Tag: work

OurNextLife.com, Adapting to New Baselines in Early Retirement, Financial Independence

Adapting to New Baselines in Early Retirement

I’ve had an odd realization the last few months in early retirement: I’d expected to catch up on sleep and exhale all the stress of work and find myself feeling perpetually well-rested and low stress. But in reality, I’m actually more aware of stress and more affected by sleepiness than I was before. But this isn’t a bad thing at all. Let’s talk about why.

What Early Retirement Has and Hasn’t “Fixed”

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.

Why I'm Glad I Didn't Retire Even Earlier // Our Next Life // early retirement, financial independence

Why I’m Glad I Didn’t Retire Even Earlier

It may seem like an odd thing to say, but as focused as I was on retiring early for so many years, I’m actually glad that I didn’t retire even earlier than I did. “Why’s that, you crazy person?” you might be wondering. Well read on, because there are a bunch of reasons that just might help others feel better about the work you do en route to early retirement.

Consider a side hustle year to begin early retirement // Our Next Life // It's easy to observe that a lot of people -- not just bloggers -- end up working more than they expect to in early retirement or financial independence, in large part because work feels very different when it's by choice than when it's by necessity. So why not plan for that and make your first year of early retirement a side hustle year? The benefits of doing so are potentially huge.

Consider a Side Hustle Year to Begin Early Retirement

It’s easy to observe that a lot of people — not just bloggers — end up working more than they expect to in early retirement, in large part because work feels very different when it’s by choice than when it’s by necessity. So why not plan for that and make your first year of early retirement a side hustle year? The benefits of doing so are potentially huge.

The Thrill of the New and the Peril of Too Much Yes // Setting New Boundaries in Early Retirement

The Thrill of the New and the Peril of Too Much Yes // Setting New Boundaries in Early Retirement

We’re 10 work days from early retirement, and are now starting to consider new opportunities that look to the untrained eye a whole lot like work. The whole point of our early retirement was to be able to say yes more, and some of the things we really want to be able to say yes to, money aside. But there’s peril in that — taking on too much, and making it not really early retirement after all. Here’s how we’re thinking about setting new boundaries.

Our Next Life // What do you want to be when you grow up? That's what financial independence is all about. // Early retirement lets us answer that question, which is a way better question to focus on than "What do you do?"

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? That’s What Financial Independence Is All About

The question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” has never been far from my consciousness at any point in my life. I asked it of myself constantly as a kid, and I never really stopped even as an adult in a career. Which might partially explain how I got on an early retirement path. But answering that question — and separating “be” from “do” — is really what financial independence is all about.

The Income Streams Our Early Retirement Is (Now) Built On

When we first formulated a real early retirement plan, it was based on the rigid belief that we’d never, ever work again. Or at least never *have* to work again. And while that’s still true — we haven’t expedited our plan by forcing ourselves to earn income in the future — we now expect to get a much more diversified set of income streams in early retirement. In part because life happens and we’ve made some different choices along the way. And in part because that recession hasn’t hit yet, health care is still up in the air, and it makes sense to keep hedging against sequence risk and health insurance uncertainty.

How to Use Your FI Freedom to Agitate for Others at Work | financial independence, early retirement

How to Use Your FI Freedom to Agitate for Others at Work

Those of us on the FI path who are still working have an incredible freedom that most of the working world doesn’t enjoy: the freedom to push for the change in our companies or industries that others might get penalized for pushing for. Better pay, more empowering conditions, parity, diversity, you name it. If we get labeled difficult or squeaky wheels, it doesn’t matter, because we’re on our way out. Here’s how — and why! — to use that power, both for the greater good and for your own legacy.

The Paradox of Growing Up So We Can Avoid Growing Up // For those of us pursuing early retirement so we can be kids forever, there's an interesting paradox: we have to grow up to avoid growing up and early retire.

