feeling competitive/OMY/TMY.....

[mistymoney]

So, as I've been contemplating pulling the plug the past few months on a lean/coast fire hybrid, playing with the numbers, saving every payday, watching the market inch up, and likewise seeing an impossible/risky FIRE situation keep getting better each month, looking more possible and doable each month in a way that acting on it takes on a very sensible path and starting to make real plans, something strange has reared it's ugly head.

I'm feeling competitive. And like FIREing will take me out of the competition. AKA lose rather than #winning.

I'd have lower income compared to friends/family (and i was already behind most! Just now catching up), then end up lower networth at the end/when all are retired.

Also lower prestige compared to collegues who are continuing to advance. Not to feel too much with friends/friendly colleagues, but some frenemies of long standing. I do expect to remain professionally active for a decade or so after quitting 9-8 job.

And look! I don't need anyone to tell me how silly and petty and foolish this all is! I KNOW! I'm surprised I'm feeling this way.

Just wondered if anyone else has encountered these feelings as you prepare. And how did you resolve or deal with those.

[Watchmaker]

I have some of those same feelings. I'm pretty sure most people do-- which is why most people never even contemplate early retirement.

There are the true non-conformists around here who never bought into the idea that work=value, but I think a lot of us did and have to reprogram our thinking. Yes, if you retire early, you may make less money over the course of your life than friends or family that keep working. But you'll have more free time, and which of those have you found to be the scarcer resource?

It's not all an illusion either--lots of work is very meaningful. And lots of types of work require large organizations to be feasible. I think a key is to differentiate the real opportunity offered by employment from the BS corporate-ladder, gamified system of "achievement" which is designed to keep you at a desk.

I'm nearing retirement (there are some here who would say I'm already OMYing) and I'm still working through these feelings. My work feels very meaningful to me (climate change related) and I could not do the exact work I do now except at a company with the resources of my current employer. But you know what? When I leave, someone else will come along and take over my role and the world will keep turning.

[Steeze]

DW has a bit of this .. as much as she buys into the whole idea of FI/RE and wants the freedom that can bring, I think she has equally as strong feelings of needing to achieve certain income or expertise in her field. Perhaps to justify her expensive education, or maybe to catch up with friends who began working years before she did. Will be interesting to see if she pulls the plug when we hit FI or if she ends up wanting to work for a while longer.

I don't really get it - I basically just view work as a means to an end, once I hit FI I am out. I think the only thing I still need to do is work for myself for a time, but I will have my whole 40's, 50's, 60's to do that if I want. I do get hung up on some consumerism BS though. For example, I have always wanted certain cars / housing / land etc... if I retire ASAP then I potentially forgo those luxuries. I am 100% not willing to keep working 8-6 in an office for it, but I will keep a side hustle so I can indulge at some point.

I do feel some pressure from my in-laws though. They are not going to understand FI/RE at all, they will think I am a bum. They are business owners and well compensated and still working in their 60's and don't need to. They just keep working because the work is easy and the money is good. I hate the idea of my FIL being disappointed that his daughter married a loser.

[lhamo]

Maybe lean/coast FIRE is not the right fit for you.

You have a couple of options:

1)  Try it for a year or two and see how things go.  You might surprise yourself. 
2)  Work a year or two or three more until you get to comfy FIRE or even fat FIRE and then pull the plug.

I was not sure when I left my last job mid-2015 if I was really FIREd or not.  I actually had a consulting contract lined up as a transition strategy, but decided to pull the plug on that after a management change (threw the $2k I earned from that into my Roth).   Once we signed the contract to sell our "lottery ticket in the sky" apartment in Beijing I felt more secure.  More secure yet when we actually got the money out of China, bought our current place with the cash, and still had 8-10 years of living expenses in the bank.  Even with that less than financially optimal setup gains on our other investments have pushed us very far into fat FIRE territory.  So now I enjoy waking up without an alarm and spending my day puttering around my garden.  Not jealous AT ALL of the guy they hired in over my head at 150%+ of the salary they were paying me for doing that job for 16 months.

[Arbitrage]

This type of issue seriously bothered a friend of mine who quit her job early (I won't say retired, because it wasn't really her goal).  She has no need to work due to a rich husband, but she did feel like she needed to justify her self-worth and many years of education by continuing to work.  She ended up going back to work part-time. 

