How to "retire" earlier than your FIRE date

[ricgnzlzcr]

Many people in the FIRE community are obsessed with freeing themselves from the working world.

They find MMM and others pursuing FIRE and decide that saving 25x annual expenses and retiring is the key to living a more intentional life.

While this is a great solution (and one I'm still pursuing), it feels like office purgatory unless your retirement date is a few years away.

After being honest with myself and determining why I wanted FIRE, I came to the conclusion that I could get most of the benefits of financial independence sooner by researching alternative strategies. Now that I've finally gotten to a point where I feel FI I wanted to share some of the strategies that helped me in case it might be of use to others who feel that they're too far from financial independence.

Time Freedom

The biggest epiphany I had in my quest to escape long hours at work was that I don't hate working. I hate:

• wearing tucked in dress shirts every day
• spending most days in a cubicle doing work I don't enjoy
• constantly dealing with email or calls from people I don't want to work with
• only getting two weeks of time off each year to explore the things I want to do

The act of working really isn't that bad. It's the feeling of imprisonment that comes from the traditional 9-5 gig that sucks happiness away. 

What most of us really crave is time freedom---the ability to do what we want most of the time. Having to work, as long as we can choose the hours and type of work, isn't that bad. Personally, it feels great to work with other people when I'm not forced to spend most of my life with them.

Strategies for Time Freedom

Changing the goal to an abundance of free time instead of never working again opens up a repertoire of game plans, many of which take much less time to achieve than FIRE.

The strategies are:

• Full retirement: this is the classic MMM strategy. Work until you have enough invested to cover your living expenses so you never have to work again.
• Semiretirement: your investments cover part of your living expenses and you earn income on a part-time basis to cover the rest of your bills.
• Mini-retirement: you work a job, save money, then quit or negotiate extended time off and live off savings until you're ready to go back to work or run out of money. This was popularized by Tim Ferriss in the 4-Hour Workweek.
• Low maintenance work/business: find a job or build a business that allows you to work minimal hours while still earning income needed to live your lifestyle. Think of an accountant who only works during tax season or the freelancer who can charge enough to work less hours and still cover the bills.

Each option has it's own pros and cons, but they can all provide time freedom.

Here is what the options look like in terms of effort and time:

Easiest to implement ==> mini-retirement | semiretirement/full retirement | low maintenance work/business <== Hardest to implement

Quickest path to Time Freedom ==> low maintenance work/business | mini-retirement | semiretirement | full retirement <== Longest path to Time Freedom


My Strategy

By understanding why I wanted FIRE, I worked on the quickest path to time freedom that fit with my ideal lifestyle.

Personally, I enjoy hard work---as long as it's on my own terms.

So after testing marketable skills that seemed enjoyable to learn, I realized that "low maintenance" work would be my quickest path to time freedom. Then based on my current savings I could fall back on mini-retirements and eventually become semiretired or completely financially independent.

Had I not found any skills I wanted to learn I would have settled for mini-retirements or semi-retirement. If I had earned enough money for a 75% savings rate I would have stuck to the original full-retirement goal.

After choosing a path, I quit my job in 2014 and lived on savings while learned a combination of skills that got me hired in a new field. After delivering great results I was able to renegotiate my contract to work remotely, 10-15 hours per week, at an income that covers expenses and allows for a healthy savings rate.

The feeling is amazing. At first I went into "vacation mode": I played lots of video games, read books, and started working out.

I still do all those things, but with the abundance of free time, I realize that I also want to take on more entrepreneurial projects---at my own pace of course.

The transition I've made in my life over the past 3 years amazes me. I've gone from hating work, hoping to escape it forever, to loving it. Being in control of my own destiny was the solution. It's what makes FIRE so amazing, but it can be had sooner if you're willing to take a different path.

Last but not least, if you can think of any other strategies to reach time freedom please let me know. I'm always curious.

[SwordGuy]

Good points!

[Lan Mandragoran]

Very cool :). What skills out of curiosity? Programming?

[monkeymoustache]

This is a great post. Congratulations on what you have achieved and thank-you for sharing your perspective. I've being doing some recent introspection and have come to similar conclusions, FIRE would be a great eventual by-product for me but I'd really like to achieve flexibility in life sooner, rather than putting all my of hopes and dreams into the date I achieve FIRE (likely a way off for me).

I want to be able to work on my own terms, take on a job I think will be interesting - If its stressful or sucks my soul I can quit and take some time out to do whatever I want (The "F*** you money" concept is critical here). When I'm feeling motivated I can find some more paid employment. I happen to like what I do, it's usually other factors that I find soul destroying - crappy commute, office environment, toxic people, stress, boredom etc... I'm also aware I don't have any inclination to run a business or any other side hustles like rental properties. Which basically means I have to stick with paid employment as part of my strategy.

This seems like a sweet spot for me, I can plan all the exciting projects and travels I want to do in my next "mini-retirement" this can offer me some motivation if the going is a bit crap in my current situation. I know too many examples within my extended social circle who held out from doing all these amazing things only to be stricken by one form of tragedy or another.