The Paradox of Growing Up So We Can Avoid Growing Up

I spend a lot of time talking about the nobler aspects of early retirement like how it will give us time to do more volunteering. But can we all be honest? We can do noble things in retirement, but the reason doesn’t have to be noble at all. For us, it’s all about what is most fun, and the answer is: not working. We want to retire early so that we can go back to being kids, but the paradox is that we’ve had to grow up big time to avoid growing up.

You can love your job and still want to retire early // You can retire if you love your career, if you feel fulfilled by it, or any other good reason!

You Can Love Your Job and Still Want to Retire Early

In the last several months of contemplating leaving work, while doing a better job of saying no and setting boundaries (woot!), I’ve come to realize something: I truly love what I do. Bad news for a soon-to-be early retiree, right? Not at all! You can definitely love your job and still want to retire early — no insanity required! Here’s why.

Imperial Palace, Tokyo Japan

Does Anyone Who Is Seriously Awesome at Their Job Retire Early?

A question we ask ourselves all the time is: Do we just want to retire early because deep down we feel bad at working? Even though we’re nothing close to bad at our jobs — we’ve very good at them — we’ve never quite been able to muster the right attitude to do them with total commitment. Which makes us wonder: for those special few who are seriously incredible at their jobs, would early retirement even enter their minds? Come share your theories!

Self Worth, Validation and Gold Stars in My Post-Career Life

It’s nothing new to say that our collective digital life has made many of us focus too much on signs of external digital validation such as likes and comments. I’ve so far been okay at avoiding that trap, but after we leave our careers, the work I do will be more digital than ever. And given my gold star-seeking tendencies, how can I redefine my self worth post-career without falling into the digital stats trap?

Replicate What You’re Great At in Early Retirement

Here’s a crazy thought: It feels great to be good at things. And if there are things you’re good at in your current work — even if it’s not obvious now that you get joy from them — you might miss out on future joy if you subtract those tasks from your life when you retire early. Today we’re honing in on the things we’re best at, that bring us the most joy, and figuring out how to magnify that joy in FIRE.

When Loyalists Contemplate Quitting

Thanks to some recurring power outages, we’ve had a lot of time lately to talk about what’s on our minds. And something that keeps coming up a lot is anxiety about what it will be like when we quit — not our post-work life, but the actual act of quitting itself. We know this feels tougher to us because we’ve been in our jobs a long time and are invested in them. Today: When loyalists contemplate quitting.

2017: The Year of “No”

Happy new year! The last year of work was super stressful for us, and we’ve been mulling the question of whether we should or even can care less at work — and whether that would solve the problem. But, we’ve come to a different conclusion about the root of the problem, and it’s giving us a new directive for this year. Welcome to our 2017, the Year of No, preamble to our retired Life of Yes.

Recognizing the Difference Between Burnout and a Dead End

Anyone aspiring to retire early can list off a million reasons why we want to quit working, but what’s interesting is that most of those reasons have to do with work culture, not with work itself. On some level, we all crave the meaning and satisfaction that come with work, but the realities of modern work are very different from that work ideal. Learning to recognize the difference between work itself and work culture — and likewise the difference between job burnout and a true dead end career — can help us zero in on why we want to retire early to begin with.

Asking for More and Getting It // 2016 Goals Review + 2017 Goal Setting

We’re thinking a lot lately about asking for more — asking for the compensation we deserve at work, and asking more of ourselves. And now, it’s official: in 2016, we successfully did both. Today, the story of how I negotiated for more money at work, and how we rose to the higher challenges we’d set for ourselves this year. Do we consider 2016 an unqualified success? Read on!

OurNextLife.com // Our Big Epiphany: We Will Earn Money In the Future // Earning Money in Retirement, Planning to Supplement Savings with Income in Retirement

Our Big Epiphany: We Will Earn Money in Retirement

Our early retirement plan has gone through a lot of iterations, but one thing has remained constant: our insistence that we never want to have to work again. But we’re starting to realize that we’ve been thinking about this the wrong way. Come join us as we trace our journey to our recent epiphany that we will earn money in the future, even after we retire.

