Ah impatience – my old friend. Throughout my 5+ years on this journey to financial independence, I’ve tried countless mind tricks to distract myself and remind my brain that being in the workforce for 10 years instead of 35 is a relatively short amount of time. But, it rarely works. I am not the most patient person 🙂 .
At my last job, I would come into the office each morning, drop my backpack, erase the number of days on my whiteboard and re-write my latest countdown. It was the number of workdays I had until financial independence (though I told my coworkers it was something else 😉 ). At that time the count was around 1,100 workdays.
Now here I am with 93 workdays remaining and let me tell you, my level of impatience throughout these years has been a wild roller coaster ride. I thought I understood that my emotions would vary while pursuing a long term goal like financial independence that stretches 5, 10 or 20 years, but I wasn’t prepared for how much – especially over my relatively short 5 year journey.
Overall my impatience from the beginning of this journey in January 2015 to now, has looked like this:
Stage 1: It’s Not Real
At the start my journey, I had saved about $50,000 accidentally in my 401(k). I had set it and forgot about it in 2011 and was shocked at its value when I started paying attention to my finances in 2015. The idea of saving $500,000 – 10 times the amount I had – was inconceivable.
I had the goal and put steps in place to make it happen, but it didn’t seem ‘real’. This wasn’t something people ‘do’. My Mom retired at 55 and still gets strange looks about that. Who am I to ride off into the sunset at 30 with half a million dollars?
I was working towards the goal, but it still felt like a fantasy and as a result I didn’t think about the end date. I didn’t count down the days and I didn’t dream of what my early retired life could be like. It was in a too distant future or even an alternate timeline of my life that I didn’t truly believe could exist (there’s my pessimism again…). Then this happened:
Stage 2: It’s Real And I Want It Now
I completed 3 years of this journey in 2018 and shit started feeling real. I hit a net worth high of $305,589 – more money than I could have ever dreamed of having. The first few years of saving were slower going. I accumulated a total of $137,612 in 2016 and $234,822 in 2017, but in 2018 with $305,589 saved, compound interest started to make my net worth growth look exponential.
Suddenly, the idea of saving $500,000 didn’t feel far-fetched. And having only 2 years until I could do whatever I wanted seemed like a relatively short amount of time. These two factors ratcheted up my impatience and ratcheted down my tolerance for work bullshit…which is not good when I still had two whole years of my work life left 🙂 .
So the mind tricks began. I created countless charts and graphs to help my brain put this short amount of time into perspective. I tried to remind myself of all the things I enjoy about my job and force myself to not wish some of my healthiest years away to just get there NOW! All of those mind tricks worked to a degree, but something else worked even better:
Stage 3: Do I Even Need To Quit?
I’ve documented how this journey changed how I act at work several times and, sometime in the future, I should overlay those changes with the impatience graph above because as I’ve grown my net worth and felt less reliant on my employer, I’ve felt empowered to push back on unreasonable requests, stand up for myself and really just say “no” sometimes when previously I was a notorious “yes woman.”
Doing so has led me to be happier at work, do better work according to my performance reviews and have a better work/life balance. This culminated in what I’ve called DGAF status. Now when someone says something passive aggressive like this gem from yesterday: “I was thinking you’d be on that 7am call” (despite not asking me to be on it and knowing we rotate that shit…), I let it roll off my back.
If someone had made a similar comment earlier in my career, I would have agonized over it and done everything in my power to anticipate this person’s every need. No longer. If you need something from me you need to say it – I’m not a mind reader. That’s not my job. I’m no longer tied to the bullshit that seems to encompass corporate life. I do my job and I do it well, but I don’t concern myself with the rest of it. And, as a result, my impatience beast retreated into its cave and I started to not mind my job.
I even had a flash of interest in it:
Uh oh – I felt genuinely interested in something at work today. Is this what y'all "I love my job" people feel all the time?!?! It was a weird feeling😉.
— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) June 4, 2019
But, like all good things, it didn’t last:
It already has🤣. It was a fleeting feeling.
— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) June 4, 2019
Stage 3.5: OMG I Need To Quit
Overall I’m pretty chill about my job for all the reasons mentioned above, but there are times when I’m happily smiling about how my work ‘isn’t that bad’ and then suddenly I’m fighting the urge to rage quit. Here’s a recent example:
A client just requested that we move a meeting to 6am on a Monday morning. You can't make this shit up. pic.twitter.com/tbIXJkeCea
— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) May 12, 2020
Other 2020 examples include:
- People not showing up for meetings – especially 7am ones….The “decline” button is right there. It’s so easy I promise
- Colleagues who feel the need to justify their existence by scheduling unnecessary meetings and then rambling in circles while I continually say I’m getting off the phone
- Coworkers who try to make their procrastination my problem
- And this gem:
Woke up to an email that was sent at 8pm, marked URGENT❗️ and asked me to email someone else ASAP…..Why can't you just email them? And how is that urgent🤔? I've decided instead of getting mad at this stuff to keep a running list to laugh at in the future🤣. It's all I can do.
— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) May 14, 2020
It’s times like these that my impatience flares up and I remember why I don’t want to continue this work life. Luckily these times are rarer than the thought of “this isn’t that bad,” but it’s still a nice reminder of why I’m working hard for this goal and should fight any inkling of “One More Year Syndrome” trying to sink its claws into me.
[A COVID-19 Interlude]
My graph showing my impatience level on my journey will (hopefully) be a little unhelpful for future early retiree classes (Go Class of 2020!) because of COVID-19. After the coronavirus turned our world upside down, my emotions were (understandably) all over place in every area of my life, including work.
We’re currently on Week 12 of quarantine in Seattle….3 whole months…1/4 of a year…Wowza. And during that time, the vacillation of my emotions would very accurately be described in the “WTF” section of the graph above.
A few weeks ago my mood would shift in a matter of seconds from gratefulness to impatience and back again. At one moment I would be reflecting on how I feel grateful to have a job while 36 million (and counting) Americans have lost theirs and in the next moment I would be pissed at my colleague’s incompetence and twist my thinking to “Well if I rage quit now that’s one more job for someone else who needs it…”
I go from thinking “Maybe I should keep this job that’s pretty easy and pad my investments more to ride out this pandemic” (*cough* one more year syndrome *cough*) to “WTF do you mean I have to wake up for calls with Europe at 6:30am for the foreseeable future?!?!”
So I’m all over the place (though I’m still quitting in September – don’t worry 😉 ) and based on the experiences of other early retirees’ writing about their experiences approaching their quit date, this is not normal so I’m putting this on The ‘Rona’s head. My journey’s going to be a weird outlier in this way so I just wanted to warn anyone reading this in the future about that. May your last few months of work be pandemic free!
Stage 4: Meh – This Isn’t So Bad
Despite the many changes in our world, my life has been surprisingly unchanged. I’ve been at my current job and working remotely for almost 4 years now. My partner has worked from home basically his whole career. Being around each other 24/7 is not new for us and since we’re homebodies, not seeing other people for long stretches of time isn’t that rare either (though this is a record by far…)
After 3 months of quarantine, we have adjusted to this new normal and I’ve been able to try and see the parts of my job that I enjoy again. For example, the other day I felt actual joy when updating a work spreadsheet…my nerdy love of tables bled into my work life for a second.
I’ve also been able to remember why I’ve stayed at this job four times as long as any other: I love my boss, my remote work setup and some of my colleagues. I also enjoy the variety of working for multiple clients on many different projects that end every 3-6 months. I have a lot to be grateful for and my overall feeling during this last phase of employment has mostly been “This isn’t so bad……but I’m still quitting.”
Conclusion
So those are the stages of impatience I’ve gone through on my journey these last 5 years. My Mom (the drama queen) read the above and commented that they sounded similar to the stages of grief. Wow. I’m not sure I would go that far, but it’s an interesting comparison and I do see a few similarities.
