Re: Why cant I pull the trigger?
Blake,
I read your post with interest because I'm going through the exact same thing and with almost the exact same amount of money, although my net worth may be a bit less liquid than yours. I've got a small business I'm attempting to sell (covertly) because I'm burned out and not enamored with the future of the business. The business makes up about 30% of my net worth. I'm 40 with 2 kids and a pretty frugal wife who loves buying cheap houses and fixing them up for rentals.
I posted my "problem" on the board of being a little scared, like you, to pull the trigger a few months back and got lots of good comments, and a few that thought my situation was a joke because of the amount of money involved. I'm with ESRBob-- I think there a lot of folks out there in our situation that have the money to ER, but we struggle to determine if it's the right thing to do.
My situation with my business, which has been quite successful and for the most part still is (although not as much because I’m not as enthused as I was 10 years ago), makes it even harder because most of my business peers think I'm nuts for wanting to hang it up so soon. My business peers are a group of like sized business owners from different towns. We get together 3 times per year and share financial information and try to make each other better, but lately I’ve just been going for the drinks and the golf. Last meeting one guy complained that his business sucked last month because it only made him $50,000, and he was expecting $75,000. We are all making very good money, but many of them are miserable because they could have made more. I guess that’s the nature of business, not being satisfied with the status quo and wanting to increase, but I’ve just hit a wall and to me we are all starting to sound like whiners.
My big reason for wanting to quit is to have more time to watch the kids grow up and to just chill for a few years and find out if I'm good at anything else other than what I'm doing right now. So at some time in the future I may go back to work, but not anything that requires 6 days a week.
My wife is generally OK with the decision, although she wonders if I'm going to drive her crazy all day around the house. I really have no formal plan for what I'm going to do when I quit, and as Brat mentioned making such a plan may be a good idea (and make my wife feel better). As soon as I get a buyer for my store I'll be gone, but untill then I'm leading this weird dual life of business man on the outside and already-retired-man on the inside.............
Good luck with your decision, and email me if you have any problems or insights into our situation that may help us both.
Bill
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