If-I-could-retire-all-over-again-these-are-the-things-Id-do-differently
00:00:00.000 | Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and I hope everybody is having a wonderful summer of
00:00:04.360 | 2019 I used to spend a lot of summers working harder or
00:00:10.040 | Writing more because I wanted to prepare for the inevitable boomerang or slingshot in the third quarter and fourth quarter
00:00:17.900 | But now as I get older, I'm taking my time more
00:00:21.640 | I'm slowing down and kind of smelling the roses and we plan to spend end of July or early August in Hawaii
00:00:29.180 | To test drive whether we'd like to live in Hawaii, especially during the hottest summer months
00:00:34.480 | So this episode it really is about more reflection
00:00:38.120 | It's about what I would do differently if I could retire all over again
00:00:42.960 | So I've been writing about early retirement since 2009
00:00:46.480 | The first three years of Financial Samurai was me mainly trying to figure out how to retire early
00:00:52.280 | How to do so in a comfortable manner where I wouldn't regret it and then the subsequent
00:00:57.920 | Seven plus years has been me touching upon various aspects of post retirement life
00:01:02.500 | And for the most part early retirement has been everything I hoped for
00:01:06.680 | Freedom truly truly is priceless
00:01:09.400 | But I've also highlighted a lot of negatives about early retirement that I could not have expected
00:01:14.500 | Until living as an early retiree for several years
00:01:18.520 | We can really pontificate all we want about what it's like to do something or be in a particular scenario
00:01:25.280 | But until you experience it for yourself, there's no amount of planning that can prepare you for some of life's biggest moments
00:01:31.840 | And one thing I'm thinking about in particular is how difficult it is being a stay-at-home parent
00:01:37.600 | It's joyous for sure, but unless you're a stay-at-home parent or unless you have kids
00:01:44.380 | Man, it is so hard to keep your wits about you
00:01:48.960 | So now that I'm deep into early retirement
00:01:51.960 | I like to share what I do differently if I could rewind time and go back to when I first left work in
00:01:57.200 | 2012 and there are basically five five things I would do differently or do a little bit better
00:02:04.880 | So one I would have worked for at least one more year in
00:02:10.160 | 2013 I wrote about the trap of the quote one more year syndrome
00:02:15.520 | Where people can't leave their jobs due to the money and security provides
00:02:20.480 | It's always one more year to see if you can get a promotion or one more year
00:02:24.560 | one more bonus to feel more secure financially that locks people in and then 10 15 20 years of one more year later and
00:02:32.840 | People wonder where all their time went. So I left work at 34 years old now that I'm 42 years old
00:02:39.840 | I look back and think how
00:02:41.840 | Absurdly young that was to retire leaving a good job at that age now seems irresponsible and reckless
00:02:48.200 | I left because I was sick of office politics. I was bored with my job and wanted to do something new
00:02:55.160 | These reasons now all sound like I was an entitled
00:02:58.320 | Impatient brat and I probably would have told myself
00:03:01.840 | My younger self to suck it up already if my son was thinking about this at the age of 33
00:03:07.800 | I would definitely tell him to suck it up because 34
00:03:11.480 | That just seems it just seems way too young
00:03:15.960 | But in my defense I had been with the firm for 10 years 10 consecutive long years before I thought about
00:03:23.720 | Getting out so it ended up being 11 consecutive years with that firm
00:03:28.200 | So if I had stayed for one more year, it would have given me more time to prepare for my post work future
00:03:35.240 | I would have lived like a pauper for my final year and saved another
00:03:39.920 | $100,000 plus for retirement on my firm's dime
00:03:43.640 | I would have gone on more international business trips. I would have taken out for lunch or drinks all my colleagues
00:03:49.800 | Competitors and clients I had gotten to know over my 13 years in the business and generally savor
00:03:55.520 | Savor my final year at work instead. I now feel like I rushed my departure. I only came up with the concept of
00:04:03.040 | negotiating a severance in November of 2011 five months before I ultimately did and you know what the first
00:04:10.400 | Three months of the concept after coming up with the concept was just filled with a lot of uncertainty
00:04:16.880 | Therefore I did make some mistakes like taking a week of vacation the year I left
