Can I Quit Yet?
Can I quit Yet?
There seems to be one question that drives this community. Not for everybody, but a large percentage of the group are chomping at the bit. The question is simple yet infinitely complex. It drives at the heart of what it means to be financially independent and evokes our greatest hopes and fears. It is often the reason we stumbled across the idea of financial freedom in the first place. Can I quit yet? Often asked but seldom answered to any true satisfaction.
When is the best time to take the leap? Early, before the crush of sacrifice? Later, once one has reached fatFIRE?
Never at all because it is bad for your health?
Financial Independence
Of course. The answer is simple. You can quit when you are financially independent. Simple. Right? But not so fast. So what does financial independence really mean? You could use the 4% rule I suppose. Or there is also the point in which “passive” income streams fund your day to day existence. There is the passive income eclipse.
Yet, we all realize that these definitions are artificial at best. We don’t really know what risk will befall us. There is the infamous sequence of returns risk, and the luck of an ill fated market. One must not, on the other hand, forget that it is not just the market, but white swan events that may get in the way. Divorce. Unexpected children. A personal health care crisis.
What if the government starts taxing based on wealth and no longer income?
The savvy person would tell you that they will do their best to risk mitigate. But isn’t the W2 or business asset class one of the most lucrative? Isn’t the best risk mitigation not quitting at all?
Can I quit yet? Maybe you shouldn’t.
Enough
You can quit when you have enough. A great term enough. But what does it mean? There are several who have retired in their twenties because they have decided that a few hundred thousand is enough and they can live on 20k a year.
Sounds good. Except that in your twenties, you have no idea what you will want in the future. A spouse? Kids? An advanced degree?
These things can definitely be planned into an extremely low cost of living lifestyle, but it is not ideal. Geo arbitrage sounds great until you need to be close to your parents who live in a large expensive city.
Sometimes life doesn’t comply with our early retirement plans. Can I quit yet can be a complicated question.
Quit or Retire?
You can always quit. There are always other jobs. But if we are talking about exiting the work place in general, is it really retirement? Is it retirement if you are not even close to financial independence?
Presumably, there are other ways out there to make money. Passion projects, budding businesses, freelancing. It’s hard. No question about it. The majority fail at supporting themselves this way.
But it is possible. There are those that exit the work place with smaller nest eggs and still manage to make a go of it. They manage to chase an interest or passion, and it works out.
Quitting doesn’t necessarily mean retiring. It doesn’t mean letting go of all meaningful work.
Final Thoughts
Can I quit yet?
No one can answer that question for you. There will always be naysayers. They will look at your numbers and say you are too aggressive. They will sneer and describe how they expect you to fail. And they may be right.
Yet, there is also risk in staying in a situation in which you hate.
Life is about risks and rewards. Be as careful as you can. Fall on your face. Get up. Start again.
Quit or no. Try to find what makes you happy. Maybe the job is a symptom and not the cause.
Thanks for the article. I enjoyed it. I have a related piece I need to complete, but my job keeps getting in the way! Can I quit, yet? Cheers, PAI
“My job keeps getting in the way”. I love it!
Can you quit yet? Anybody can retire any time they want. Anybody can fail at retirement. Anybody can pretend to be Financially Independent and base that on some narrative they repeat to themselves. Failing is a trivial exercise. We are surrounded by retirement failure, people with $10K stashed away, likely 20 yo’s with 1M stashed away and 70 years to survive maybe even 40 yo’s with 2M stashed away and 50 years to survive. Success OTOH requires much greater diligence and honesty. If failure is the haystack, success is the needle. Mantras don’t buy many hamburgers when you are 90.
