I stopped full time work in 2013 at 57 yo - which was not planned (position "eliminated"). All my calculations and financial planning (and great advice from this site!) projected that I was able to leave paid employment entirely, and that was in fact my expected and intended path. About two weeks after leaving work, however, I got offered a short consulting job, and decided "why not"? It was in my field, it was easy, and (most importantly), it was a concrete number of days after which it would be over.
Since then I've had a pretty steady stream of short-term gigs that have come my way. I *never* let it interfere with my plans for travel or other non-work life plans, and have turned down quite a bit due to that, but I've also actually done some short things while on the road, too, with zero negative impact on the experience. In all, the consulting has totaled 25-40% of my time over the course of each year, but in concentrated chunks, and actually fewer calendar days than that because the consulting day is calculated on an 8 hour basis, and I'll often work longer than that to get stuff done. I generally work from home but have also had interesting international trips as part of a few jobs (which I actually like - YMMV). I've also increased my rate to make it comparable to my most recent FT work pay including benefits, so feel I am being paid what I'm worth.
So I plan to take this semi-retirement situation "one day at a time", but figure I'll continue to do it at least another year or two assuming (a) jobs are still offered without me having to seek them out/market and (b) I don't start hating it. The driving motivation for me is absolutely and 100% the money! It has allowed me to be much more indulgent about spending than I normally would be, especially on travel -- both based on reality, i.e., what would be a conservative SWR, but also psychologically since I know I would be way too cheap to splurge even though I could (so basically I haven't had to psychologically transition to living strictly without work income yet...). In fact, having the extra consulting $$$ means I haven't had to take a dime out of my investments in 3.5 years, which has increased the pot some (even with a dismal returns year like 2015
). I've also been able to add more to my Roth and also opened an individual Roth 401(k).
Re: down sides to this set-up: (1) well, it's work after all, so it does mean *some* exertion and interference with total lounging around (although still low stress and flexible); (2) my taxes are really high, dramatically an added expense but also dramatically limiting the amount I can convert of my tIRA to Roth and still stay within the 25% bracket (as a single person, the limits are very low).
So the bottom line is that I sort of backed into ESR instead of full ER, but it has actually worked out great! I actually recommend this 'transition' approach of going from FT to PT work (and eventually to zero work!) to all my friends now, as a way to escape the rat race a bit earlier than they might normally do.
