By Dr. James M. Dahle, WCI Founder
Katie and I have found ourselves in an interesting position in the last few years. We love our work (both with The White Coat Investor and clinically) and continue to do both part-time. But we are also well beyond financial independence, and we want to experience that FIRE (Financially Independent, Retire Early) lifestyle as much as possible. We end up cramming our lives so full of everything because we fully subscribe to the Hunter S. Thompson quote:
“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow what a ride!'”
A phrase I use frequently with our staff at WCI is “It's a lifestyle, not a vacation.” Naturally, they all now use that phrase frequently to tease me right back. But what do I really mean by it? Two things really.
Setting Up Your Life Deliberately
The first thing I mean by it is a glib response to anyone that incredulously exclaims to me, “You're going on vacation again?! You just got back from a trip.” I simply reply,
“It's not a vacation, it's a lifestyle; I set up my life this way on purpose.”
Being deliberate in our lives is a core tenet of the financially responsible and, especially, the FIRE community. We deliberately spend our money on what we care about most and use the rest to invest to fund other things we care about—like early retirement, the financial security of our children, and our favorite charities. Too many people live their lives by accident, simply falling into habits and routines because that's what they have always done or because something happened to them. Too few of us actually draw a picture of our ideal lives and work persistently to align our actual lives with those ideal lives.
I don't want to say our Venn Diagram (the second image below) has perfect overlap, but it's pretty darn close, and it has gradually become closer every year. Especially if you compare it to the first Venn Diagram.
None of us are probably ever going to have perfect overlap, but the process of working to increase it is likely to boost the happiness and effectiveness of our lives.
More information here:
8 Things to Do with Financial Independence Besides Retire Early
The Unspoken Risks of NOT Retiring Early
Working on ‘Vacation'
The other thing I mean when I say, “It's a lifestyle, not a vacation” to the staff is that just because I'm on a trip, that doesn't mean I'm not working. Here at WCI, we don't really have a vacation policy. It's basically unlimited vacation. It certainly is for Katie and me. But there is the expectation that you will get your work done, and that applies to Katie and me just as much as anyone else.
Since we go on so many trips, that means we usually have to do at least some work while we're on them. All of us have a job that is location independent. That means if we have a cell phone connection, we can work. And we often do. Some of my trips are to places without cell coverage, and while I often think about work while on them, I can't actually do any. But most of them allow me to work—at least a little. That means I do a lot of work while sitting in airplane terminals despite my travel motto: “If you never miss a flight, you've spent too much of your life in airports.”
I do a lot of work while riding in cars and sitting in hotel rooms, too. As I write this, we're currently on the tail end of a nine-day trip to the former Yugoslavia with two WCI staffers and their spouses. Brett, our COO, is driving while James, the CTO, navigates. Katie and I are furiously typing on our laptops.
Is this your idea of vacation? Maybe not. But again: it's a lifestyle, not a vacation.
What have the days looked like while on this trip? We wake up early, grab breakfast, and go touristing. One day, we're canyoning in the coldest river in the world. The next, we're checking out the Tunnel of Hope under the Sarajevo airport and standing in Gavrilo Princip's footsteps. The next day, we're exploring Croatian national parks or climbing a Slovenian mountain on a via ferrata. Or exploring cathedrals and long abandoned fortresses. Or doing a bike tour through Zagreb. We're young, healthy, and location independent, and we're trying to make the most of it by vacationing actively. We don't know anyone in their 70s that could keep up with us so we don't want to wait until we're 70 to do this stuff. By mid-afternoon, we take a break back at the hotel before dinner and spend some time cruising the streets, visiting bakeries and gelaterias for dessert.
Then, it's time to work back at the hotel.
From 8pm to midnight, we may be putting in a solid half day's work. I'm answering emails and responding to comments, writing blog posts, choosing whether to accept a new advertiser, revising a chapter in the original book, deciding whether a post from a contributor is sufficiently aligned with the WCI philosophy or needs more editing, making plans to re-record the five podcasts we did the day before we left because the sound was recorded with the wrong microphone, explaining to yet another online entrepreneur how trademarks work and why we defend ours so vigorously. The work is unlimited. There is always more to do. We make a quick call home to check on the kids and the grandparents caring for them. We remind the kids again that this is “Parent Appreciation Week” and that they need to be on their best behavior. We're also trying to keep the sports teams we're coaching going by email and text while we're gone and helping the kids revise their school essays. Perhaps I shoot off an email for the real estate syndication I've been entrusted with. We also have to do our own budgeting, investing, and other chores.
