Early Retirement Update: Has it Really Been 8 Months?!

Let’s start with the fact that this post, as I had envisioned it, was supposed to be a 6-month update… That’s just one of the many things I had pictured for my first few months of early retirement which have not gone as planned. Then again, I don’t think this year has gone as anyone has planned so we walk on. Today I’m sharing with you an update of my first 8 months of early retirement (the plan vs. the reality).

How I thought the first 8 months of early retirement would go….

Mornings

• • Walk daughter to preschool each morning
  • Workout daily … lose 30+ pounds by end of summer

Daytime

• • The first month (or two)
    •  Binge watch TV shows and catch up on sleep
  • After the first month (or two)
    • Launch Rich Frugal Life blog; write 2 posts per week
    • Finish home remodel projects, and plan backyard
    • Clean and organize house so it looks like an Instagram post
    • Plan future travel
    • Socialize more
    • Volunteer more
  • Read more

Afternoon/Evenings

• • Take daughter to the park, do crafts, be perfect mother, etc.
  • Cook fancy meal
  • Relax with Mr. RFL

Here’s how the first 8 months of early retirement actually went…

The pandemic began right around the time I left my job. So instead of having most of the day free as planned, to better myself and pursue passion projects (after the month of sloth, that is), I’m currently a stay at home mom without any alone time.

I have mad respect for stay at home moms. It’s not my strength, and I know my strengths, which is why I strategically timed my retirement for when my daughter was transitioning into public school. School days allow us to have more time together than we did before, but not so much that parenting becomes a full-time job. 

I don’t mean this to sound like a complaint… I’m grateful that we’re in the position to have a parent home during this time. I feel for the parents trying to juggle homeschooling and quarantining while both working full-time. We had to do that during my last week of work (with only one child) and it sucked. I can’t imagine what it’d be like for months on end.

We’re blessed to be healthy and financially stable, and I know this situation is only temporary. It’s just not how I expected my first 8 months of early retirement to go. Despite this, I’m way happier now than I was before and there have at least been some successes.

I’ve broken up the rest of this update by topic below.

Money

Surprisingly, this is the one area where early retirement has exceeded my expectations. 

I’m not going to tell you that we are better off financially without my paycheck, because it isn’t true. As an accountant, I made good money, and we definitely took a hit to our future net worth by me quitting. However, our family is better off in every other way, and the move actually hasn’t hurt our finances as much I had expected. It helps that I have what Mr. 1500 Days called the “ultimate passive income” … a spouse who still works.

We’ve discussed me quitting for years now, but I was always concerned with tighter budgets, minimal savings rates, and the future income I’d be walking away from. I know it sounds silly to say, as we are obviously blessed to be in stable well-paying careers, but our expenses were really high. And maintaining the same level of spending just wasn’t going to cut it if we wanted to live a less stressful and more leisurely life on a lower income.

My income contributed to nearly half of our household income. As such, I expected a significant blow to our savings rate after I quit. The reality is that our average savings rate has barely dipped in the eight months since I retired. Our average savings rate over these past eight months was 68%, while the average rate, excluding annual bonuses, for the eight months before was only 71%!   

It turns out that our family is saving a lot of money having me at home, which is offsetting some of that lost income. I’m interested to dig further into what those savings were and how much of the income I’ve offset, which I’ll share in a later post.

Either way, I’m no longer concerned that we will be just “scraping by” on one income, which alleviates a lot of my financial worries.

Health & Wellness

Part of the appeal of financial independence is the ability to focus on healthy living.

Years of working long hours in stressful jobs left me overweight, stressed out, fatigued, and unhappy. Part of my journey is one towards a healthier lifestyle.

Stress

After quitting, I experienced an immediate sense of relief! It was as if all the stress in my body just melted off.

I was unhappy for so long. It’s a relief to be done with the corporate world, knowing that I never have to go back to work unless I want to. That doesn’t mean I won’t earn any money in the future, but it means that I don’t need to, which is the ultimate freedom.

If I decide to start a business or make a little extra cash from hobbies, that will just be icing on the cake. Extra cash means more cushion in our portfolio. But since we hit Coast FI earlier this year, we just need to make enough to cover expenses going forward.

Over the summer, some of my anxiety has returned. Pandemic worries and the isolation are starting to take their toll on me, but I’m planning to incorporate journaling or some form of meditation into my daily routine to help cope with this.