00:04:22.120 | I also almost lost all my corporate card points because I shut it off before redeeming them
00:04:28.460 | But ultimately I got them back. Whoo, if I had stayed for at least one more year
00:04:32.800 | I also would have aggressively tried to find a new role within the firm in a different office
00:04:38.440 | You know, that's kind of like a new adventure changing jobs
00:04:42.160 | But with the same firm and having all your credits and goodwill that you've built along the way it is
00:04:49.040 | Always it has always been a dream of mine to work overseas since I grew up overseas for the first 13 years of my life
00:04:54.480 | If I had been able to find a new job within the firm in Hong Kong
00:04:58.180 | Taiwan Beijing or London
00:05:00.240 | I think my interest in work would have been rejuvenated and I could have worked for at least another three years
00:05:05.680 | I was thinking about it and a new country new city new friends new activities new culture new food
00:05:13.360 | It would have been awesome to just relocate to another country and I have an expat package
00:05:18.880 | Where you know, you get maybe subsidized housing and then the first I think
00:05:23.120 | $96,000 you earn is
00:05:25.760 | Tax-free not bad. If you already know you're gonna leave a job and negotiate a severance
00:05:31.840 | Let's say a year from now your work life could become much much less stressful and much more interesting
00:05:37.840 | Think back to when you're in high school or college
00:05:40.080 | When you knew where you were going to college or going for work by leaving so quickly I fail to uncover more opportunities
00:05:47.760 | So today I encourage folks to try to get it out until age 40 or for at least one more year
00:05:53.400 | than originally planned if you're burning out take a sabbatical or
00:05:59.320 | Multiple extended two-week vacations to recharge use up all your vacation days, please
00:06:05.200 | Please if you are feeling burnt out, but on the flip side don't use your vacation
00:06:12.800 | days if you absolutely know you want to leave work because
00:06:17.360 | Vacation days are worth a daily pay rate
00:06:21.580 | So if you wait until age 40 or for at least one more year than you think you want to leave
00:06:28.800 | not only will your finances be stronger, but you'll also be able to eliminate more completely any potential work regret and
00:06:35.600 | Maximize your chances of never returning
00:06:38.120 | Over the years I've seen plenty of idealistic young fire dreamers truncate their careers
00:06:43.520 | Probably because of fire FOMO only to realize they had made a big mistake and when they tried to get back to work
00:06:48.980 | they had a hard time getting the same job with similar pay and
00:06:53.520 | You know, they felt a lot of I think stress and anxiety and sometimes ridiculed by others for you know
00:07:00.840 | Quote retiring at the age of 28 or 30 or whatever again
00:07:04.580 | It just seems so ridiculous to try to retire in your 20s or early 30s when life
00:07:10.800 | There's just like so much more you could do at work and in life and it's not just an NLBL and life
00:07:17.060 | Does seem kind of long in retrospect?
00:07:19.920 | The second thing I would have done differently was try to have children while working. One of my regrets was waiting until
00:07:25.840 | Age 37 or three years after I left work to try
00:07:30.400 | Seriously having children my wife was 34 at the time and had just negotiated her severance
00:07:35.900 | We waited so long mainly because I was overly focused on my career
00:07:39.620 | I didn't think I was mentally ready to be a dad without first having an enormous financial buffer
00:07:45.700 | So when I was in college and also after working for a couple years, I was thinking myself
00:07:50.520 | I I think I need like a million dollars to raise a kid in Manhattan or in San Francisco
00:07:56.400 | And so logically I felt that having children would delay my permanent escape from work
00:08:00.900 | Friends kept telling me once their children were born. They felt they had a responsibility
00:08:04.360 | To work until they graduated college
00:08:08.180 | So working for another 21 to 23 more years sounded like a prison sentence
00:08:12.960 | Therefore I decided to avoid prison altogether and selfishly focus on me
00:08:16.720 | but
00:08:18.480 | If I could do it over again
00:08:20.120 | I would have tried to have kids in my early 30s rather than at 39 years old because sometimes
00:08:27.240 | Not everything goes according to plan. I mean you can't just say hey, I want to have a kid on
00:08:33.520 | August
00:08:36.400 | 15th at 10 p.m. No, it just doesn't work that way, right?
