The idea of early retirement is huge and blogs devoted to discussing FIRE seem to pop up every single day. I’d say it’s probably the fastest-growing “category” in money blogging. (and has been for several years)
The tricky thing about FIRE is that a lot of the people writing about it are in the accumulation phase – where they are saving up to retire. This makes sense because we enjoy the journey more than the destination.
That said, I believe that thinking about retirement as a destination can be a mistake. It’s more like a mile marker on the long road trip of life rather than a spot you reach.
So to those who seek to retire early, here are a few posts to help you think about what happens after you “retire:”
Doing Nothing Is Okay [Root of Good] – “There is no right answer to the question of how busy you must be in retirement to be fulfilled and content. It depends on what drives you and makes you happy. For me, the first six months of retirement were pretty busy as I was used to a decade of full time work and I continued the productivity trend straight out of the office and into retirement.”
If you like mental models, this next post is very long but very rewarding. It discusses this idea of a money spectrum and where you may be on it (it is itself a journey) based on your relationship with money. Lots of fun illustrations too.
Money Is the Megaphone of Identity [More to That] – “Life is almost always a framing problem, and wealth is no exception to this. To say that money is complicated is a cliche worthy of a thousand eye rolls, but when it comes to our ongoing relationship with it, I find that it’s quite simple to explain and distill. At any given moment, our journey falls along a vertical spectrum with three main phases:”
After you read that, here’s a similar blog post about the freedoms we all crave:
Five Freedoms [Humble Dollar] – “We all want a sense of financial security—and yet all too many folks lead fragile financial lives. If our income barely covers our expenses, we may be okay if it’s a typical month. But so few months turn out to be typical.”
Finally, for a little bit of fun, a little scammy scam story.
Todd Hitt’s Shameless Con: How Washington Society Got Scammed by One of Its Own – “Though a son of the Hitt Contracting family—one of Washington’s wealthiest construction dynasties—Todd Hitt had only recently forged a profile as a brash and crazy-successful self-made entrepreneur. He was a commentator on Fox Business. He traveled by private jet. By the night of the soiree, he had convinced a long list of locals that he was an alum of the Wharton business school; that he had a personal net worth in the billions; that when he wasn’t busy with his own exploits, he quietly helped run the family company, too. […] Even as Hitt worked the room during Washington’s most glittery weekend, he had yet to pony up for the party—and he never would. Not two months later, he would become the target of a federal criminal investigation. By fall, the FBI would unmask Kiddar Capital as a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme and rebrand Hitt as a shameless con man.”
It’s a crazy story where everyone seemed to ignore the red flags and when doing nothing ISN’T okay.
Have a great weekend!