Is success really that rare?
https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-have-americans-saved-for-retirement/
Hell ya buddy quit anytime you want. Sam doesn’t believe the numbers. In fact I do. He might want to read this book first.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Nomadland_Surviving_America_in_the_Twent.html?id=tDZJDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false
What’s more likely, being a 1%-er or living in your car? Most of the car dwellers were from the middle to upper class until the past 20 years decimated them financially. First the recession, then the job loss, then the retirement goes, then the house equity, then you are age 75 living in your car, working the sugar beet harvest to the smell of clouds of dirt 16 hours a day in North Dakota for 10 bux an hour or fighting with a robot at an Amazon Fulfillment center around Christmas time. They really like 65 year olds for the gig work at Amazon because they actually show up.
https://www.studyfinds.org/two-thirds-of-all-american-bankruptcies-are-due-to-medical-expenses-study-finds/ Give me another round of “bad sequence of returns” There is a difference between “success” and survival.
I like this line, “Isn’t the best risk mitigation not quitting at all?”
I’ve decided that working full-time is the best retirement strategy for me, at least for the foreseeable future. It has been my experience that “white swan events” while unpredictable, are not at all rare, and must be budgeted for, however imprecisely.
There is an additional risk of “quitting” for physicians. Unlike quitting a business, once a physician is out of clinical medicine for 2 years, it is near impossible to return due to the inability to get malpractice insurance. This applies whether one leaves to start a new business, raise a few kids, or sail around the world. Physicians take a much larger risk than most professionals when quitting their profession.
That’s why I like this idea of cutting down or half retirement.
Everyone has to figure it out for themselves. The key is to be flexible and open to change.
I hated my job so I quit. I could have found another job, but I figured why not try retirement. Luckily, it worked out really well. If it didn’t work, I would have gone back to work. There are always options.
Flexibility is key.
Literally, as I was reading this, there was a “code blue” called to the OB OR and, soon thereafter, a specific doctor was ordered to the OB OR “urgent”. I have never heard either of these overhead pages before. If I weee the doc in this predicament, it would probably be my last day. I do not have the resilience to deal with these things anymore; it’s largely why I dropped out of IR.
It gets old, doesn’t it?
I guess I could quit. At least for a while. I’m not sure how long. It depends on what the future holds and my crystal ball has a smudge on it.
I could take a sabbatical for a year or two for sure. Or keep up my part-time work, likely forever.
But the more important questions are why do I want to quit? Why am I doing something I so desperately want to quit from?
How can I figure out how to do something I won’t look so eager to quitting?
Maybe find something in which the joy is in doing and there is no specific end in mind. Like blogging!
I don’t think I considered my W-2 as an asset class. Good idea and you are right, it is the most lucrative one for most people.
I’ve been thinking about side hustle lately and I’m pretty sure there isn’t a single thing I can do at this time as lucrative as moonlighting. More hours essentially doing my day job is the easiest way to make extra money. It has an obvious limit but require no extra skills.
Can I quit yet? Not even close!!! Loans, buying our first house, 1/10th of the way to regular FI. Still got lots of time!
Moonlighting is the absolute best lazy side hustle!
Great post topic and the underlying message that it truly is an individual decision is on point.
I do feel that most people in the FIRE realm are super conservative and plan for so many contingencies and SORR etc. The end result is likely they die with too much money rather than not enough (which is the way to go if given a choice).
You can liken it to leaving the safety of your home. Every day you leave that front door there is a small chance you will not make it back. Whether it is a car crash or other form of trauma or victim of a violent attack etc. Does this mean that you should never leave your home? Agoraphobes think so. But for most of us we weigh the risk benefits and choose accordingly by leaving our safety net and venture forth.
If you are constantly anguishing over what is enough for retirement you may find yourself working yourself to death. The one thing that is going for FIRE people is that we are quite adaptable. We do non-conventional things now to put us in that position so we are outside the box type thinkers and likely can think our way out of negative situations.
SO when will you quit?
Agoraphobes won’t leave the house due to fear of having a Panic Attack and not being able to get help. It’s actually an irrational fear. Part of the treatment is graded exposure. Leaving safety behaviors and people behind and going out on their own and learning that they won’t die (or run out of money). But maybe you will die or run out of money, it’s possible. And certainly you might have a Panic Attack and feel like you are going to die.
I like this idea of graded exposure.