I've been coast-FIRE for close to 3 months now, and I'm not having any worries about the people who are taking over my hard-won responsibilities and passing my career by.  My bigger worries are having the right gear to continue kayaking/biking as the weather turns, and figuring out how to get started on all of the mountain biking trails around.

(OK, I do have other significant concerns about keeping kids COVID-safe in school, finding new friends, and such, but that's neither here nor there). 

[moof]

Pick something else to be competitive at to satiate that part of your personality.  FIRE'ing will give you much more free time to take some of your hobbies and activities to a higher level.  If you look at adventure races there are a lot of youngish retiree's along side the trust fund kids for a reason.  Send your frenemies picture albums of your adventures while they toil away at #winning.  If you have kids you can use the time to have true quality time with them, not just weekday hastily prepared family dinners and exhausted weekends. 

[LightTripper]

I wonder if age makes a difference here (i.e. how E is your R?)

I'm in my mid 40s and probably "peaked" in my career (at least, hit the top rung of the ladder in my particular field) 10 years ago (got the final promotion 5 years before that, but I'd say it took another 5 years to feel I was really doing the role comfortably and well).  So from a professional point of view I don't feel I have anything to prove any more (don't get me wrong, there are more senior jobs - but those are proper "leadership" type roles that I don't have any particular aptitude for, meaning they would be very energy sapping for me and I don't have any appetite for them, given I would probably never do them very well even if I could get hired to one).

The other advantage of being older is that several of my friends are not working or at least not working full time.  Either they've gone from corporate to smaller freelance gigs, went on maternity leave and never felt the need to go back, or I recently found out that one of my University friends actually pulled the plug on a big corporate job and retired (I'm not convinced he won't go back at some point, but that's certainly his story for now).

Having kids also helps because it is a kind of obvious ticking clock: they won't be young and want my company for ever, so it makes sense to pull the plug now unless I have very good reasons for staying.

Of course, I'm still prevaricating about actually pulling the plug.  I've done it very slowly and probably won't be fully out before Easter (a full year or more after I originally intended, pre-pandemic).  That's been more about my feelings of responsibility to certain colleagues, projects and clients though, rather than feeling that I actually want more stuff or more prestige.  Plus a generalised fear of change - but I don't think that's what you're talking about!

I think though that retiring in my mid-30s would have been much harder, even if financially I was in a very strong position, due to some of the issues you identify around guilt of a "wasted" education, or wondering if I could go further in my career in X, Y or Z way - and just far fewer people on a similar path in my cohort.

[Metalcat]

Spend some quality time reflecting on what is driving these thoughts.

Thoughts are not feelings, they are an interpretation of feelings.

Something isn't adding up here, do some reflection and figure out what your true needs are.

[wageslave23]

I know you said you don't want to hear, but I think you need to acknowledge that you're not wanting to quit in order to impress others is a disadvantageous feeling.  Once you acknowledge that it's a form of immaturity/pride, you will be able to focus on over coming it instead of accommodating it. 

In the meantime, while you are working on that, you can look at FIRE as the ultimate competitive win. How many people do you know that make a lot of money and advance in their careers over the course of multiple decades? Probably quite a few. Frankly, I don't know how it's possible not to advance up the corporate ladder and make a ton of money if that's your objective.  But how people do you know that can support a family and retire in their 50s? Not as many. How about 40s? Very few, I know of none in real life.  That's way more impressive to most people.

[Radagast]

I can sort of sympathize. When I was a kid I liked building legos, making sand castles on the beach to see how long I could hold back the water, playing SimCity, and many others. Now as a civil engineer I get to do those in real life! In many ways my job is fun, but it would be nice if, like in school, I only needed to do it 6 hours a day with 4 months off per year. And maybe a sabbatical every 3 years...

[PDXTabs]

I can find things to be competitive at that aren't making money. Because how am I going to compete with really rich people? Not by making money.

Maybe if I had a chance at having my own private cargo plane or something really cool like that, but I'm never going to make that much money. So perhaps I content myself with a 37 foot sailboat and a sail around the world?

[fuzzy math]

Go to the Throw Down The Gauntlet section here and assert your competitiveness by racing to FIRE? There are many things you could view as the ultimate #winning scenario. It sounds like you have 2 competing ideas in your head. Getting out of the rat race IS winning. Is working for self worth and status also winning to you?

[ixtap]

I can find things to be competitive at that aren't making money. Because how am I going to compete with really rich people? Not by making money.

