[Editor's Note: The following post is from WCI Network partner, Physician on FIRE. After much talk about early retirement the last few years, I think he's really going to do it this year. If you're interested in early retirement from medicine, there is no better resource! ]
Retire On something.
And With something.
And From something.
And Under something.
And Before something.
And In something.
And For something.
If you’ve read any advice related to early or standard retirement, you have encountered the following mantra:
“Don’t retire From something. Retire To something.”
Retire To Something is great advice and I’m not here to dismiss or disparage it. I could have just as easily written this post with the quote as the title, but where’s the fun in rehashing advice that appears on the pages of hundreds of other articles and forum threads on the subject?
So let’s try the phrase with some different prepositions.
Don’t Retire To Something. Retire On Something.
Retire On Something
Retire On your own terms. Leave when you’re good and ready, not when someone else decides it’s best for you to move on.
Retire On the day of your choice. Perhaps you’ll celebrate your birthday with an early retirement or decide to make Labor Day your Anti-Labor Day. Or work just long enough in the calendar year to max out your retirement accounts one last time.
Retire On a sizable pile of investments. Play your cards right and your passive income streams and investment accounts will allow you to live a retired life with little worries about money with your safe withdrawal rate below four percent.
Retire On drugs. Just kidding! Don’t do that. Maybe some metoprolol and a baby aspirin. Toss in a statin if your liver will tolerate it and probably some insulin if you’re diabetic. But none of the illegal stuff.
Retire With Something
Retire With your better half. If you’ve achieved FI as a couple, you’ll probably want to enter the next chapter together, as well.
Retire With your kids’ best interest in mind. Build up their 529 Plans first. Expect to be more present for them than you were able to be during your working career. Make it to every game, recital, and holiday celebration for the rest of your years.
Retire With your health intact. Many an ailment has led to a retirement that was neither planned nor fully funded. Take care of yourself and retire while you’ve still got some of that youthful vitality!
Retire From Something
Retire From the obligation of paid work. While the common quote begins with “Don’t retire from something,” that’s exactly what you’ll be doing. Embrace your newfound freedom.
Retire From the alarm clock (or alarm app). And the pager. I hate the ^$(#! pager.
Retire From the stress that came with your job and your prior reliance on a paycheck. Financial independence takes away the stress of financial insecurity, and retirement can take away the stress of dying patients and other stressors you might have encountered on the job.
Retire Under Something
Retire under a blue sky. Make plans to visit your dream destination and plan to stay awhile. #slowtravel
Retire under the impression that you’re making the right choice. If you turn out to be wrong, you can always return to paid work someday.
Retire under mysterious circumstances. If you’re not comfortable telling people you’re retiring when you’re so young and good-looking, just say you’re moving on to explore additional opportunities and other vague language that implies you’re not actually retiring. And then do whatever it is you want to do.
Retire Before Something
Retire Before it’s too late! Sadly, some people never get a chance to experience a single day of retirement. I suppose that’s the dream for someone who absolutely loves to work, but if you’ve read this far, that’s probably not you.
Retire Before your friends and colleagues. Be prepared for looks of bewilderment and lots of questions.
Retire Before your parents. It’s too late for me, but millennials are realizing it’s possible and seizing the opportunity. See Retire Before Dad for further details.
Retire In Something
Retire In the prime of your life. Why wait until you’ve experienced decades of physical decline and are at higher risk of cognitive impairment to retire? Play with FIRE and retire when you’ve got the energy and ability to check all the boxes on that bucket list.
Retire In comfortable clothing. No more suits or starchy scrubs. Business casual becomes beach casual. You can still dress up if and when you want to, but wearing certain clothes (or in certain places, wearing any clothes) becomes optional in retirement.
Retire For Something
Retire For your mental health. I’ve explored how retirement can make it easier to do all the things that science says will make us happy. Rates of depression and suicide are higher among physicians as compared to the general population. Retirement can take away those stressors and give you back your time.
Retire For your family. As long as you’ve taken care of your financial needs first, retirement can benefit your immediate and extended family. You’ll now be able to prepare a meal and sit down with your family to enjoy it on a more consistent basis. When a loved one becomes ill, you can go to them and spend all the time with them that they may need.
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Retire For a change of pace. Maybe you just need a break. Or a different career; remember, retirement doesn’t have to be permanent. But if you’re in a career or life rut, and you’ve saved a good deal of money, a trial at retirement might be just what you need to figure out what you want the next chapter of life to look like.
What did I miss?
Give me your best Retire ________ Something below. I look forward to seeing what my creative readers come up with!
I missed this one the first time around and really enjoyed it.
Bravo 👏
I suppose this works for some people.
My ideal retirement would be to be found, dead, at my desk. Hopefully late enough in the day that they have to pay my estate for a full day’s work. I don’t love my job, but I think I make a useful contribution and I get paid. I can afford to retire now. But the miser in me would find it hard to end my paid employment while I could still generate earnings. That would have a bigger negative effect on my networth than hiring some high priced asset manager to buy a bunch of high expense active funds. As long as I can work, I draw nothing from my savings. I will not have to start RMDs until I retire. So if I go at work, then the RMDs will only begin when my spouse or heirs have to. Financially, continuing to work is clearly better.
