I have a surprise for y’all today 🙂 . My Partner has popped onto this blog from time to time to answer y’alls questions and talk about hitting his FIRE number and today he’s here to talk about how he’s finally retiring!!!
I’m so excited for him! So here are all the deets, straight from the man himself.
Hi! I’m retiring in mid December!
After hitting my FI number in November 2023, I committed to two more years of working to let my investments grow, and to divert all of my savings towards helping some people I love with their own retirement (not Purple, she still gets nothing). I’ve managed to avoid “one more year” syndrome, above and beyond this “two more years, no take backs”, and am sticking to my original planned retirement date.
I don’t have a lot of unique knowledge to share, just my own emotional experience of closing in on early retirement after 14 years of work and planning.
Work, or, “Man I’m tired”
I’m not sure if being so close to retirement is making it worse, but burnout finally caught up to me this year. Retirement couldn’t come at a better time, except maybe right now instead of December.
Day to day, all the little annoyances and gripes of regular work are wearing on me. I don’t feel as patient or effective as I’d like. I keep reacting to things with, “Ugh, I should just quit.” Purple has politely held back on talking me into it.
Some of my favorite coworkers left or got pushed out, and there’s a push from my company towards showing off how much generative AI you’re using, and finding every opportunity to add it to the product. I find Claude useful for many questions that Google search has enshittified, but otherwise find it all pretty tiring and not exciting – it’s not what I signed up for or enjoy about coding.
Having “Fuck You money” has definitely made me more comfortable pushing back and voicing skepticism openly, and while it’s not the reason I’m leaving, I’m really thankful I’m not tied to a company or industry that’s changing in ways I don’t like. “Let’s go to the pub and wait for all this to blow over.”
But the burnout does help counterbalance any lingering fears about leaving a career that I do find rewarding and which has become part of my identity.
Finally getting excited
On the positive side, I haven’t really felt impatient for retirement for the last four or so years, but it’s now close enough that it’s starting to feel real. I’m really excited for getting deep rest, for having the time to focus on my own projects (hobby game development), for trying to re-adjust my attention and step away from algorithmic feeds, and spending more time reading, creating, and allowing myself to be bored.
I’m mentally starting to finally reframe it from “just quitting work” to thinking that I can do all sorts of interesting and useful stuff, and I’m going to have the time to explore that. I’ve grown to really like being good at my job, but I can enjoy finding other things to be good at too.
I’ve always been wary of believing that retirement will automatically solve all my problems, and I wanted to nail down a better sense of balance and develop rewarding hobbies outside of work ahead of time. I still haven’t done a good job of this, but maybe it’s a testament to how much work takes out of me. Or that I haven’t had the energy to even start making the foundational changes to my attention span that I need in order to stop scrolling YouTube and Reddit and Bluesky and do more of the things I find hard but rewarding.
Purple says you need to be very patient with yourself right after retiring, and that it took her at least a year to decompress and recover a lot of the energy she had been putting into work.
How about the market?
I may be the first FIRE-ee to say this, but I am concerned about the state of the market. It definitely feels like we’re due for a recession with tariffs hitting, and what seems like an obvious genAI bubble. But as always, stay the course, no timing the market. I’ve got my 30% international stocks too.
I’m very thankful to have had an extra two years of strong market growth after hitting my number. After more inflation, and getting a car and a small apartment this year, I’m open to adjusting my budget up or down depending on what the next year looks like. I can easily give myself some more wiggle room, from $28,800 up to $32k. I’m expecting to spend less on travel and eating out, and more to cover ACA insurance premiums. I was $3k under budget last year, so we’ll see.
- I Got A Homebase! (But Will Still Travel 1/3 Of The Year)
- I Bought A Car! What I Learned As A First-Time Car Buyer
- How I Lived On $21,499 As A Global Nomad In 2024
My original FIRE number was based on my 3.5% safe withdrawal rate, but as of writing, $32k a year would be a super safe and cozy 2.9% with my $1.09 million net worth, which easily survives all historical cases of recessions or stagflation at the start of retirement. And to be honest, I would also love to be in a timeline where my investments end up quadrupling, not just avoiding the very worst.
I’d like to stay focused on living frugally and contentedly for a few years at least, before I start splurging on business class flights or e-bikes or a house.
So what’s the plan?
I’m giving my favorite coworkers warning a few months before leaving, and giving my manager notice around the same time. I’m also facing vague guilt and worry about leaving my team. Companies aren’t families and we don’t owe them anything, but my company is full of many individual people I actually like and don’t want to burden.