Maybe if I had a chance at having my own private cargo plane or something really cool like that, but I'm never going to make that much money. So perhaps I content myself with a 37 foot sailboat and a sail around the world?

I am so competitive I refuse to make sailing around the world a goal because so many people feel like failures when they decide not to complete the circuit. I am just going to sail until I don't want to anymore (well, the next safe landfall after that would be ideal).

[Goanywhere]

I have similar feelings sometimes.

It make me anxious just thinking about resigning from my role, which has a certain level of prestige, and being seen to potentially  "give it all away" at a relatively young age.

I know that this type of thinking is wrong, but it is hard to stop it morphing into:

- you are so fortunate to earn the income you do, and what if my children never have the same opportunity
- am I being selfish (although I know the greatest gift I can give my wife and children is time)
- should I work longer to provide a legacy for my children (i.e. purchase a first home which is becoming unobtainable for a lot of people in our country)
- what if I get to 25x or even 33x and the market tanks. I might have to take a job earning a fraction of what I do now

It is hard and I don't have the answer.

[PDXTabs]

I can find things to be competitive at that aren't making money. Because how am I going to compete with really rich people? Not by making money.

Maybe if I had a chance at having my own private cargo plane or something really cool like that, but I'm never going to make that much money. So perhaps I content myself with a 37 foot sailboat and a sail around the world?

I am so competitive I refuse to make sailing around the world a goal because so many people feel like failures when they decide not to complete the circuit. I am just going to sail until I don't want to anymore (well, the next safe landfall after that would be ideal).

I'm not actually that competitive. I could totally quit half way through.

[mistymoney]

I can sort of sympathize. When I was a kid I liked building legos, making sand castles on the beach to see how long I could hold back the water, playing SimCity, and many others. Now as a civil engineer I get to do those in real life! In many ways my job is fun, but it would be nice if, like in school, I only needed to do it 6 hours a day with 4 months off per year. And maybe a sabbatical every 3 years...

gosh! can you imagine how happy, how productive and how fulfilled we all would all be if work worked that way?

[mistymoney]

I know you said you don't want to hear, but I think you need to acknowledge that you're not wanting to quit in order to impress others is a disadvantageous feeling.  Once you acknowledge that it's a form of immaturity/pride, you will be able to focus on over coming it instead of accommodating it. 

how silly and petty and foolish this all is! I KNOW!

I'm curious in what ways you see my quote above not addressing your point?

[mistymoney]

Spend some quality time reflecting on what is driving these thoughts.

Thoughts are not feelings, they are an interpretation of feelings.

Something isn't adding up here, do some reflection and figure out what your true needs are.

Yes, I think I just need to tune into these feelings and thoughts rather than castigate myself for them and figure things out on a deeper level. Address them with curiousity and see how far I can unravel this. Maybe I could get some therapy sessions too. A lot of things are tied into this seeming simple/not so simple wrinkle.

It doesn't help that I was really not at the best financial place to fire anyway. I was going to quit in desperation and had nothing to look forward to except reduced stress. I think I can start to at least get some distance from the work stress by not caring as much, not trying to do it all, and put a target of 12-18 months to fire and start preparing the final approach - the least of which would be the financial side. If the market keeps giving, I should be in really good shape by then.

I think it does go really deep, just thinking on it calmly for a little be brings up a lot.

[mistymoney]

I have similar feelings sometimes.

It make me anxious just thinking about resigning from my role, which has a certain level of prestige, and being seen to potentially  "give it all away" at a relatively young age.

I know that this type of thinking is wrong, but it is hard to stop it morphing into:

- you are so fortunate to earn the income you do, and what if my children never have the same opportunity
- am I being selfish (although I know the greatest gift I can give my wife and children is time)
- should I work longer to provide a legacy for my children (i.e. purchase a first home which is becoming unobtainable for a lot of people in our country)
- what if I get to 25x or even 33x and the market tanks. I might have to take a job earning a fraction of what I do now

It is hard and I don't have the answer.

Wow - and yes. There are so many aspects to this. Especially the provider side.

And I do worry about the potential for the big or prolonged stock drop. Once again - that is something I'm not yet ready for/haven't finalized my strategy to deal with it. I guess alot of it is I still need to figure a lot of stuff out!

[mistymoney]

I didn't quote/respond to everyone, but thank you all for you thoughts and persepctives.

The post was intended as a rather casual observation of thoughts and feelings, but I do really need to wrestle with this and resolve it, because if I don't quit today, I will be quitting sometime relatively soon and it needs to be dealt with.

