How did i arrive at the decision to retire... I was on a burnout career path in High-Tech industry, way too many hours at work not enough with my family. Once I obtained my financial independence I started to work on finding "balance". Working less, taking a day off a week to teach classes at my kid's school (ran their computer lab). After about 6 months decided to go for a leave of absence to see if I could handle it... loved the time with my kids, family, and at the gym so I never came back.
RE: FRIENDS/FAMILY: It was awkward at first. Most of my close friends knew what I had done and really didn't treat me any differently... except to rib me from time to time about how hard I worked at walking my dog
. I actually met with my friends for lunch more after I retired (my time was more flexible). By working at the schools I also made new friends with some of the teachers/administrators (especially at the elementary school level.
RE: PERCEPTION BY OTHERS: I really didn't live any differently after I retired than before and being from the LA area buying a new car really didn't set me apart. The only real difference was that I didn't have a loan on anything. It feels really nice not to have a mortgage!!
I can't say I experienced any resentment... occasional envy. When you meet new people and tell them you are retired it can be a conversation stopper... they just don't know where to go from there. Sometimes I just told people I was an Investor, which is true and also very boring so most people just move on to the next topic.
Some other thoughts: Although I don't regret my move to retire for a moment, I will tell you it was not all easy. The first few months are a walk in the park, however, the first year of transition was probably the most challenging.
Some challenges I have encountered:
- My wife was a stay at home mom, so there was an adjustment period. She wasn't used to me being around all the time and I had to learn not to intrude on her time with her girlfriends (especially since I was seeing them as much by volunteering at the school and picking up the kids, as she was). One thing that really helped was when I really stepped in with the household chores (cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc).
- I wanted to help out at my kids schools (as I am sure you are aware all of the schools in CA are tremendously underfunded). I built two computer labs, a weight-room, and refurbished a gym. However, I did not want anyone knowing that I paid for the work (especially my kids). I found by working with the key administrators I was able do all of this with only 1 or 2 people knowing my real involvement.
- I did find that the days when I wasn't at the school could get kind of long and boring, however, I solved that problem by focusing on my fitness. I started going to the gym after the kids went to school and by the time I got done working out, recovering from my work out and getting cleaned up, it was pretty much lunch time and then my kids were out of school in 2 hours and that took care of the rest of my day/evening
- As you probably saw in one of my other posts. I left CA about a year ago to improve our quality of life. This first year has been a bit more challenging since I don't have the established friendships and my kids are now older (middle school, high school and college). If you and your wife have any ideas of leaving the LA area I would strongly recommend doing it before they leave elementary school.... The parent involvement is so much more at that level and it makes it much easier to meet people. Once you hit middle school and especially high school parents are kept much more at arms length and meeting other parents gets much harder.
HOW DID I MAKE THE NUMBERS WORK: I will admit to not being as financially savy as most of the people I have seen on this forum. So this was my process:
- I found an accountant I was very comfortable with... he was a referral from a friend and I worked with him before I was FI. I went to him to get a referral for a financial adviser (he is what I would term a "value investor"). We set up two main accounts (1) for income generation (2) for growth. My target for living expenses was $10K/mo from the income account (after taxes). So I pay all my bills, and taxes from the income account. Then for vacations, 2nd homes, home improvements, big ticket items, etc., I pull from excess in the income account and then from the growth account. I found that with the exception of this year I was typically netting 5-6%, after taxes on the dividends in the income account plus, since I wasn't just invested in bonds I was able to realize some equity gains on this account as well. My income account is a little riskier than a typical retirement account but I am young enough that I can afford the risk and I have the growth account to fall back on if times get tough for a few years.
Hope that helps some.