But, overall, I found it interesting that impatience peaked a few years before I planned to quit. At that time, I thought it would just continue to ratchet up until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I was wrong – and I don’t know if that is a result of the pandemic we’re currently experiencing or what, but that’s where I am. I’m grateful to have a job and I (mostly) don’t mind it. 18 Mondays to go…
How has your impatience level changed as you approach a big goal?
My impatience peaked in the past few months actually. It came suddenly and it came HARD.
Everything was planned on my end for 1st of May this year to pull the trigger but COVID-19 had other plans. Every month that passes by now I get even more impatient and it’s getting worse 🙂 This situation literally forced me into the 1 more year syndrome but hey, maybe it’s a blessing. Who knows?
Cheers!
Oh no – I’m sorry it’s getting worse! I hope it eases up so you can survive that one more year. And yeah maybe it’s a blessing. We can compare notes in a few years to see what’s up 😉 .
Great article, Purple!
You’ve been a huge inspiration for me in this FI-journey! I’ve reduced my FI-number from $600,000 to $500,000 after inspiration from you. Did only spend $17,5K last year, so can’t see any point of grinding more years in the 9-5 if it’s not necessary 😉 I’ll retire from the 9-5 in 2 years (unless my index funds vanish to $0 during another crash 😛 😛 ).
Looks like the COVID-19-situation will be more/less over when you retire, so then you can travel and enjoy your life just the way you’ve planned!
I wish you my best luck!
PS! Continue to blog after ypu’ve retired 😀
Thank you! And oh wow – that’s really cool! Congratulations on your 2 years. What makes you think COVID-19 will be over by October? Just curious.
P.S. I have promised to keep my every Tuesday schedule for at least a year after retirement. I can probably be convinced for longer 🙂 .
Hi Purple,
Glad you talked about this. I was fortunate that my discovery of the FIRE movement (July 2019) to being able to feasibly quit (my husband and I agreed to Nov 2019) was short. I meant my path to be much longer so I could get to a bigger FI number, but once I contemplated FIRE-ing, I couldn’t wait, so had the “I want to phase out of this job” discussion with my boss in early Nov.
To help out my boss, who I like, I agreed to work until end-Mar2020. There were snafus with getting my replacement so my end date changed to end-Apr2020. Covid definitely has been f-r-e-a-k-y! in so many ways, and I wobbled more than once around actually quitting, but did start my retirement on May 1st.
My husband, who retired in 2018 after 45 years at his job, told me that “time flies by once you announce you’re retiring.” I did NOT find that to be the case! Every day, every second dragged by. I am nominally still employed just so my replacement can reach out to me with questions. I skim my email to make sure there’s nothing from her, and I see soooo much other crapola come through and feel incredible joy that I don’t have to deal with any of it!!
Congratulations on your retirement!!! I’m sorry time didn’t fly leading up to it. That’s really cool you can scan over all the “crapola” (love that word lol) and just check in with your replacement. I’m sure I would find all this work nonsense a lot more amusing if I was just looking in without being involved 🙂 .
Nice post!
Glad you are still going ahead with your plan to retire in September!
I can imagine your mood changes every day, but as you said – 36m (rising,falling etc.) people are without any job at all. Many member of the FI community are very fortunate, despite our constant strive for ‘better’
Best,
J
Thanks! And yes indeed we are very fortunate.
I had to laugh at your 6am Monday meeting! In my old corporate career, people in my office would have the same reaction to a 9am Monday meeting. We all struggled to be in the office by 9:30am or even 10am. Of course, we all stayed late, but NYC is a beast unto itself and there seemed to be incredible flexibility with work time arrival (trains are too unreliable).
Today, no one in my current health care profession blinks an eye at such a suggestion. 6:30am? Sure! Isn’t everyone up and already at work by that time anyway?! It’s hard to believe this former night owl works such early hours.
Anyway, it’s been interesting to follow your journey. You’re not wrong for wanting to stay longer to pad your investments, nor are you wrong to want to stick to your original plan and retire early. You’ll know what to do when the time comes.
Ah yes NYC – it is indeed a beast. You’re bringing back some memories there. And ugh yes I do not miss those trains – especially when I had to take 3 to get to work/home. Too many variables and it seemed like one of them went wrong daily.