I don’t want to go to the beach, certainly not more than a few days a year. I get to go to the library and read on days off. I don’t want to travel. I don’t mind wearing suits and I find scrubs to be comfortable.
I just see retirement as money left on the table.
Once one gets to old or impaired to work, then one has no choice. Quitting before that is a waste of money.
Wow. One extreme to the other.
I like the contrast. After a good day I work I feel similar, after a bad shift, I think I could figure out a way to retire before I even pay off my student loans! There are certainly cons to early retirement, and you point out many. I don’t know how I’ll feel in 15 or 20 years, but I hope I enjoy the job enough to keep going. I’d like to model that work ethic for my children even as they are starting their careers.
A very nice article that I, too, missed the first time around.
I won’t miss the job, the administration duties, the hours, but I will miss the relationships that I have developed with my patients over the years. So those are the pros and single con, as I see it, of early any retirement.
I have an acute exacerbation of retirement-philia s/p every bad code. I t wanes by the end of the shift, at least so far…
There’s little point in having savings if you never plan to touch it.
Nevertheless, I would encourage anyone to make FI a goal, because sometimes we’re forced out of work whether we like it or not. People change, jobs change, and it’s always wise to have an exit strategy, whether or not you ever actually implement it.
I am leaving plenty of money on the table, but I also feel I have more than enough to be comfortable and contented indefinitely. And experience has told me I’ll be happier, a better husband, and a better father without the job that I’ve had.
Cheers!
-PoF
“There’s little point in having savings if you never plan to touch it.”
Plans do not always work out. Having more money provides a margin of safety.
If plans do work out and I end up never touching savings, then there are heirs and charities that will benefit.
Shortchanging them because I could not work up the energy to get out of bed and go to work would ruin my self image. At some point, if I live that long, I will lose the capacity to work. Then I can quit without leaving money on the table.
You forgot the next few sentences.
“Nevertheless, I would encourage anyone to make FI a goal, because sometimes we’re forced out of work whether we like it or not. People change, jobs change, and it’s always wise to have an exit strategy, whether or not you ever actually implement it.”
Looking forward to hearing more about this next phase in your life! FI is for you to live life on your terms, which you are clearly doing. Congrats! Like any other life decision, other people will have constructs/ideas/societal pressures which may differ from yours.
Yes, we are pretty excited about this next phase of our lives. We’ve already lined up two months of family adventure in Ecuador and two months in Spain. We’d stay longer if I didn’t have to be back for WCICon 2020!
Cheers!
-PoF
Thanks for the guilt trip!
de nada!
Not to compare myself to the accomplishments of the people I cite. I mention them because they are well know and illustrate my point.
Jack Strominger. I recently saw an article about him. Famous scientist. Has been a Harvard professor for many years. Lasker awardee. Elected to the National Academy of Science decades ago. Still teaches a course for graduates and undergraduates. Recently got another grant funded.
He is 93 years old.
NIH says that he is not the oldest PI they have ever funded and it currently supports 13 people who are over the age of 90.
What is wrong with these people? Don’t they know their most important goal should be to minimize the total amount of work they do in their lives? Smart enough to get grants funded but too stupid to realize they can afford to retire?
OK, they are old and may have some selective form of dementia that makes them still great at science, but not able to understand that they can retire.
What about people like Lebron James, Kevin Durant, Roger Federer and other wealthy athletes? They are, presumably, too young to be demented. So why in the world are they still working? Why didn’t James retire after his first year in the NBA? He had enough money to last him the rest of his life. Why not hire someone to sedate and intubate him to spare the work of breathing?
OK, the athletes are not demented, but they are not finance experts. Maybe they don’t realize they have tons of money and can retire.
What about people like Warren Buffett and Carl Icahn? They are old, rich and finance experts. Surely they know they could have stopped working years ago and that they can do so now?
What is the world is wrong with these people?
How wonderful it would be to have a job you wanted to do into your 90s!
It could be having a job one wanted to do at 90. For many it is about having goals one wants to pursue and will not abandon when once they no longer need earned income to support themselves.
A job can satisfy the goal of having food on the table and a roof over your head.
But those may not represent the only goals someone might have.
People might not love their jobs, but they have to do their jobs in order to accomplish their professional goals.
Those goals could mean answering scientific questions, developing new treatments and delivering them to patients, educating medical students and trainees, building and sustaining a clinical division or department or research group.
Outside of the medical context goals might be leading a great economics department, running a successful company (or division of a larger company), delivering learned opinions as an appellate judge, writing important articles as a scholar in many fields…
These would all pay income, but many people do these jobs for the professional accomplishment as well as the income. That is why so many continue to do jobs like this even once they no longer need the salary to make ends meet. They keep doing them long after their personal needs for money are covered several times over- or many times over for the higher income types.
I know a lot of people like this and many would disagree that they “love their jobs.” Rather, they think they are doing something important and that the the annoyances of the job are part of the price they pay to pursue their goals.
They may enjoy playing golf or traveling, but could not imagine that as their full time activity. So they work. Long past the point where they could afford to retire.