Two years ago today I walked out of my office with my backpack full of belongings, hopped on my bike, and made my final commute home. There was no retirement party, no celebration of any kind. I had planned FIRE for years, but my last day sadly coincided with a massive layoff, and a lot of my coworkers trudged out of the building that same day in a different frame of mind. It wasn’t the time or place to celebrate, so like every other work day I just biked home.
When I got home, one of the first things I did was call my dad. He had started his career in the 60s in an era of lifetime employment with pensions. But in the 80s shortly before he would have qualified for a full pension, he was laid off. He gave his heart and soul to that company, worked long hours and weekends, traveled, went to all the company outings, and then they kicked him to the curb with suspicious timing. From the perspective of my impressionable teen brain, the clear lesson was to not trust a company to look out for your best interest and to take control yourself.
So I called my dad. He seemed happy for me but was baffled by the whole early retirement thing and kept offering to loan me money if I "didn't find something right away." I tried to explain I was not planning to look for anything, but it just didn't fit in his world view, even after his own experience. To this day I think he is still puzzled and worried by how long it is taking me to find a job.
No, I had my plan, I had executed it, worked, budgeted, saved, biked. And here I was FIREd and dammit I was going to enjoy it. One of my motivations to FIRE was to get rid of the constant stress and guilt of working full-time in an unfulfilling job and never having enough time or energy for the meaningful things in life (wife and kids mostly but also projects and hobbies that I enjoy and never had time for). When I was sitting in my office, I felt guilty that I wasn’t home with my family. And when I was home, I felt guilty that I wasn’t getting more work done at the office. I just felt I was never doing enough anywhere. So I was going to FIRE and then spend all my time doing what I wanted to do: spend time with the kids, read more books, do some writing, learn some carpentry, volunteer, practice the piano more than once a year.
But as the old song goes, Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. Because then my dad got sick. And when that happened, all my grand post-FIRE plans went out the window. But thanks to the pre-FIRE planning, it was fine. I wasn’t doing what I had originally planned to do with my newfound freedom, but I came to see how just having the freedom was the truly meaningful part. I did not have to "take time off" to go and help my parents. I could just go, and I did. Despite the circumstances it was awesome to be able to be there with them (even though they kept asking how I was going to find a job if I was sitting there in the hospital with them). My original plan hadn't really included spending more time with my parents, because I figured they have always been there, they'll always be there, right?
As I sit tonight with a beer and reflect on my two years of FIRE, I think of how much I am constantly adjusting the post-FIRE plan, and yet it is all good. Adjusting is just part of the plan. Luckily my dad got better, and now I call my parents all the time, and I visit them as often as I can. There have been lots of other adjustments to the priorities as I figure out this new life. I do spend a lot more time with my wife and kids, and I've done a lot of reading and volunteering. I still can't play piano for crap, and I haven't learned much carpentry (although I have learned some plumbing by necessity). But that's all part of the adventure, and there hasn't been a single day in two years that I have felt bored and wondered what I should do with my time. I'm not doing what I might have expected, but I am enjoying everything I am doing. And it beats the hell out of sitting in that damned office wishing I had the time and energy to do something else.