[Dances With Fire]

Nice post. I believe this is what (most) people are looking for. Not everyone has a great income and the ability to sock away 50-60% of it every year.

Most everyone I know seems to be looking at having more time. Always in a hurry to get from point A to point B, and wakeup one morning only to look at their family as if they were strangers. "The film of childhood only plays once" my friends...

On a personal note, I was in the corporate world for many years where the hours were brutal. I took a couple of sabbaticals in my 30's to save what sanity I had left. Since then I have had to tell myself to step-down or step aside and let others take more of the work load. After finding MMM and other sites I have continued to distance myself even more. I think it is a healthier way of work/life balance...

[Schaefer Light]

One strategy would be to retire while your spouse continues to work.  I would only recommend this if your spouse is okay with that ;).

[Lan Mandragoran]

One strategy would be to retire while your spouse continues to work.  I would only recommend this if your spouse is okay with that ;).

Unless your spouse has already taken this route :( lol.

[ricgnzlzcr]

Very cool :). What skills out of curiosity? Programming?

I started with programming, but realized that my strength is in product development (figuring out customer pain points and developing products that they love). The programming skills helped me land my first new job, but I don't write code anymore.

To be honest I'm a mediocre programmer, a mediocre marketer, and a decent product developer. It's the combination of those skills that made me valuable to small companies who sell online products. I learned about combining skills into more valuable assets from this Scott Adams post: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html

I want to be able to work on my own terms, take on a job I think will be interesting - If its stressful or sucks my soul I can quit and take some time out to do whatever I want (The "F*** you money" concept is critical here). When I'm feeling motivated I can find some more paid employment. I happen to like what I do, it's usually other factors that I find soul destroying - crappy commute, office environment, toxic people, stress, boredom etc... I'm also aware I don't have any inclination to run a business or any other side hustles like rental properties. Which basically means I have to stick with paid employment as part of my strategy.

This seems like a sweet spot for me, I can plan all the exciting projects and travels I want to do in my next "mini-retirement" this can offer me some motivation if the going is a bit crap in my current situation. I know too many examples within my extended social circle who held out from doing all these amazing things only to be stricken by one form of tragedy or another.

Do you have a job where you can work remotely? My wife has similar problems at her office and she negotiated to work a few days from home. She still has to work, but when she's got down time she doesn't have to pretend to be doing something on Excel. She can watch a TV show while doing mindless work and can get a workout in if she wants. She's happy enough with this setup that she's decided to keep working.

If you're attracted to the mini-retirement idea then you have perfect leverage. You can ask to work remotely part-time/full-time and quit if they say no. When I worked at a university I went through the same process unintentionally. I had asked for remote days before and they said no. When I saved enough FU money to take a mini-retirement to learn new skills they magically offered me the chance to work remotely even though they said it was against their policy before.

I still walked away because I was focused on learning new skills, but being capable of quitting gives you the most leverage---assuming that you are a strong performer and deliver value. Good luck!

Nice post. I believe this is what (most) people are looking for. Not everyone has a great income and the ability to sock away 50-60% of it every year.

Most everyone I know seems to be looking at having more time. Always in a hurry to get from point A to point B, and wakeup one morning only to look at their family as if they were strangers. "The film of childhood only plays once" my friends...

On a personal note, I was in the corporate world for many years where the hours were brutal. I took a couple of sabbaticals in my 30's to save what sanity I had left. Since then I have had to tell myself to step-down or step aside and let others take more of the work load. After finding MMM and other sites I have continued to distance myself even more. I think it is a healthier way of work/life balance...

I couldn't agree more. I hope the work/life balance has improved.

[ricgnzlzcr]

Really great points, thanks for sharing. Definitely gave me a lot to ponder :)

Related: Jake Desyllas (Voluntary Life podcast) wrote a book called Job Free that is somewhat along these lines. He observed 4 routes to freedom from a traditional job: "extreme saving" (i.e. what MMM did), following passion instead of money, creating low maintenance businesses, and founding+selling a startup. A pretty quick read, but I enjoyed it and it seems relevant here.

Awesome, just downloaded the Kindle version of Job Free. Thank you for the recommendation.

[aspiringnomad]

Love this post.

We also decided we didn't want to wait the extra few years until we'd saved up 25x our only quasi-mustachian expenses in our HCOL area. Instead we're gonna quit early and travel off the equity from our primary residence, so kind of a mini/mega retirement, but with a strict rule not to touch our other investments. When/if the home equity money runs out or we get sick of travel, we'll settle back down somewhere, probably look for interesting ways to make money at that point.

[ricgnzlzcr]

Love this post.

We also decided we didn't want to wait the extra few years until we'd saved up 25x our only quasi-mustachian expenses in our HCOL area. Instead we're gonna quit early and travel off the equity from our primary residence, so kind of a mini/mega retirement, but with a strict rule not to touch our other investments. When/if the home equity money runs out or we get sick of travel, we'll settle back down somewhere, probably look for interesting ways to make money at that point.

Sounds amazing. My brother is also doing a mini-retirement at the moment and is traveling through Europe/Asia until he gets sick of it. So far he's loved it. Good luck with the mega retirement :)