00:08:40.360 | Normal couples take seven to eight tries to get pregnant and then you know
00:08:46.400 | Staying pregnant is another issue. So
00:08:49.040 | Prayers to all those on board kids who never made it and my heart goes out to all the parents out there as well
00:08:54.880 | Life is truly truly precious
00:08:57.720 | And as I look back, I would have ideally liked to have my first at age 33
00:09:03.760 | Have another little one by age 36 and like my job enough to retire at age 40 after 19 years with the firm
00:09:11.200 | I think a couple things
00:09:13.200 | Would have happened one
00:09:14.880 | I would have better appreciated work and all its benefits more if I had kid while I was working and
00:09:20.720 | Then I know I would have probably started resenting work for keeping
00:09:24.680 | You know me away from my kid
00:09:27.280 | After about one or two years, so then I would have appreciated
00:09:30.680 | early retirement more after
00:09:33.640 | Let's say negotiating a severance at least one year after my son was born
00:09:37.080 | So these you know, there are definitely some positives and negatives
00:09:40.960 | To having kids while working a stressful job
00:09:45.000 | But I think these are some positives that would have happened if I did three I
00:09:51.000 | Would have worked on my side hustles sooner and more aggressively
00:09:54.760 | I've mentioned this before and I just want to encourage everyone to work on something
00:10:00.360 | Outside of work time because you never know what will happen, you know
00:10:03.920 | The key I think to maintaining a steady state of happiness is being able to consistently forecast your potential misery
00:10:09.880 | And taking steps beforehand to counteract that misery and ideally we can all consistently plan three to five years ahead
00:10:16.520 | But it's not a natural act right just like going to lift weights is not a natural act
00:10:21.760 | You've got to regularly work on it. It wasn't until the stock market melted down in 2008 and 2009
00:10:29.800 | When I started seriously forecasting my misery on a regular basis and before then I was just too lazy
00:10:36.240 | You know, it's too lazy to think about a side hustle because things were pretty much going well, right?
00:10:42.440 | I had got a new job in 2001. I moved out to San Francisco
00:10:45.400 | I got into business school part-time and my career and my pay was going up up up until the financial crisis
00:10:53.240 | If I had started financial samurai in 2006 when I first came up with the idea
00:10:58.640 | Perhaps I would have felt much more settled than I did when I left work in 2012 with more financial certainty
00:11:05.440 | More confidence and a clear purpose. I may have had the guts to try having children three years sooner as well
00:11:12.640 | But the desire for money and the necessity to live in an expensive city like San Francisco in New York for this money
00:11:19.960 | Got to me and I just realized man. I had to really grind it out and be financially stable
00:11:27.440 | To be a responsible parent. I mean, I don't know why I felt I needed to be so responsible before having children
00:11:34.200 | But I did and some of you might think I'm being too hard on myself for not foreseeing the recession and starting to work on
00:11:41.040 | my side hustle sooner
00:11:42.600 | But ever since I started working in the finance industry in 1999
00:11:46.200 | I've always felt that my years were numbered because of the company long hours and great stress. All right for I
00:11:53.160 | Should have bought more real estate in 2012 real estate is my absolute favorite asset class to build wealth
00:11:59.520 | Especially since I've seen real estate do so well in places like New York City in San Francisco for the past 20 years where I've lived
00:12:06.520 | and worked
00:12:07.760 | But I was too focused on engineering my layoff in 2012
00:12:10.760 | The last thing on my mind was leveraging up to buy more property
00:12:14.760 | In fact, I try to sell my primary residence in 2012, but couldn't find a buyer. Thank goodness
00:12:21.520 | you know I was trying to sell and then just downgrade to a two-bedroom one-bath rental and
00:12:26.440 | Really live frugally my first year post early retirement, you know, I just didn't want to you know
00:12:31.800 | Mess things up and come back with it my tail between my legs and say please give me a job again
00:12:37.360 | So if I had planned on working until let's say age 40 or five and a half six more years
00:12:42.800 | I would have had greater confidence to buy at the bottom of the existing cycle
00:12:47.720 | 2012 literally was right before everything started going
00:12:52.040 | crazy in San Francisco real estate and in real estate across the country a
00:12:58.240 | 900,000 rental property I would have bought in 2012 would be now worth about 1.6 million today
00:13:05.760 | So that lost seven hundred thousand dollars in gross gains
00:13:10.400 | hmm, that's that could pay for
