 65 if she took the new job.

A friend advises against this arrangement, saying that it sounds too "unconventional." The friend advises just saving enough to achieve full retirement a few years early. The woman does some calculations and determines that it is going to take a long time to save enough to leave her current job altogether. The thought of waiting so long to be able to spend more time teaching piano depresses her.

If she takes her boss's offer, is she "retired?" I say yes. Not in the conventonal sense. She still goes to work three days per week. But she sure as shooting is retired from something, is she not? She is retired from going to work on Thursdays and Fridays. She was able to retire a whole bunch sooner than she could have doing things the conventional way. What's the harm?

The whole idea of "early retirement" is unconventional. The driving idea behind the concept is to use your financial resources to become free to do what you want with your life. Different people want to do different sorts of things. If the only way to retire early is to leave the world of work altogher, you greatly limit the number of people who have any interest in the concept. Many people can't stand the idea of giving up work while they still have energy enough to do it and enjoy it. But there are many, many people who would like to retire from the unpleasant aspects of their jobs early in life while continung to do some form of work for many years to come.

People want to retire and people want not to retire. They want to retire from the aspects of their jobs they hate and not to retire from the aspects of their jobs that they love. That makes sense, doesn't it?

The conventional approach to retirement puts us in straightjackets. It says, work until 65, don't ask questions. The narrow view of early retirement puts us in straightjackets too. It says, retire all at once or don't retire at all. I see the mission of these boards as getting us out of straightjackets, not finding new ones to get into. Those who want to retire the conventional way, just a little early, should do so. Those who want to retire early but shape their retirements in unconventional ways so that they can continue to do work they love, should do that. We are talking about something new and it is far too early in the game to become too dogmatic about most of this stuff.
 
***** said:
I took the title of this thread from a thread I saw this morning at the Motley Fool board. The kick-off post in that thread was very short. All that the text of the post added to the message in the title was: "I do want to be able to retire early!"

That's me. I view work as one of the great pleasures of life. If there were a law of the universe that said that, if you achieve financial freedom early in life, you must stop working, I would prefer to remain in debt my whole life to having to give up the joys of work.

It's not just me. When I wrote my report on Secrets of Retiring Early, I included a section called "the Goals secret" where I explained that there is no law of the universe saying that one must use financial freedom to leave the workplace behind for good. I said that it is possible to "retire" just from the aspects of wage slavery that do not possess much appeal.

You can "retire" from a work schedule that leaves little time for the other good things in life by gaining the financial strength to be able to set your own hours. You can "retire" from having to follow the dictates of pointy-headed bosses by using your accumulated capital to reduce the risks normally associated with making a transition to self-employment. You can "retire" from doing work that doesn't excite you that you do anyway because you need to do it to pay the bills by using the income from your savings to supplement the smaller income you can earn from doing work you really love. I received a number of e-mails from readers saying that that section of the report was their favorite, that they had never looked at the concept of early retirement in that way and that it made the idea a lot more appealing to them.

I don't have any problem with people who want to save to leave the world of work altogether. But I think it is a mistake to think of the concept of early retirement so narrowly so as to cover only that option. What is really signified by the phrase "early retirement" is "early financial freedom." Some want to use financial freedom to insure that they need never work again. Others want to use financial freedom to do work they always dreamed of doing and to work longer hours than they ever did when they were doing it primarily for the money.

I'm with "DoubtIt," the poster who started a thread with the same name as this one over at the Motley Fool board. I don't want to retire early. I sure want to be able to retire early though!
Click to expand...

***** I am going to write you a presciption for hot sex and traveling to cure you of this :D
 
I agree with you analysis *****. It is a bit more about financial freedom than early retirement. I think the word ER sticks because Companies have label it as such when a person stops working before 65 and is eligible for retirement benefits.

I think FI and ER are used synonymously.

I am not giving much thought to work right now because I am spending too much time trying to figure out how to stop working. Once I jettison the old ball and chain, I will decompress for a while. I have hobbies and travel plans. During decompression (maybe a year or so) I will contemplate next steps. My biggest personal interest is music. I will pursue that and am doing so now.

If I could get paid for doing something I love, that would be great. Perhaps I can do so with music. Get in a band or something like that. However, my interest lies more in writing lyrics and the music.

I think a job winds up being a social outlet for many people (if they do not need the money).

I will probably join some organizations for social interaction. Possibly get more active at church.

I am likely to volunteer. Possibly become more politically active or help with social causes. This would serve two needs. Help stay connected and socially active, plus be involved in a cause.
 
Bigritchie - you are new here, so you might want to do a search on *****. The post you pulled up is from 3 years ago, and that guy has been pretty much de-bunked all over financial message boards. I believe he was banished from here, although others who have been here longer than me could probably better share the stories...
 
H*cus:

While I agree with many of your points. I see a long winded rationalization going....

Nonetheless, I too have chosen to keep working even though I could bow out now if I so wanted. I do not hate working like some of the other posters. My reasons to keep working have to do with keeping engaged and for getting paid to work on interesting things. The extra money accumulated working certainly doesn't hurt either.

I have thought about this work/retire issue quite a bit and have posted before about how I had an work attitude change (big time) once I realized that the money was there to quit working if I chose to. Once I had my attitude change the drudgery of work went away. My opinion of the boss and some of the co-workers changed for the better.

Maybe it's hard to believe, but it is much easier and much more fun to work now that I am FI than when I was younger.
 
Please go back and look at the original post of this thread - it is dated 12-10-2004!! ***** has been persona non grata around here since then. Don't feed the Troll.

Grumpy
 
I may be one of the few people here who seems to appreciate the point that H*cus is trying to make. I think it is true that ER does not need to be an "all or nothing" proposition. Transitioning to part time work, such as the piano teacher example, may be a quicker path for some to FIRE. Also, I am of the opinion that ER does not need to be an irrevocable choice. Financial Independence is all about freedom.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

I
REtiring early at 57 and scared
2 3 4
Replies
82
Views
5K
orbops
O
A
I think I made it...for now, at least.
2
Replies
25
Views
2K
Andre1969
A
N
Article: 'I'm too young to retire': What forced these workers to retire
2
Replies
46
Views
4K
meleana
M
R
Retirement Date Target Set at Aug/Sept 2025
Replies
3
Views
112
Route246
R
G
Early Retirement SS Benefits Reduction due to Income earned questions.
Replies
8
Views
870
glasswave
G

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom