It makes total sense why the low-information diet is a frequent topic of discussion among current and would-be early retirees. There’s so much bad news these days that can feel overwhelming, and some well-known writers have argued in favor of tuning out. But is the low-information diet actually good for us? Let’s look at the science. (And then let’s look at how we can manage news and social media more healthily!)
For a long time, I let myself go down the magical thinking rabbit hole, convincing myself that early retirement would cure everything in my life that needed fixing. And even after I recognized that magical thinking for what it was, I still assumed that early retirement would fix a lot for us, especially things related to work stress and limited time. So how has that actually turned out so far? Let’s take a look.
Maybe it’s because I was confined to the couch all last week with a migraine, and maybe it was because there was recently a fresh wave of “Early retirement will kill you!” headlines, but I decided to really dig into this question of whether early retirement could actually be bad for us. Here’s what I found.
We officially have so few work days left that we can count them on our fingers and toes. Which means we’re 100 percent fired up, right? Um, yeah, about that. Turns out even though I knew the feelings at this stage would be complicated, they’re even more conflicting that I expected. And that’s not to mention how I feel physically. How this point in time feels so different from what I expected.
Early retirement and financial independence are such huge goals that most of us can’t help but build them up in our minds, and that often leads to the totally normal tendency to get into magical thinking: believing early retirement will make us happier, or better people, or cure whatever else ails us. Today we get into why it’s worth countering that magical thinking, and how to do it.
Almost a year ago, we realized that we’d reached financial independence. And reaching it hasn’t been anything like what we might have expected. Our FI life is still life, with all the usual ups and downs. Some things are better, but most things are the same. This year has taught us: Financial independence is a good goal, but a bad goalpost.
We could only daydream about our future life and how different it will be from our current one for so long before we had to accept: Life won’t just be different. We will be different, too. For the first time, we’ll get to know the well rested versions of ourselves, and the less stressed versions. And it has us wondering: How well do we really know our post-retirement selves? And how well do we know post-retirement us, as a married couple? Let’s discuss!
Today, a short list of things you can do right this very second to make a difference in the world.
If you’ve been reading here, it will come as no surprise that we care a lot more about happiness than we do about money. And happiness doesn’t happen by accident. For us, happiness right now means not waiting to become our best selves. Here’s how we’re doing that.