And woooah that’s amazing you work that early when you used to be a night owl. My partner and I have started going to bed earlier and I’ve found myself waking up naturally at 6/6:30am the last few weeks when I used to groan while rolling over to my alarm at 8:55am before starting work at 9. It’s weird lol. And thank you!
Love the graph with the WFT. This pandemic as for sure is an interesting ride for a lot of people, ourselves included. But why being impatient for 5 years? Doesn’t this show that you might not have fully enjoyed the journey until then? I can’t relate to this since, by the time we learn what FI was, we were already there. But with life in general, I tend to enjoy every single day and I don’t mind delaying gratification for months or years if necessary. Just some food for thoughts Purple 🙂
Thanks! And that’s interesting. I don’t think those are two states that are separate or directly opposed to each other: impatience and enjoyment. For example, I am impatient and excited about a lot of things at all times, like an upcoming vacation, but that doesn’t mean I am not enjoying now or want to fast forward my life to get to it. I’m just excited and looking forward to it.
The same is true for FI. I made my life as awesome as I could now. I found a job with a boss I love, work I find more interesting and a remote set up that works best for me. I moved to my favorite major city (Seattle) to be happier. I even slowed down my FI journey when I stopped job hopping 4 years ago to keep this job I enjoy even though that means I haven’t gotten a real raise in those 4 years when based on my part behavior I could have tripled my salary in that time and reached FI way sooner.
So no I don’t think I haven’t enjoyed the journey. I was really intentional about that after reading the mad fientist write about how he basically stopped spending money to get to FI faster and he was miserable. Also, to put a morbid spin on it, I have always assumed I might die before even reaching FI so I better make my life as awesome as possible now since nothing is guaranteed. That’s awesome you learned about FI when you’d already hit it!
I had thoughts similar to NomadNumbers, but more along the lines of research I’ve done into the field of happiness. From studies we can see that planning something (house renovation, vacation, retirement) and having a clear goal to achieve that outcome will make us happy and excited with our life. Then, most often, we reach the desired outcome and find it doesn’t make us as happy as we thought it would. Sort of an anticlimax.
I wish Purple the best with her retirement, but point this out so people can at least think ahead to what they’ll do after financial independence. Maybe she’ll want to do a little work here and there, which pads her retirement even more while she enjoys her life more. Sort of like the podcast Michael Kitces did on her situation. Either way, excited for you!
That’s cool you’ve done happiness research. I don’t expect to be any happier in retirement personally. It’s more removing a negative than adding a positive to my life in my mind that gives me time to work on the action of being happier more minutes of my life. I fully advocate people having a plan for what they want to do in retirement, what their purpose will be, how they’ll spend their days etc. I think I have that all figured out, but we’ll see if my plans are sufficient. As for work, I do believe the internet retirement police would say I’m already ‘working’ in retirement now that I’ve made money on my blog. Kitces seems to have been right. And thank you!
I love the WTF graph! I had a laugh. Good article.
Haha I had a chuckle myself. I’m glad you liked it!
The emotional journey of a long term goal is pretty wild. Thanks for laying it out there! I’m cheering for ya!
It really is! This is the longest goal I’ve pursued in my life so far. It’s wild. And yay thank you!
Actually I did feel that way about work almost every day, it was a fun hobby. But I wasn’t at many people’s mercy, they were at mine since I was the boss at least for my division but I did have my overlords. It did eventually get kind of ridiculous so I retired a little early, I hear they have Saturday meetings now! Not this guy.
SATURDAY MEETINGS?!?! Hell no! My boss scheduled a meeting on Memorial Day (one of the few federal holidays we get off) and I happily hit decline – I’m not about that life. My weekends are sacred.