Best case, my leaving doesn’t actually have much of an effect on our small team. Worst case, they have a lot of time to think about replacing me. Another worst case, they fire me immediately and I have to retire a couple of months earlier. That might be the best case actually.
Back in my baby-FIRE days, I always loved reading people’s quitting stories and the incredulous reactions from their companies. Coming up on it myself, I don’t know what to make of it or how much to share with coworkers. I’ve heard enough comments about VTSAX from my programmer colleagues that I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them are pretty familiar with FIRE.
On my side, I’ve got a pre-retirement checklist to run through, including things like medical checkups while I have corporate insurance, getting new glasses, and signing up for a new credit card while I have income to put on my application.
I’m not building a large cash buffer before retirement like Purple did, just making sure I have enough to get me to my first bi-annual withdrawal (I’m thinking March and September every year).
I’ll need to turn off “reinvest taxable dividends” in Vanguard, set up a calendar reminder for my roth conversion ladder and build a spreadsheet for estimating taxable brokerage drawdowns before I hit retirement age (my napkin math says it’s not a problem, but it’s worth double checking).
- How I’m Using A Roth IRA Conversion Ladder To Access Retirement Funds Early
- How I Sell Investments To Fund My Retirement: A Step-By-Step Guide
What if the market keeps going up?
One thing I’ve been thinking about more as I get closer to retirement and have seen a lot of market growth above my original FI number is “how do you know when it’s safe to spend more?” I left this as an “exercise for the reader” while saving, since staying focused on frugality and contentment was the foundation of the whole plan. I, and from what I can tell a lot of other FIRE people on the subreddits, feel like I’ll have an emotionally complex time spending more after saving for so long, but there also are things I’m content without, but that could legitimately make my life better.
For those of you who are retired, I’m curious what’s worked for you. Did you define a set of rules ahead of time? Or after long enough being retired in a good market, was it easy to see the gap between savings and spending and just feel safe bumping it? I’m not concerned with optimizing for being able to spend as much as possible, just convincing myself it’s safe to allow lifestyle inflation.
This is why I’m especially drawn to CAPE based spending rules, which avoid the “starting point paradox” – it gives the same result no matter which year you start, adjusting for the current market. But it doesn’t give a clear answer on when it’s safe to bump your spending floor forever, just how much you can bump discretionary spending that year.
In conclusion,
Thanks for reading, and I’ll probably be back with an update in December!
Congratulations on your retirement! It would be interesting to know how your investment portfolio is made up of. Can you share it?
Thanks! He shared that in his previous post: “~97% stocks (80% VTSAX, 20% VTIAX)”
https://apurplelife.com/2024/04/16/partner-reached-financial-independence/
Thanks!
Long time reader, first time caller (poster)..
Congrats to you both – aaaaand no matter what the market does or does not do… I wager you will not regret retiring..!
I had a set retirement date and stuck to it.. retiring when the market has done this well feels easy-ish.. but like most people that do this, there are plans and schemes and backup plans and…
Enjoy the adventures!
Congratulations!
Thank you!
Congrats! What’s worked best for me after 8 months of early retirement is a cash bucket that I replenish with dividends as they come in. With the bull market, I’m richer today than when I retired and haven’t touched principal.
Great job. What are your passions/hobbies/purpose now you’ve reached retirement (an important part).
For the increasing spending question, personally I currently use a 3-year trailing average of my portfolio’s value (to help smooth stronger or weaker market periods) and a withdrawal rate, to decide if I should increase my income.
Alternatively, as your portfolio grows, your Core Expenses % should come down. if you keep the core expenses more fixed, then you can spend the excess more freely without worrying, as you can always pull these back in market downturns if needed.
best
Jack
Thank you for the post! This is very inspiring to read. Regarding the variable withdrawal rates and the “how do you know when it’s safe to spend more?” question, I recently came across the Total Portfolio Allocation and Withdrawal (TPAW) method from Ben Mathew. He has a lot of discussion on Bogleheads and on his website (tpawplanner.com, not an ad). I am not retired, but I have been thinking about the same question, and my grossly oversimplified version of Ben’s plan is to withdraw a maximum of 1% of my portfolio’s value each quarter (~4% per year). This way, the withdrawal amount adjusts for ups and downs in the stock market.
Thank you again for all your inspiring posts!