Don't Check Out Early // Weathering the Home Stretch to Early Retirement -- Set goals, shape your legacy, give yourself something to strive for before you quit your career

Don’t Check Out Early // Staying Engaged in the Home Stretch to Early Retirement

We get the question a lot: “How do you stay patient en route to early retirement?” But we’ve realized that’s the wrong question we should all be asking. The biggest predictor of happiness in the journey to early retirement isn’t how patient or impatient we are, it’s whether we stay engaged or let ourselves disengage at work. That’s why we now say: Don’t check out early.

OurNextLife.com // To Care or Not to Care // Work As Retirement Nears -- Care less at work, work less hard near retirement, Zero chill at work, DGAF at work

To Care or Not To Care // The Work Mindset As Retirement Nears

One of my favorite parts of FinCon was getting the chance to talk to bloggers who are ahead of us on their FIRE journeys, including several who are already retired. I asked them all if their last year of work was harder, and answers were mixed. It all seemed to come down to how much they cared about work in the home stretch, and it has gotten us wondering whether we can care less to make our last year less stressful.

OurNextLife.com // Early Retirement and Financial Independence Blog | Working in Early Retirement | Portfolio Preservation | Increasing the Odds of Early Retirement Success

Rethinking Work in Early Retirement // Contingencies, Sequence Risk and Fail Safes

We have said from our second post ever that our vision for early retirement has never included mandatory work. And we’ve been more vigilant about this fact than probably any other in our early retirement plan. We’ve shifted our investments, we’ve changed our timelines, we’ve debated when to give notice, but we’ve never wavered on the no mandatory work idea. But… that might be changing.

OurNextLife.com // early retirement, financial independence, adventure, simplicity, mountain living

Reconsidering When to Give Notice

The current debate in the ONL house is when to quit our jobs. Barring a major market correction, we feel pretty good that we’ll hit our magic numbers ahead of schedule next year, possibly as early as Q2 of 2017. But of course before we can quit, we have to give notice. And that brings with it a whole bunch of other questions. Here’s how we’re thinking about them.

Going Out on Top // Retiring at the Peak

if you watched yesterday’s super bowl, you couldn’t miss all the speculation that peyton manning is going to retire after this season. what’s incredible is that peyton has the rare privilege of choosing to go out on top, on his own terms. not many people, in sports and in regular working life, get that choice.

What Do You Want Your Tombstone to Say? // Defining Our Purpose

we have felt for years that, if something tragic happened and we died unexpectedly, we wouldn’t have a whole lot to show for our lives, or at least not the things that we’d want to be remembered for. rather than lament whether or not our accomplishments match our aspirations at this point in our lives, we decided to be the empowered authors of our own purpose. here’s what we mapped out.

Our Next Life By the Numbers // Our 100th Post!

wow, you guys. though time doesn’t fly when you’re trying hard to retire already, it feels like just yesterday that we started this little blog to chronicle our journey to early retirement (actually it was about 10 months ago), and here we are, 100 posts later! we thought we’d celebrate the day with a rundown on some of the other numbers we’ve racked up while writing these 100 posts.

Our Golden Handcuffs // Sticking It Out in Stressful Jobs Until We Retire

we feel the sunday blues in a big way. and we know why: not only do we just not love having to work every day, we know that we’re in especially high pressure, stressful, occasionally soul-sucking jobs. but we didn’t just default into these golden handcuffs of ours, and we don’t stay in our jobs because we lack imagination. our choice to stay put in unsustainable jobs is a clear-eyed decision we’ve made, based on considering all of our options and deciding what’s most important to us. the most important thing? getting to our exit date as soon as we possibly can.

the wardrobe cue

if we really cared about achieving a lot in our jobs, wouldn’t we want to dress as nicely as possible? wouldn’t we want to look slick and pulled together all the time? instead, the casual world is the better fit for us.

work is still the reality

like in the allegory of the cave, we used to see the shadows like everyone else, this illusion that work and earning and buying and accumulating are the only option. now we’ve seen that we can choose a different path for our future. except, for now, work is still our reality.