I think you did well putting into words what most of us feel on this journey. I tend to vacillate from “eh, I’m on the right path, it’ll come when it comes” to “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” It’s probably because my job tends to vacillate between “I can’t believe I get paid for this” to “I don’t get paid nearly enough for this $#%#.” Also, I love that you’re counting down Mondays, that’s amazing. For me it’s Wednesdays, since that’s our paper’s deadline day. It’s kind of like defending your thesis on a weekly basis. I dread them and look forward to the time when Wednesdays are just another day. Or maybe I will buy a waffle iron in retirement and make waffles exclusively on Wednesdays, so that they have a new special meaning. Well, here is to ticking off another Monday!
Haha yeah the vacillation is real. And yeah Mondays are my roughest day (“case of the Mondays” etc). Makes sense about Wednesdays. And yummm now I want waffles…
My chart was pretty linear. I kept getting more impatient as the target date crept closer. I took an MLOA before I quit. It was a different situation, though. I really dislike my job by then. I was there for 16 years and couldn’t take it anymore.
You’d better go see your dentist and doctors soon. 93 days will fly by.
September is not looking good. You might not be able to travel much. I expect FinCon will be canceled this year. Good luck!
Yeesh I’m sorry your chart was linear. I’m glad you were able to take a MLOA and get out though!
Doctors appointments all happened right before the pandemic so that’s good. The Dentist isn’t looking good (it was either going this week which I’m not comfortable with or not at all before we move – they’re booked all the times I’ve available). Yeah – September for international travel isn’t looking great, but luckily I can just push it back a year or two – I’ll have nothing but time 😉 . My backup plans of just living near family in the US is something I’m also looking forward to so it’s all good. And yeah I’m expecting FinCon to be cancelled as well 🙁 .
Have you considered taking a leave of absence from work before you quit? Kind of a trial to see if you’ll enjoy your new lifestyle before making the jump.
I enjoy your posts overall, good luck with everything.
Good idea. I have considered it. Unfortunately marketing doesn’t do leave of absences. We’re seen as expendable. I’ll be surprised if my company doesn’t lay lots of people off in the coming months (possibly myself included). So quitting basically is the only leave of absence I can take. If I somehow don’t like my new freedom I can just get another job. Thank you
I get impatient as I get closer to a trip. Along with counting the days (or even the hours when I get down to about 3 days before), I also do a backwards countdown. So if something is happening in 30 days, I look back 30 days from today to see what I was doing on that day. It puts things into perspective of how long or close I am to that goal or event. The beauty with that is for ever day closer to the goal, it is two days forward from the last day I was thinking about during the backwards count. So it feels like the gap is closing in even faster when counting down backwards.
Of course now with no travel I have nothing exciting to count down to 🙁
Oh wow – counting hours is next level! Maybe I should try that lol…I do love putting things in perspective by looking back the same amount of time. You inspired me to that today with the number of days I have left to work and I vividly remember everything about that day in January and it feels like yesterday which is hilarious. Definitely helped! Great tips. And yeah I’m finding that I used to define years by the international trips I would take and that’s what I counted down towards – now not knowing when that will be possible has left a gap in my countdown clocks. I guess I’ll fill it all up with my retirement countdown instead 😉 . I hope you find something you can get excited about in the distance soon!
Yes to all of these! I may or may not have been tempted to rage quit a few times. Mostly because I’ve got people that report to me that have absolute garbage crap they churn out, but on paper they are doing better than me because they can churn that sh%t out faster than I can churn out quality stuff. WTF am I doing agonizing over quality when they can get away with crap?! Sigh. I’ve also noticed that my life hasn’t changed much, except now going to the store is like gearing up to get supplies during the zombie appocalypse. Being a homebody certainly has its perks. Sadly I am also an extrovert so I talk on the phone with people at work way too much now.
I’m glad you agree and sorry you’ve felt like rage quitting. I hate that feeling. And ugh people under you churning out garbage sounds awful – I’m sorry. Another reason on my long list of why I don’t want to manage people. I would have a very high turnover rate lol… Your company valuing speed over quality unfortunately doesn’t surprise me, but does make me sad.
YES to gearing up for the apocalypse before going to the store. That and I haven’t left like a mile radius around my house when usually we would walk much farther than that. Oh well – walking in circles works too haha. And you’re a homebody AND an extrovert?! Wow that sounds unique. I’m glad you can feed that by talking on the phone though – that’s awesome!
