What does this mean? The traditional mindset toward work is to get a job when you’re in your early 20s, work 40+ years in a job you don’t like, during the best hours of the day, during the best days of the week, during the best years of your life, top buy stuff to impress people you don’t care about in order to retire at 65 with half the money you earned during your working years and finally living the life you want. (How’s that for a run on sentence?)
Since the average life expectancy in the US is about 78 years old, that you trade 40+ years of working for about 13 years of actually LIVING. I’m not a mathematician by any means, but that math doesn’t add up to me.
How does that make you feel? Talk to some retirees sometime and a lot of them forgot who they were after 40 years of working. They had big dreams in high school and college and started a career hoping to do those things, and slowly those dreams begun to fade because the reality of working to pay for your lifestyle became the reason for living. 5 years pass and then 10. You go to your high school reunion and where other people are, and then 20 years pass. You have a midlife crisis and want to do more. But you’re invested in your job. You can’t just get up and leave. That’s unreasonable and you have bills to pay. Backpacking in Thailand suddenly seems irresponsible even though it started off as a dream. 30 years pass, now you’re fighting to get to the finish line and suddenly you’re 65. You’ve made it.
What happened in 40+ years? Where did those dreams go? Maybe you’ve always wanted to climb Machu Pichu? Maybe you’ve always wanted to bungee jump or even climb Mount Everest? Maybe you wanted to backpack and travel across Europe. How’s that experience at 35 versus 65?
This is what I mean by dying at 25 but not being buried until you’re 75. If you dedicate your life to work, before you know it 40 years will pass. Better make sure that job makes you happy. You try to make up for lost time, and before you know it, you’re too old to enjoy it. You hold on to the memories of the good old days in High School and College when you were carefree and wild, but during your working years, it’s a blur. You may have made some memories at work, but the highlights during those times are vacations or events that took place outside of work. Ugh. It depresses me to think about it.
When I look back at my life in the Army, I was basically working 12 hours days. It was normal. I got up around 0500 to get to work, maybe do a quick leader’s huddle or check email before doing Physical Training (PT) from 0630-0800. I’d get showered and dressed for work, slam a protein shake or hit the chow hall for breakfast and grind at work until around 1700-1800ish. On a really good day, maybe I’d leave by 1600. I’d get home when it was dark, drink a beer, unwind with whatever’s on TV, and hopefully have dinner with the family by 1900. This gave me 3 hours of focused time with my family before going to bed and repeating the cycle all over again. 2200 on a good night, but realistically for me, I’d be asleep by midnight. I’d get to the weekend, attempt to catch up on sleep and spend it running errands I couldn’t get done during the week while trying to squeeze in some family time. Sunday evening always brought dread to the bullshit that awaited me the rest of the week and before I knew it – I was back at work. I gave the best hours of the day to my job, while my family got the leftovers. If there was anything left after that, maybe I’d get it. Sound familiar?
So what do you do? What’s the alternative? This is what 90% of the world does right? Is there a way off this treadmill?
Maybe I win the lotto? Maybe I get an inheritance? What if you receive a million dollars? Is that enough to quit your job? How long will that million dollars last? How do you know?
We’re taught to save 5-10% of our income, invest in a 401K or a ROTH IRA and work until we’re 65 and by then, we should have enough to retire. What happens if you increase that by 20% or even 50%? How much sooner will it take to get to your retirement goals then? Hell, what is your retirement goal and how do you calculate it?
If you’re like most people, you hear these questions and it’s overwhelming. It’s so overwhelming that you’d rather just stop thinking about it altogether and continue doing what you’re doing. “It’s too complicated, it’s too hard, investing 30% of my paycheck is impossible…”
But is it?
Start with my post about how to calculate how much money you need to retire. It’s 5th grade math. We call that “Fuck You” money. What doe that mean? It means you save up enough money to put yourself in a position where you can confidently tell your job, “Fuck you, I QUIT this bitch.” I think we’ve all fantasized about doing this at one time or another. That math wasn’t that hard was it?
Now do some inventory. How much do you have in your 401K? How about your ROTH IRA? How about your savings? Add that up. Again – 5th grade math. How far are you from your “Fuck You” money goal now? Is it far off? Even if it is, at least now you know right? As they used to say on G.I. Joe, “Knowing is half the battle…”
How hard was that? Not very hard at all
So don’t talk yourself out of it. Don’t tell yourself it’s impossible. It’s entirely possible. Instead imagine what your life can look like as a young retiree.
Imagine going to the gym at 1 pm on a Wednesday because you can. Imagine waking up at 9am and going to brunch at 11am on a Tuesday. Imagine climbing Machu Picchu at 40 years of age or simply traveling the world cause you freaking can. Instead of thinking “I can’t”, you’ve got to start thinking, “I CAN”.