By midnight, sleep is overcoming us, and we crawl into bed only to do it all over again tomorrow. The other staffers hopefully have a higher relaxation-to-work ratio than we do, but they're working while they're here, too. Not quite enough that we can write off this trip as a business expense, but enough that I suspect they'll soon be saying, “It's a lifestyle, not a vacation,” too.
More information here:
How to Add Adventure to Your Life
Living the Dream
Is it a great life? Absolutely. Brett tries not to let me write blog posts where the takeaway is “my life is way better than yours.” So, I hope that's not the message you're getting from this one. There are seasons in our lives. In our 20s, we deliberately decided NOT to “live the dream” of being a ski bum and a climbing dirtbag. Instead, we went to school, got jobs, learned about personal finance and investing, and did a residency. This was Spring. In our 30s, we took care of business, saving a large percentage of our income, boosting our earning ability, and starting a small business. Perhaps that was Summer, when the blazing sun seems to slow growth as the plants in your garden stockpile almost invisible resources. Now in our 40s, we're enjoying the harvest of Autumn, when we see the fruits of our hard work paying off. Eventually, we'll have Winter, but at least we'll know we have plenty stockpiled to get us through.
I don't know where you are in the seasons of your life. Perhaps you're in Spring. Let our harvest inspire you to do the hard work it takes to plant the crop. Maybe you're in Summer, and nothing seems to be growing as fast as you would like. Keep watering and fertilizing, your time is coming. Perhaps you're now like us and moving into the Autumn of your life and reaping what you've sown. May you achieve extensive overlap between your ideal and actual life. If you're now in the Winter of life, may your carefully guarded stores last as long as you need them—and then some.
What do you think? What have you done to live your life deliberately? What season of life are you in? Can you get on board with the “it's a lifestyle, not a vacation” philosophy? Comment below!
Love the quotes and lifestyle you have created. We are a couple of years out from time freedom but still unsure of how to maintain continuity with kids schooling and sports while exploring the world. We are planning to keep them in traditional school but want to do more than travel during school breaks. Are traditional (elementary) schools receptive to allowing kids to complete school work on the road? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
The better your kids are as students the better it works to just yank them out and let them make it up. Right now we have two that could probably miss a lot of time and one that really can’t miss any!
But if you really want to do a lot of travel WITH the kids, you’re going to home school or travel with a tutor. Neither is cheap if you consider the value of parental time.
Great article. My take home lesson is:
Know who you are and what makes you tick. Then try to create a life that suits you best.
I learned that lesson a little bit later in life than you did, but it is really almost never TOO late.
This is one of my favorite articles that you’ve written. You have worked hard to get to where you are and you’ve crafted an intentional life. Yes, you have to work some while on the many vacations but hopefully you still enjoy helping all your readers and get some of the benefits that work provides.
Your vacations sound amazing and your lives are truly inspiring. I feel that we’re in summer now but we’ll soon be in autumn like you and Katie. We love hearing about your trips and reflections on your life journey. Enjoy the vacation!
Love the ven diagrams on actual vs ideal life. Says it all. Freedom is what enables that if one chooses to make it happen.
Thank you for showing us a little bit of your life. You are putting a nail in the coffin of the false dichotomy “Should I Retire.” It’s not a yes/no question!
They say do what you love and you will never work another day in your life. That’s not quite it, because you work harder the more invested you are in your work.
Work Forever and Retire Early are not at odds. It is both/and. Not binary. Don’t give in to the false dichotomy about retirement! https://www.fiphysician.com/retirement-a-false-dichotomy/
Absolutely. You get it. Nobody seems to understand what I’m saying when I say I’m pretty much retired AND that work is an important part of my life.
Just wanted to say thank you for this post, and I think usually the posts where one takeaway is “my life is way better than yours” will have additional takeaways that are equally important, assuming the post is well written. My takeaway here is: you can create a life where your ideal life is very close to your actual life when you are intentional and when you have a realistic ideal (i.e. some work on vacation). That is helpful and aspirational!
Thank you.
It’s kind of funny the post was scheduled to run today. I just came off a five day river trip at 1 am, unpack and repack today, work a shift tomorrow, and leave the next day for a 7 day canyoneering trip and on neither of those trips will I be doing any work except in the car on the way there and back (I did spend 4 hours last night doing emails and responding to comments last night on the way home though.)