From my partner: Thanks, I’ll check out his writing! I’ve explored some “% of current portfolio” spending rules, with an inflation adjusted floor, and I like that it’s mathematically simple and still works historically if I choose a low enough percentage. I may use that or a CAPE based rule to determine how much I can bump discretionary spending each year, versus when to bump my spending floor forever (and maybe I’ll decide that distinction isn’t actually that useful).
Thanks for the update, very excited for you two!!
Thank you Ken!
I love this for you, it will be great for you & Purple to both be retired and enjoy your time together!
I like that you plan to spend less time online and scrolling – I started a career break in January and that was one of my goals (including having ‘no computer’ days!) but this hasn’t really panned out, in fact I think I’m wasting *more* time on the internet… so watch out for that!
I have a huge list of projects I thought I would get done, but after 9 months I think I’m still getting used to doing what I *want* instead of what I think I ‘should’ be doing, and not always having to be ‘productive’.
My quitting in January was a bit of an anticlimax, so be prepared for uncomfortable feelings. Mine was maybe less satisfying than yours will be, as I didn’t tell people I was retiring (I’m still not sure if I am retired or just taking a break!). And I felt saying the word ‘retirement’ at age 38 would invite more jealous reactions than happy ones – even saying I was taking a break inspired some snide ‘must be nice to have money’ comments.
It was hard seeing others take over my work knowing they would do things differently. And them moving on quickly without me after 8 years of work, made me feel a bit like I hadn’t been as essential (or as good friends with them) as I thought. But this is why we need to value our lives *outside* work more so than our work lives!
Anyway congratulations and I hope you both keep us posted with your separate and joint post-retirement adventures!
Oh and I meant to say, here’s some useful things from my leaving checklist in case you hadn’t thought of them:
* Find out what happens to any stock options or similar (I assumed HR or someone would tell me things like this, but they didn’t – I had 3 months after leaving to exercise my options, and I wouldn’t have known).
* Change any accounts that use your work email, to personal email (ADP for final paychecks, insurance, doctors, 401k, HSA etc)
* If you choose to work 1 day into the next month, you may get that full month of health insurance covered (check with HR)
* Make sure your PTO balance gets paid out (might not if you get unlimited PTO, mine didn’t because of this, which I didn’t realize)
* If you’re sentimental like me, forward or save anything nice that people have said that you may want to remember! I saved good performance reviews, thank-you emails and nice Slack messages from over the years, and kind comments people sent me before I left.
Tacking onto this: I took a career break (quit my job but planned to (and did) go back to work) and when I left I didn’t realize that my rollover PTO wouldn’t pay out. I only lost a few days’ of PTO payout but it was annoying.
From my partner: Thank you!
I definitely am concerned about ending up spending too much time just internet scrolling. I similarly planned to practice being more deliberate about it during previous work breaks, and ended up not making much progress. For me it really does feel like a big lift to reverse the changes to my attention span that 20 years of the internet have wrought. But also definitely, balancing that with needing to rest and getting out of the “your value is based on your productivity” mindset.
And similarly to you, I’ve avoided saying “retirement” to my coworkers.
Also thanks for the checklist suggestions Aimee and bethh, I added a few to my list!
excited for this next chapter for y’all!!!!
Thank you!! We are too 🙂 .
WOOHOO, congrats Mr. Purple!!! Yeah, I think you’ll do just fine with that sub-3% withdrawal rate 😂 I know you’ve been traveling with Purple once she retired, so my only question is: is there a place you’ve visited that you’d like to revisit as a retiree with zero work demands?
From my partner: Hahaha “but what if this time is different?!”
Thailand stands out, since I was working evenings for part of it, so it’d be great to revisit.
Congratulations!
It’s not retirement, but when I took a year off work it was gratifying to see I did in fact spend what I thought I spent on a yearly basis. But I also found that I would like to spend $[Unlimited Dollars] on fun travel. I know you’ve had a lot of exposure and practice traveling, but I really hope that each of you share your spending in future years!
From my partner: I’m very curious to see how my spending changes with slightly less travel and no work. I’m not dropping in office expenses (transit, clothes, work lunches) like some retirees, but I might do a lot more cooking on my own, etc, so we’ll see. I’ll definitely have Purple share my learnings here in a year or so, and she’ll continue sharing her budget as always.
Question for both of you, if you are close to 100% in stocks, what would you withdrawal strategy be for years the stock market is down or tanks 20-50%?