[Metalcat]

Spend some quality time reflecting on what is driving these thoughts.

Thoughts are not feelings, they are an interpretation of feelings.

Something isn't adding up here, do some reflection and figure out what your true needs are.

Yes, I think I just need to tune into these feelings and thoughts rather than castigate myself for them and figure things out on a deeper level. Address them with curiousity and see how far I can unravel this. Maybe I could get some therapy sessions too. A lot of things are tied into this seeming simple/not so simple wrinkle.

It doesn't help that I was really not at the best financial place to fire anyway. I was going to quit in desperation and had nothing to look forward to except reduced stress. I think I can start to at least get some distance from the work stress by not caring as much, not trying to do it all, and put a target of 12-18 months to fire and start preparing the final approach - the least of which would be the financial side. If the market keeps giving, I should be in really good shape by then.

I think it does go really deep, just thinking on it calmly for a little be brings up a lot.

One thing to remember is that it will be normal to really struggle with this once you quit.

It's a process, and you have to expect it to be uncomfortable.
Just because you *will* struggle with negative feelings around quitting doesn't mean it isn't good for you.

Sometimes the most valuable emotional experiences are horrible.

[Ron Scott]

A competitive spirit that pushes you to achieve a worthwhile goal, alone or when working with others in a spirit of comraderie, is a wonderful thing.

But if that spirit is directed simply to grow greener grass than your neighbor, it can be a waste of energy or even harmful to the soul.

Knowing the difference requires wisdom.

[Metalcat]

A competitive spirit that pushes you to achieve a worthwhile goal, alone or when working with others in a spirit of comraderie, is a wonderful thing.

But if that spirit is directed simply to grow greener grass than your neighbor, it can be a waste of energy or even harmful to the soul.

Knowing the difference requires wisdom.

True, but there's typically something foundational underneath driving why someone responds one way or the other.

It's not simply a matter of choosing to be competitive in a constructive way, one needs to be in a state of good mental health to feel that motivation.

Often if someone is feeling competitive *against* those around them, it's an indicator of a deeper issue, which is exactly what OP has identified.

[Chris Pascale]

A study of about 25,000 retirees showed that most people were unhappy after retirement. They missed the competition (they were out of the race, after all) and the camaraderie (no longer in the fight with their old team).

If FIRE-ing is not victory, then bypass that finish line and find another.

Maybe part of you is being small and petty, but perhaps another can do something MORE. Is there a goal worthy of your time and talent that you'd like to go for? It doesn't have to be financial, especially if you have the finances to never work again.

When I think of retiring, it's not actually FIRE-ing; it's just leaving my current employer (federal government) early and pursuing something else.

[wageslave23]

I know you said you don't want to hear, but I think you need to acknowledge that you're not wanting to quit in order to impress others is a disadvantageous feeling.  Once you acknowledge that it's a form of immaturity/pride, you will be able to focus on over coming it instead of accommodating it. 

how silly and petty and foolish this all is! I KNOW!

I'm curious in what ways you see my quote above not addressing your point?

Sorry, you are right.  I worded that wrong.  You have acknowledged that it's silly and immature.  I got the impression from your original post that you were giving the thoughts/feelings too much power and hadn't FULLY accepted those thoughts and feelings as disadvantageous.  I had the impression that you were contemplating allowing them to affect your future plans.  If that's not the case, then disregard my post. 

But I think there's a difference between acknowledging something and deep down accepting it to be true.  If you have already done that, then the solution to getting rid of that competiveness and pride is simply to FIRE.  You will be forced to deal with the those feelings and forced to look for healthier goals because you won't be able to compete anymore.   Whenever I find myself placing too much importance or pride in a certain area of my life, I force myself to let it go for awhile.  It's tough at first, but the tougher it is, the more unhealthy of an obsession I know that it had become.

Look at a different example.  If someone told you they had a mint condition classic car they were always worried about getting scratched and obsessing over keeping it looking shinier than their peers cars and wanted to sell but was afraid of not having the best car anymore, what would you tell them?  Sell the car, buy a normal used car with a few dings and scratches. Problem solved.  You can analyze the thoughts and feelings to death or just realize they are disadvantageous and act to correct the situation.

[exterous]

Does it help your competitiveness to frame it differently?

"I don't need the money anymore so I wanted to open up the job for someone else to be able to grow their contributions to society and earn a better living for their family"

Winning at being magnanimous