Half Life Theory says:

I love this! Totally agree, when i first started pursuing FI, all i could think about was exiting work, and hoping that will make me happy. Being that the road to FI can be relatively long, 7-10 years, along the way i started questioning things. Why aren’t i happy NOW?

I have come to realize that hating work is not a good enough reason to FIRE, plus i’m somewhat of a compulsive worker, i HAVE to be doing something, which is why i am so happy i found Blogging. FI in my opinion just ensures that no matter what, i have more option.

My goal is to at some point get to a place where money matters a lot less, as it is just a byproduct of all the value I’ve created. As long as i’m doing something meaningful and productive, i should never have to worry about money.

Side Hustle Scrubs says:

Is there some type of workaholics anonymous that could slowly wean me off new income in a supervised setting?

Gasem says:

There is much truth in this. The nature of momentum is to not change and to change momentum, it needs to be forced. When you retire you will spend about the same as you always did sans the amount you spend saving for retirement, and after some flashy trips even your travel will become mundane and predictable. KFC in Hong Kong is pretty much like KFC in Orlando. IMHO if you’re smart you will engage your retirement without consideration of further “paid” employment. If you need paid employment you didn’t do it right. If you need paid employment then the momentum of that need will consume your freedom.

My BIL and sister just retired and they are going to spend the summer in Alaska running a lodge for room and board in other words they are going on an adventure. My BIL wants to run the waterways, which requires more boat than he owns and the lodge owner needs some help so the BIL will run the water taxi and do some maintenance and my sister will serve the guests, and they will come away with a deep understanding of what it means to live Alaskan and deal with big wilderness. The immersion and adventure will be their pay. Of course they will get their fill of outdoor adventure as well on a pace that is normal and human and with adequate depth, not like 2 weeks of drinking from a fire hydrant. It’s near 24 hour daylight up there so you can easily work a day and play a day and go to sleep in the “daytime” all in the same day. When they’re done they will figure out something else to do. When I retired I was interested in a software technology called SDR so I found a company and became a software tester. It’s my job to break their software so they can fix it and make it better. The engineering crew is brilliant and so I access world class knowledge well beyond what I would get if I enrolled in a masters engineering program. I don’t get paid, I just get smart in something I want to know about.

Make a big enough pile before you pull the trigger, trim your sails regarding things like taxes and Roth conversion, explore as many nooks as you can trying to tame variance in your portfolio, and any obscene spending habits and then sleep tight and spend your time doing something truly interesting.

Here’s a picture: The target is off years in the future, The target is not to die rich but to die not poor. Your job is to hit the target. You hit the target by behaving like a sniper. You take in every order of variance that would throw you off target. The closer you get to the target the less the variance. A side gig might reduce the variance if you’re far away but so would a couple more years of the more lucrative main gig. You fund every known and predictable cost prior to trigger pull because that’s a source of variance. Today workman are replacing my air conditioners. I’m using money that was planned for 3 years ago when I was working. I’m doing it this month because my daughter graduated last month so the cost of setting her up is now in the rear view mirror. I’m Roth converting all of my IRA to control my tax variance in the future. The necessary tax money for the conversion was planned for a few years ago. I bought a retirement car prior to my exit. Things like this are perfectly predictable and can be funded best when working. I changed my momentum by applying the force of planning and risk reduction and compounding (and medicare) to the point where I couldn’t afford to “not quit”. I needed 4 or 5 income free years to make Roth conversion work before RMD started to clean my clock.