Our life looks very similar. Interestingly enough, this is the configuration that friends and neighbors seem to have the most difficulty with. “You’re going on vacation, again?” sums up the attitude nicely and is a common refrain. If you were fully retired or did an FIRE style year abroad that would for some reason be easier for people to swallow even though it is arguably more extravagant. For some reason, mixing some part time work back into the equation seems to be hard for people to grasp 🤷♂️
Thank you, Jim. This is your best post and the most important you’ve written.
Aligning your life with your values is a continual journey of discovery. Living “on purpose” is never easy. It’s making a commitment to your highest values. It means saying NO to good opportunities so you can say yes to the best ones.
Thank you for sharing.
Love how you describe it as a lifestyle and not a vacation. I can relate to that. I run a few blogs as my full-time job and although I only work a few hours a week, I still work a while. I’m on holiday. An hour in the evening or the morning is enough and keeps my income ticking over. I could completely cut down but I’d lose money so I’d prefer to carry on.
Corinne x
What kind of laptops are those? They look small (what I’m looking for)
Macbooks. Mine is a 13 inch Macbook Pro.
Hey Apple – Sponsor this guy ^
Lol. I could really use it. Just bought a new iPhone yesterday and dropping mine in the river.
Is that Rovinj in the pic?
Looks like it, doesn’t it? But you’d have to ask the staff, it’s not one we took because that’s not a city we went to on the trip.
We are 4 years out of residency on track to have loans gone in a year. We homeschool the kids and take them all over the place. Currently on our way back from DC/Williamsburg/Jamestown. Travel is a line item in our budget, much more important than “things”. Your plan works!
“The work is unlimited. There is always more to do.”
What do you “love” about the work you do from 8pm to midnight?
Knowing that you are “well beyond” FI, if you stopped working on WCI, and as a physician, nothing would change in your financial life (other than maybe less given to charity). And I wonder if eliminating the 8pm to midnight work would improve other aspects of your life?
At the tail end of FIRE week, it may be an interesting post about what motivates you to continue with “work is unlimited” when there is no financial need.
I have certainly heard reasons why you continue, but maybe I overlooked a succinct post about it.
Just chatting with (and helping) cool people like you mostly. It’s now 6 pm on a Sunday while I’m driving to a canyoneering trip this week. Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
Just as the Dahles give $ to charity and wouldn’t stop doing that to retire earlier or just have more to spend on themselves they choose to continue helping others by (and continue the income from) their work on WCI. Service.
It is a lifestyle and a matter of what one enjoys.
Although I can relate to some of those vacation activities, every vacation day needs to have 2-4 hours reserved for reading. Not including any work I might do.
One of the joys leading up to a vacation is picking out my reading.
A vacation day without serious reading is a day lost. I may as well not have taken it off.
Each to their own.
Great concepts and explanation. I’m looking forward to sharing with my five kids (ages 7-19). We talk a lot about generational wealth and generational wisdom, and your illustrations and behind the scenes pic are so relatable. I am going to use your lifestyle not vacation quote to start off our next dinner table “lesson.”
An interesting and different article thank you. The energy levels are admirable but I think what stands out most to me (supported by your replies here in the comments too) is that you like the work you do *and* you seem to get a sense of service from it. Perhaps that’s a common trait of medical professionals (I’m not one) because the field seems to have frequent potential opportunities for the positive feeling that servitude can bring.
For other fields, let’s say engineering perhaps, I think many people quite also like what they do. But I think it’s much (?) harder for them to find the motivation to match what you and others seem to get from directly serving and helping individuals. Plus it’s your own business which is another win I think – no “working for the man” disillusionment.
Perhaps this is the one area where the “Jim’s life is amazing” stands out a bit, at least for me. It is easy to be envious, and hard to figure out how to “match” what you have!
My life is amazing. I was complaining to myself this am about having to go to the ED on only 4 hours of sleep because I returned from the second of two week long trips in the last two weeks. But I’ve already seen five patients this am, enjoyed helping all of them (including the “drug-seeker” and the guy whose feet smell a bit homeless), and in between I get to interact with all of you.
But you’re absolutely right about the service aspect and the ownership aspect. I think it would be much harder to get excited about work if I didn’t feel like I was helping people directly and I’m basically unemployable at this point.
Great article! I appreciate the reminder that financial independence is not just about taking vacations but about creating a lifestyle that we enjoy. It’s important to find a balance between enjoying life now and saving for the future. Thanks for the insights!