Fitness

My plans for the first eight months of early retirement included daily workouts and healthy eating. I thought that this would help me magically drop 30 pounds by the end of summer. Obviously, that hasn’t happened. Old habits die hard, but I have at least made some progress in this area.

I’ve been successful in working out more but have only been eating slightly healthier. We definitely did some pandemic baking (and drinking). Despite this, I’ve still managed to drop 15 pounds over the past eight months, most of which was during our frugal & healthy month challenge in August.

I’ll keep working on this.

Family

Like most families, our family has spent a lot more time together during the past several months due to stay at home orders and quarantining. This has been nice for the most part – we’re a pretty happy loving family.

My daughter and I have developed a relationship that we just didn’t have before when I was working. Being together all the time takes it out of me, but I know I’ll look back at our time together fondly when she’s older and everything I do embarrasses her.

We’ve also gotten to spend a lot more time with my Mom, which has been really nice, since I moved away from home when I was 18. We’ve only recently moved close to my parents. I love rebuilding our relationship, and watching her build one with her granddaughter each week.

Mind

Time

I have no idea what day or time it is most of the time. The days still go by pretty fast, but I’m not trying to cram so much in that I can’t enjoy the little moments anymore. It’s an amazing feeling. I doubt that I will ever be bored.

Rich Frugal Life blog

While many people stop blogging once they retire, I didn’t start mine until afterwards. Why? Because despite wanting to start this two years ago when we discovered the FIRE movement, I had no time or energy do so. Work was stressful and demanding, and with a child and renovation at home, I had nothing left to give.

And despite what many bloggers will tell you, starting a blog is not easy nor fast. You wouldn’t click those webhosting affiliate links if they did. You can buy a domain name in less than 15 minutes; however, setting it up and writing meaningful content takes a lot of time and effort.

One of the things I enjoyed about my career was the intellectual stimulation from learning and sharing new things. I can do that here, but this time, I get to write about topics that interest me and a lifestyle I’m passionate about.

Finally, Mr. RFL continues to work full-time and probably will for a while. He enjoys his career and is pretty darn good at it. This and having a young child, means we won’t be constantly jet-setting around the globe and sipping cocktails anytime soon (though, we’ll do some of that). As such, I needed a meaningful way to fill some of that time.

I launched the blog a few months later than expected but am proud that I followed the idea through. While I had hoped to write more often, I think weekly posts will be about all I can muster until the little one goes back to school… or I get a lot faster at writing. I have so much to say, but no desire for this to turn into another full-time job. Especially being that it’s an unpaid one. You get what you pay for.

Other Learning

I love learning! If learning were a career, I would have gladly chosen it and continued to work until I die. I don’t plan on learning much more about accounting, but I do want to learn more about personal finance, DIY renovations, gardening and about 50 other topics. I’ll do this through reading, volunteering, and doing.

Learning has been ok so far. While I haven’t done much “doing”, I have read way more books than I usually would in this timeframe, as well as dozens of magazines and blog articles. Eventually this will translate to doing. But for now, I’m just grateful that I have extra time to fill my head with new things. My Jeopardy! game has improved since retiring as well, which is always exciting. 

Home Renovation

Most of my free time has gone to starting the blog, so I haven’t made much progress on the home renovation. Pretty much the only thing we did in the past eight months was put up a few baseboards (and by we, I mean Mr. RFL) and decide that we don’t want to add a pool as part of our backyard plans.

I hope to finally knock out some of these DIY projects and finalize our backyard plans over the next few months. The pace will just be a lot slower than anticipated.

Social/Volunteering

Unfortunately, I haven’t made any headway in either of these areas thanks to the pandemic.

 

The next 4 months and beyond

I don’t think life will drastically change in the next 4 months as I’ll continue to be a stay at home parent until next fall.  However, I am trying to get into a better routine with structured “me time” for the blog and my fitness goals, so that I can be truly present for my family the rest of the time.

I’m still not the best version of me yet, and my family deserves that version. Right now, I don’t really feel like I’m succeeding in any of these areas, so I’m hoping to change that over the next few months. Just need to take things one day at a time and always be improving.

Next fall, our daughter will go back to school and I’ll have 5 – 6 hours a day to experience what real retirement is like … as was the original plan. I’m excited for the ability focus on passion projects, health, travel, building relationships and giving back more than I have been able to in these first eight months of early retirement. But I feel blessed for the experience thus far.

Related Post: Early Retirement Update: The First Year and a Pandemic

Have your financial plans changed since the pandemic began?

What will you do in your first six (or eight) months of early retirement?