Haha. This is great, Purple.
I am on Impatience Step 1.75, not quite 2. I desperately want to quit, but know I don’t have my shit completely together yet.
And yes, it has nothing to do with the actual work that needs done, but the people getting in the way of me getting work done, and then being jerks about why things aren’t done. lol. I’ve been handing out a lot of Thumbs-Up emojis instead of verbal responses for a month now.
Glad you liked it! And ah yes Step 1.75 – that’s a tough one. And ugh why are people the worst lol? In another life I think I should take a job where I don’t have interact with people at all. I’m still trying to figure out what that could possibly be because everything I think of doesn’t pay anywhere near a living wage. TBD. And ah yes the semi-passive aggressive thumbs up emoji – I love it 😉 .
So interesting to read about the progression, I, too, was very impatient during the middle part of acquisition. Now, I think it’s likely I’ll have the ability to walk away in a year. I feel a combination of impatient to have the ability and “meh” about whether I’d actually do it or not. I’m at the point in my career where I’d be able to walk away for a bit and come back if I wanted to – plenty of opportunity. But, my current gig is pretty great, so maybe I’ll stay awhile. Love the stages!
Awesome to hear it’s not just me! I wasn’t expecting that middle peak of impatience. And woot woot to having the option to walk away in a year AND to just come back if you want – I love all the options!
13 – the number I wrote on my board today.
WOW that’s amazing! Congratulations!!!
I love this post. I’ve felt so many of the feels throughout the years.
I think starting reading MMM in college was an advantage and disadvantage because it started this crazy impatience trending from day 1!
It wasn’t until I talked to a bunch of people about FI and FIRE, that I realized that FI is important to me but not the RE part. Not that it will always be like that but it’s where I’m at now.
When I no longer had any end goals, the impatience with work mostly lifted. My net worth has been cruising along and I feel much more at ease that things are on a simple auto pilot.
Yay I’m so happy you loved it! And wow reading MMM in college is hardcore! I can see how that would be a double edged sword though. Awesome you figured out you’re about FI instead of RE. I wish I was the same lol. Autopilot is a beautiful thing. Keep crushing it!
Hey Purple, really enjoyed this post. It caused me to reach out to my FIRE ‘students’ (mostly family) to suggest that they look into Asset Location (taxable vs tax deferred vs tax free accounts) so that should they choose (or be forced) into early retirement they will have assets they can tap without early withdrawal penalties. So, thanks for triggering that thought process…
But my mind did not stop there. I also became concerned that you may be targeting a Lean FI that may look doable at thirty, but think about where you may be in thirty years from now. At 60 you may not be so keen on having to live so frugally on a Lean Portfolio. And you, at that point, could very well have another 30 years ahead of you.
I would hope that you either figure on having to generate some sort of income to supplement your SWR from your Lean Portfolio, or that you put in a bit more time and get that portfolio up to at least Flex FI. Personally, we held on until we reach Fat FI and after 13 years of retirement (almost 70 years old now) we are fat and happy.
There is a VERY good post about the stages of FI at this URL: https://fi180.com/2017/06/26/the-milestones-of-fi/.
Enjoy…
— jcw3rd
Glad you enjoyed it. That’s cool you reached out to your FIRE students. According to Joel’s link you provided I’m FI, not Lean or Flex. I can cover all of my current expenses (plus a 10% buffer so maybe that’s inching into past FI territory). I also find it a little amusing that you linked to him since he decided to go back to work 🙂 . As for me, I’m already making money on the side (described in the link below) and won’t be stopping in retirement. Full steam ahead. I’m glad y’all are doing well.
https://apurplelife.com/2020/03/31/5-months-to-retirement/
I’ve been on count-down mode for the last 7 years. All sorts of different ways to count down the days. Paper and excel sheets. It might be making the anxiety worse at times. I look forward to your Tuesday Purple posts.
