Dan AE (After Employment) Journal - Day 3: Re-Tired

I realized that my life over the last few days has been quite comparable to that of a retiree. Basically, being at home helping with household chores and child care, along with doing whatever peaks my interest in any given moment. It got me thinking about the conventional perceptions of what it means to retire and to prepare for retirement.
Essentially, from the first day we begin our careers we are planning for the day when we no longer need our careers to survive. If we've succeeded at the primary goal of what we have dedicated our lives to and done everything correctly, it means that we will eventually get to stop doing our life's work, and the more successful we are at it, the sooner we get to retire and no longer have to do it anymore! Seems a bit backwards does it not?

In Tim Ferris', book "The 4 Hour Work Week", he outlines an idea that one's life should contain several 'mini-retirements', interspersed in between various career milestones along the way, versus continuously working non-stop until we officially 'retire 'at the end of our working lives. And then there is Randy Komisar who proposed that "The greatest risk of all is spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later". Accepted career and retirement planning has us stuck in this mindset every single day. Work is not meant to be fulfilling but merely tolerated. If you persist with it long enough, you will be rewarded by being able to live in a time share in Phoenix at the end of your life or be able to take several Caribbean cruises each year, and then you will be happy and fulfilled.

The question of 'when can I retire' comes up early on when you work with a financial planner. He will typically ask a series of questions to find out what kind of life you want to have when you no longer have a regular source of revenue, and then work backwards to compose a strategy to accumulate the necessary wealth in order to attain the desired lifestyle by a certain age. Specifics aside, retirement (whether interspersed or left until the end) boils down to a simple formula:

Months of Retirement = Monthly Spend / Total Assets

All we are doing is figuring out how long we can survive given certain consumption rate and a fixed quantity of resources. If we burn resources at a higher rate than expected, we will run out sooner. If we can reduce our consumption rate, our resources will last longer. As stated in my previous post, my burn rate and accumulated resources are assumed to provide me with roughly 8 months of survival time before things get dicey. I have the two variables within my control to extend my survival time: Reduce my monthly spend or Increase my total assets (or both). Is it possible to perpetually extend this survival buffer without having to compromise one's level of personal and professional fulfillment? This is the pivotal question that I hope to answer for myself over the coming months. Stay Tuned.