Hi Mustachians,
Pete writes about
mental freedom in his blog and that's what strikes me most, because one's FI/RE is a thing we can count-down to, where-as freedom, as Buddha said, can come suddenly in a single moment of enlightenment.
For example, when my job sucks and makes my tired, I start thinking of how long I'll need to pay the mortgage off and then be free. (I have an investment stash already, because mortgage interest is so low.)
I have always been a frugal person and stashed like crazy even though I spend a few years of my life not actually working and so when I discovered the MMM blog, it was nothing new, just reminded me that I'll FI/RE in a few years and then the bad life will end, but then something entirely different happened to my brain as I went on reading on the joys of Mustachian life. Like doing work that you like and not caring for being paid or not. Like having the freedom to choose or decline any job.
If I am now unhappy with my full-time job now (which isn't that bad, actually, just my free-time is too little to allow for even half of my hobbies to get some time) then I am not training my happiness muscle at the moment then why should I be any happier then, when at over 40 I suddenly give up my job, have to build a social network from scratch (because now no time for friends), find some occupation for myself to not get mad (humans need _something_ to do, after all). That all just sounded really stupid.
And then the enlightening thought: with all my stashed fortune, I actually do not need to work really urgently now. I do not need to fear my boss, because I can quit any time, take a long break, then another job. Just this thought makes life so much more relaxed!
So with this new mental freedom, I went over my options again and decided to go part-time with a 4-day week. This should leave me enough time to get housework done every weekend at my own (slow) speed (including managing my immense fortune which includes an unused garage that I want to rent out and haven't had the time and energy to do it yet), relax a bit on my bike in the country side, and then use the third day of the weekend to work on my hobby projects.
Like probably many others I had often thought that part-time work is not well seen in the modern office-world, where meetings are on almost every day of the week and communication between people happens all the time in-between meetings. But my current job already has those open Fridays when people are working from home, so that seems like the perfect day to not work at all and not be missed or be missing any big news. (Using electronic chatware instead of yelling across the office also makes it easier to catch up on missed news...)
So who else is doing part-time retirement and slowly shifting their work hours from 40 to nothing while concurrently taking up more hobbies, more friendships, and more side projects? Isn't this a thing that should have a proper cool sounding name!? Part-time retirement, voluntary paid work, pretending to be a normal salaried employee, but effectively being there on one's own terms...
so long and as the Vulcans say: "Live long and retire early"