From my partner:
The mathematical answer here is that a low enough safe withdrawal rate has survived a severe recession in 100% of historical cases so we should be good to change nothing, but my psychological answer is probably that I’d slow down on spending, travel a bit less, and focus on frugality for a couple years just to avoid more anxiety about it.
From me:
At this point the market declining 50% would barely take me to my original FIRE number so I don’t think I would change anything. However, when I first retired my plan was to cut expenses by a few thousand dollars, which is easy for me to do and would have allowed me to weather the worst downturns in history, including the Great Depression according to FIRE simulation sites like cFIREsim. I talked more about this in this post among others: https://apurplelife.com/why-im-comfortable-retiring-with-500000/
Thank you, @purple: what was your withdrawal rate when you started your retirement and have you just adjusted that amount by inflation for the subsequent years?
4% basically and I adjust my spending for inflation, but haven’t had to change my withdrawal amount yet because of increased dividends and a little accidental income. The first few years of retirement I spent down my 2 year my cash cushion since I was retiring in 2020, then for the last few years I’ve sold $20K of investments. Here are links to all that stuff:
https://apurplelife.com/2023/09/26/how-to-sell-investments-to-fund-retirement/
https://apurplelife.com/2024/12/24/2024-spending/
https://apurplelife.com/2024/12/10/income-2024/
I forgot to convert my work travel points accounts to my personal email. Lost out on some free nights I could have used.
As for when to increase, a long-retired friend does max of inflation from last year or 3% of total portfolio value. 3% should work forever, so you can increase in the good years and still take that inflation raise in rough stagflation ones.
Enjoy your new life!
Congrats, Mr. Purple! I had a 15-year career – I started work in 2006 and retired in 2021 – so you beat me by one year there. Believe me, once you’re retired, you’ll wonder why you waited so long.
To answer your question, I have no hard-and-fast rule on when it’s safe to spend more, but I am trying. Since I retired, my net worth has grown way beyond my original projections. I don’t want to spend money just for the sake of spending it, but I do want to lead a comfortable life now, rather than live like a miser and wind up embarrassingly rich in my old age.
From what I understand, a 3% withdrawal rate has never failed, so that seems like a safe floor. If my spending is below that number and I can think of experiences I’d like to have, I’d consider bumping it up.
Yes, please give yourself grace and be patient. You might get bored, you might doubt whether it was all worth it, etc… But give it some time, give yourself some time to rest and to find new interesting things to do.
1) huge congratulations on ER. 2) all the same feels around the work force right now with the direction and this AI stuff that is not at the level it needs to be to make it work – lending itself to failure and bullsh*ttery.
Hoping I can follow suit in the next 1-2 years. Trying to figure out how to make it work. Especially with most of my money in 401/403. Fortunately close enough to take age of 55 soon or a 72t. Anyway, much congratulations. Have grace making the big jump.
Congrats! I’m on a similar boat where I hit my FIRE number 2 months ago and started planning my transition out for spring 2026. Ended up getting laid off 2 weeks ago so actually had less time to plan but I’m so ready to decompress and recover now 🙂
Oh wow – well CONGRATULATIONS on retirement!!! I’m sorry about the lay off changing your timeline a bit, but I hope you have a great time decompressing. I love it so much 🙂 .
So far so good! Things have been moving quickly but I feel them starting to slow down finally at week 3 haha
I find that the advice on “Retire to” something is overrated. The amount of mental energy works takes can not be overestimated. Even when not working it is rolling around in the back of your mind.
This takes the majority of your energy you need to explore new hobbies or new worlds. Removing work will give you space to find the next chapter whatever that is
Congrats on retiring
Belated congratulations to Partner of Purple!
On deep rest / decompression from work: I wholeheartedly agree with Purple to give yourself time; you’ll know when you’re ready. And it’s not necessarily linear – we had family health stuff and personal health stuff so ups and downs in my energy levels but I can say I never wished I was still working during any of it! I learned a lot about myself once I let go of my work persona as well. I’ll never be at Purple’s level of retirement productivity (wink) but 4.5 years in, I’ve found a good balance of rest and activity and finally reading books again.
Financially, we are concerned about the market as well. The first year, we gave ourselves the grace of information-gathering vs tight rules and adjusted from there. In preparation for the uncertainty we felt going into this year, we withdrew 2 years worth of cash. In hindsight, we obviously missed out on a lot of growth (and had a big tax hit) but I do it again given information available at the time.
I’m excited for you! Hope you’ll share more updates from your journey.