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What did you tell friends/family?

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2KidFIRE:
Hi everyone,

My wife and I are in our late 30's / early 40's with two boys under the age of 6.  We are hoping to FIRE by the end of 2021.

One question I have for folks who have already pulled the trigger is what did you tell your friends and family?  Especially if you had/have friends through your work?  We have a very close network of 3-5 families who either work or worked at the same company as myself, who have young kids the same age as ours, and with whom we are very close.  We take annual trips together, weekends are often spent at each other's houses, etc.  If/when we quit and stop working at our normal day jobs, these friends will obviously notice.

Many of our friends are likely in a similar financial situation to us, although I do not know their spending savings habits, but I imagine some could be on a path to FIRE if they so choose.  However, I don't really know, and we generally don't discuss finances directly.  So what have folks done?  Told people they were taking a sabbatical?  Let people think that they were doing online/consulting/contracting work?  Told them the truth but kept it vague?  I feel like anything we put out there is going to make it more challenging to maintain these relationships.  I'd love to hear what others have done!

I do see this question has been asked before, and am reading through some of the links below:
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/post-fire/fire-do-you-tell-people-or-not/
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/post-fire/what-do-you-tell-people-you-do-do-people-believe-you-are-retired/
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/post-fire/friends'-reaction-post-fire/
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/do-you-tell-friends-you-are-financially-independent/

Metalcat:
The simple fact is that it's impossible to come up with a perfect response that will get people to react the way you want them to.

I medically retired last year, so it's a bit different, but I just refer to myself as "retired" most of the time because most people don't need to know I'm sick. I used to say "medically retired", but that often lead to a ton of invasive questions, and even worse? Advice. I'm a medical professional, so I'm pretty intolerant of pop culture medical advice. So I switched to just defaulting to "retired".

I'm only in my 30s and on top of that, I look very young, so I get a lot of surprised looks and comments, and I generally just shrug them off as if what I've told them is the most normal thing in the world.

Some people are nosy, some people have opinions they think need to be shared, but as I said, there's no magic response that will prevent that, so don't overthink it. You'll find your comfort with the subject eventually.

Moustachienne:
Many friendships are based on being in the same place in life: having kids the same ages; working at the same place; living in the same neighbourhood; having the same or at least similar salaries and financial assets.  When you're no longer in the same place, the friendship will change and maybe even fade. And that's OK. It doesn't mean it wasn't a good friendship for its place and time, just that things have changed. 

If the friendship is mostly situational, there isn't any way to talk about your new FIRE status without a possible change to the friendship. You are no longer in a similar place. If the friendship is based on things you continue to share like hobbies or other interests, it might adapt and continue.  If you can't be open with your friends about what's going on in your life, whether FIRE or something else, that might indicate some natural limits to the friendship.

The good news? You'll continue to make new friends throughout your life, and you'll connect and reconnect with old friends as your lives and interests go in and out of alignment.

NB. I'd be ticked if I thought I was sharing similar life stages and challenges with a friend only to discover that they were secretly millionaires or had won the lottery or were FIRE, but didn't respect or trust me enough to be honest about their life.

Edited to add: How much detail you might give these friends about your finances would be affected by how much detail you'd give them about other areas of your life.  Not all friendships need to be "soul baring". Too exhausting!  But you say you're "very close", which implies you do share personal things. If so, what's more personal than FIRE .  But you know best what level of calibration is appropriate with friends, or family for that matter.

flyingaway:
I am always confused by these questions. Who cares if you are retired or not? It is probably you who may think too much about these things.

If my friend wins a lottery of $100K, life will go on as usual. If someone wins $10M, he may just find new friends with similar finances. But I will be I am.

You are retired, so what?

Linea_Norway:
I think you should stay as close as possible to the truth as you are comfortable with. Anything else would be awkward for you. But you could sell it as a sabbatical without an end date at first. Only when they start asking you after a year when you plan to go back to work, you might indicate that you financially don't need to have that kind of wellpaying job anymore. This is what we did with friends and they accepted that explanation. If you take a sabbatical first, you already show them that you can afford taking a year off, which could lead tovarous reactions. In our case, we sold a clown house for a high price and told them we could in the future live in a cheaper house. That way is wasn't so difficult to explain that we didn't need high paying jobs.
But we haven't told everyone. Next time we can travel abroad again, I will be more honest with my mother and brother/SIL, as the sabbatical year has now passed.

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