Why did I retire early? Stressful job...A path to FIRE (financial independence retire early)
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I’m a recent early retiree as of August 2020 at the age of 48. Since then, my pack (myself, my wife, and our Pomeranian Toby), has been traveling the eastern parts of the United States. In between these travels, we’ve spent time with our family.
Recently a question came up. What was the #1 thing that made me want to retire early?
After giving it some thought, I realized it was the stressful job. I hadn’t realized it while I was going through it, but since about the last two years or so of my tenure at that job, it really had become the reason for hastening my early retirement.
All my life, I’ve been told that I should work 40 somewhat years then retire at the golden age of 62 or 65. I found nothing wrong with that plan for awhile. In the first few years of my working years, I just wanted to make more money so I can spend it. This drive to make money kept me going at first.
It wasn’t until I quit my first full time job selling Acuras, that I realized how tough life can be. The dealership I had been working at, had been sold to another dealership. The acquiring dealership didn’t have the best reputation in the business. It was all about the money and not so much about customers or the employees. I stuck around for a month, but then I quit, to work at another Acura dealership.
I had lots of time to ponder about life at the new Acura dealership. There were couple of gentlemen who worked with me and frankly, they were not good role models for me to emulate. One of them was a daily gambler at the OTB (off track betting), while the other was constantly lamenting his life. He would say just about everyday, how he didn’t have someone to love, how he didn’t have money, and how he’s never going to retire.
After hearing those lamentations day in and day out, I wondered if this was how my life will be like when I got older, selling cars for a living…This bad experience was the impetus I needed to change my career, which would allow me to retire early.
After changing my career to IT (Information Technology) the following year, I became more focused on making this new career work. I put in long hours at the startup company, often working late into the night. This job lasted little over two years.
In between then, 9/11 happened and I started to get a nagging feeling that I didn’t really enjoy what I was doing at the startup. I had signed up for an IT type job, but it ended up being an ‘all hands on deck’ type job, where I did what my boss said I needed to do. Long story short, I ended up quitting that job as by the end of my tenure there, I was doing sales/marketing tasks...
When I started this job, I had dreams of working my way up then retiring early. I had a vague idea of what retirement was, but I honestly thought it would work itself out. After doing sales calls in the final few months, I realized I had been naive...Life is not that simple and I needed to find a better way to get to early retirement.
I was disenfranchised. I had become tired of the hustle and bustle of New York City. I wanted to get off the rat race. I had concerns about safety living in NYC post 9/11. I was tired of taking the subway each working day and be greeted by rats the size of cats. I was looking for a change, and it came in 2003.
My wife and I decided that year to move to Hawaii. We didn’t have a job lined up, had family over there, nor knew anyone there. We simply sold / donated most of our belongings, packed 5 large suitcases, then headed to Oahu, Hawaii on Thanksgiving Day, 2003.
We didn’t move to Hawaii to advance our careers. We did it to get out of the rat race, and the hustle and the bustle. We were just drained from making ends meet while living in NYC. We moved to Hawaii in search of a slower pace of life, where we can enjoy life more, and not just worry about making ends meet.
That life suited us really great the first year. We went to the beach every week to swim, snorkel, and to enjoy the sun. We walked and biked everywhere. We took tours around different sites. How could you not love Waikiki Beach and other world famous attractions like Diamond Head Crater and Pearl Harbor? I worked at a transportation company and my wife worked at retail. We made minimum wage but we were happy!
The second year, I started to feel the itch again. I started to miss my family and friends. I also got tired of ‘rock fever’ or ‘island fever’, which is when you feel isolated due to the small confined space of an island. I always loved to drive for hours on end. We had done a cross country trip from NYC to Colorado in 2003.
On an island that is 44 miles long by 30 miles wide, you can’t really drive for hours unless you’re going around in circles. I had driven just about all the roads I can find, but that got old in a hurry... I was longing for a long drive where I wouldn’t run out of roads!
So in March 2006, we moved back to the East Coast to Pennsylvania, where we could see our family and friends more often. The following year I ended up with my final job (IT help desk) that would allow us to retire early.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably thinking we sure changed our jobs and our lifestyles often! Yup. I can’t deny that. We’re both Generation X. That means we rarely stuck around at one job!
The best thing that happened while we lived in Hawaii was that we learned to budget. We lived a Spartan lifestyle. We didn’t own a car (we biked / walked / took public transportation), we paid most things with cash, and we set a defined amount for our monthly budget. The rest we saved.
When we came back to the East Coast, we kept most of these budgeting habits.
We started a path towards early retirement around 2010 after learning about the FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement. This was exactly what I was searching for all these years. I knew I wanted to retire early, but didn’t know all the details of how to get that done until the FIRE movement.
Fast forward to year 2018. I had been working at this same job for 11 years by that time. Slowly but surely I started to get the itch again...
I no longer enjoyed the routine of getting ready for work, dealing with ever more demanding tasks, equally frustrated callers, and feeling burnt out.
While Friday nights would be the best time of the week, by Sunday, it would be the opposite. It’s the realization that work week was coming up again that got me depressed. By Sunday evenings, many thoughts would pass through my brain. Most of these would be work related and it would stress me out.
I really hated being on-call every 2 months or so, to take calls from users after hours and on weekends. I remember taking calls at 4 a.m. from someone working early, or I would take a call from some frustrated user who lost his iPhone somewhere and demanding it be replaced ASAP…
Again, I didn’t realize it while I was working, but the longer I did the work, including on-call, I really dreaded the work…
I suffered from bouts of insomnia. It would hit me hardest on Friday nights. My brain would not turn off. It would constantly churn through what happened that week. I was lucky if I slept at 2 am...
What didn’t bother me prior to 2018, bothered me then. Every little thing would tick me off. If some demanding person wanted things done yesterday, it would bother me. If someone complained about something, it would bother me. After awhile, I became numb at work. I became an automaton just going through the motions of working, but not really enjoying anything, except maybe the steady paycheck.
I learned what I was experiencing were all symptoms of work overload/burnout.
When the pandemic hit early 2020, I seriously considered quitting for good. I wanted to experience a future where I no longer was stressed out/burnt out because of work. My wife and I decided to do just that in August 2020.
How does it feel now that I no longer have to work?
Well, it feels AWESOME! It’s amazing how much time you have when you’re not working or getting ready for work. Work week wouldn’t just be 40 hours. It would be the commute time (morning & evening) plus getting ready time (wearing business attire, grooming, etc.), and preparing meals & snacks for the week time. All in all, this miscellaneous time would amount to another 6 to 8 hours per week.
Since retirement, I’m enjoying my daily ‘siesta’ time while listening to music. I can wake up to the sound of birds and the rise of the sun without the need for an alarm in the morning. I’m not stressed out. I’m doing things I always dreamt of doing: traveling to different places, spending month or more at a time to see a place, reading more, sleeping more, writing my blog, recording videos of places we’ve visited and posting them on YouTube, spending time with family, learning how to cook, and more...
I’m grateful for having the ability to retire early and to quit the job that was causing me so much stress.
Thank you all for reading! I hope someone will get motivated to want to achieve the goal of early retirement. Your early retirement will be different than mine, but the common goal of wanting to quit whatever job is causing stress is most likely the same...
Jake
Wandering Money Pig
Please check out our YouTube channel ‘Wandering Money Pig’ showcasing our travels and our Pomeranian dog! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3kl9f4W9sfNG5h1l-x6nHw