I switched jobs 5 years ago and it’s really a great place to work. But it’s still work…. I might be just leaving work, rather than working towards a passion-filled life. I’m sure I will find things that I love to do.
Once I hit the 6 month mark, the impatience seemed to subside somewhat. 5 more months and I will have all my time to myself. A friend who retired a couple of years ago told me that the last year flew by for her. I’m sure this will be true in hindsight, but some weeks do seem to drag. 95 working days!!!
Oh wow 7 years is hardcore! When do you feel it makes you anxiety worse? I haven’t gotten to that point yet and am curious. I’m so glad you look forward to my posts – that warms my heart 🙂 .
I get the advice that we should retire “to” something instead of “from” something, but have always thought there was a nuance there. I wasn’t planning to retire to something in particular and my Mom didn’t and she’s been fine retired without a big goal or purpose for 5 years. Getting work out of the way so you can have the time and mental space to figure out what you want to do with your life sounds like a solid plan 🙂 .
That’s awesome the impatience subsided and that’s a great way to look at it – I need to shift my mindset 🙂 . My work hours have been long lately and it’s been hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s close and it’s blinding so I should focus on that. This year has definitely not been flying by for me haha. Hang in there and woohoo 95 now!!! We got this!
Love your blog! Thanks for sharing your journey as I am going through the exact same roller coaster esp earlier this year right before the lockdown. The stress/pressure from work manifested via health and I had to take sick leave. Then everyone started working from home due to COVID and I (along with everyone in the world I guess) began to reassess the priority of work life balance. I am learning to get into your stage three now and try to adhere to DGAF mode as much as possible when people giving some unsolicited advices or other BS. But like your blog said, it’s hard. And the only thing that keeps me going is counting down days to the next paycheck (I am still a long way to FI) while I look for other job until the lockdown is lifted/things change in the office.
Quick question – does your FI number include your partner net worth or only your own? Would you recommend one way or the other? ( I am guessing solo FI number would be more conservative?)
Thank you!! And yeah there’s nothing like a global pandemic to make people think about the importance of work/life balance. Counting to the next paycheck is a good idea. I only get paid monthly and it feels so long in between paychecks that I often forget I’m not working for free lol, which is ridiculous, but apparently how my brain works. Good luck finding a new job! You got this.
My FI number and all numbers shown on this site (spending, salary etc) are just for me. My partner and I don’t combine our finances at all. My partner and I prefer it this way because it’s less stress for us. We don’t need to discuss money or where it goes because it’s each of our business (outside the big things like deciding together where to live and what internet speed to split for example). I don’t have a recommendation one way or the other – it seems like whatever works for each person in the couple and makes you feel more comfortable would be the way to go.
I’m not sure about a solo FI being more conservative. Mine is based on my lifestyle flexibility (high since I have no house, car, kids etc) and risk tolerance (super high lol). My partner decides that stuff for himself so I think your level of conservatism with your finances and FI number is more individual than if you combine finances or not.
This is a great piece. I can look forward to these stages as I progress. I Know I was the “yes man” guy early in my career.
It has now worn off. I wonder if it is just time and worn down energy that brings you away from that stage as well?
Congrats on your achievements and come September I’ll send you a cake for your “I quit” party haha.
Fair point – it’s also possible we all start giving less of a fuck as time passes and corporate life wears on us. And thanks so much! You cake would be a welcome surprise. It will be a party of 2 (me and my partner) since offices will still most likely be closed in Seattle and even if they were open: my company has never thrown a goodbye party for anyone 🙂 .
Hi, Think the blog is great. I’m living in the UK, 54 years old and will be retiring next September.
Guess you must be thinking well your 20 years too late, but even now it feels like a big step to take. Most of my cohort will be retiring at 65, to put it in perspective.
I really relate to your thought processes and I’m really getting impatient, and a grumpy old fa*t.
Hi Jon – I’m so glad you’re enjoying the blog! I absolutely do not think that’s late – 54 is an awesome age to early retire! I’m so excited for you. I’m sorry you’re getting impatient, but I hope the time flies by. Next September isn’t far away at all. You got this!