00:13:14.520 | College tuition private school for two kids, I would think
00:13:18.080 | Hmm. So my failure to buy in 2012
00:13:22.440 | That really kind of is painful when I really think about it and I really do the math
00:13:28.640 | But at least I did buy a fixer-upper in 2014 and I continued to contribute to my tax advantageous
00:13:36.560 | Retirement accounts. It's all better than nothing
00:13:39.480 | All right fifth and finally I didn't fully capitalize on my position as an early retiree
00:13:46.640 | So the fire movement is very very hot right now
00:13:50.720 | and you can't go a week without some major media publication talking about retiring early and
00:13:58.000 | Although I've been writing about early retirement since 2009
00:14:03.120 | Financial samurai is often left out of the mainstream fire conversation because I write about so many topics in addition to early retirement
00:14:10.880 | I'm more focused on wealth maximization through equity investing
00:14:15.080 | Entrepreneurship career strategies and real estate my favorite asset class
00:14:20.640 | Over the past couple of years. I've discovered new joy talking about family finances and estate planning
00:14:28.560 | So I'm basically writing about my journey and the things that interest me as I involve
00:14:34.720 | Becoming a father and becoming older and so forth once I retired early
00:14:39.560 | I felt like there was no need to talk incessantly about early retirement
00:14:43.800 | Instead I just got on with my life because my goal of financial independence had been met
00:14:48.940 | Further I didn't want to rub it in people's faces that I was done with work
00:14:52.840 | You know offline after a year of telling folks who asked what I did that I was retired
00:14:57.080 | I started changing my response so that I wouldn't feel as stupid and guilty
00:15:02.760 | I changed my response to say that I was a writer or a tennis coach
00:15:06.200 | Just to feel more comfortable
00:15:08.920 | You know, it just it just didn't feel right and sit right with me to say hey look at my amazing life here in wherever
00:15:16.040 | Amsterdam because we are retired early and then just taking selfies and pictures or that just obnoxious photo of your
00:15:24.760 | toes
00:15:26.200 | Dipping into the sand on the beach somewhere and just saying look at my wonderful life
00:15:30.800 | I'm not like that and I don't do that on social media
00:15:35.680 | And I certainly don't want to do that regularly on my site if at all, you know
00:15:40.720 | Maybe once a year something like that, but not every week every month saying hey, this is early retirement early retirement
00:15:47.260 | Ha ha ha ha right. It just felt unseemly. I
00:15:50.280 | also naively believed
00:15:53.040 | More people would give finance samurai credit for being one of the pioneers of the modern-day fire movement. I mean 2009
00:15:59.800 | Not many people
00:16:02.640 | Were talking about retiring early online
00:16:05.800 | But just like at work those who self-promote the loudest tend to get the most attention
00:16:11.160 | And while those who stay silent and believe their good work will get them
00:16:15.520 | Recognized usually get left behind
00:16:18.720 | So in retrospect if I was a little bit more self-promotional a little bit more
00:16:23.360 | Proactive and a little less naive. I think I would have grown financial samurai
00:16:29.640 | faster and larger and I would have done better at branding the site as
00:16:35.400 | Now we're so focused on early retirement lifestyle in the personal finance
00:16:41.120 | blogosphere and in the media
00:16:43.600 | But I do think there is opportunity because half the US population lives in the expensive coasts, right?
00:16:50.900 | San Francisco, New York, Boston
00:16:52.920 | LA San Diego, and I don't know many if any early retirement bloggers
00:16:58.400 | Living off investment income in these areas as a result
00:17:02.200 | I feel like I'm often left on an island without a tribe of people to converse with in a similar situation
00:17:09.680 | But at the same time that is an opportunity to help represent and talk about issues that afflict half the population
00:17:16.960 | And as a father now with rising cost to cover and a full-time mom for a spouse
00:17:22.120 | I need to focus more on monetizing this site going forward
00:17:25.720 | I've been way too
00:17:27.240 | Lackadaisical about generating revenue due to our sufficient retirement income and my desire to only write about things that interest me
00:17:34.640 | So going forward the next I don't know three to five to ten years if I'm able to hold on to financial samurai for this
00:17:41.000 | Long I'm really gonna focus on the monetization aspect whether it's writing new books
00:17:45.520 | doing courses
00:17:48.000 | building more affiliate partnerships and so forth
00:17:50.560 | because I see opportunity and I think it's the responsible thing to do to make enough money for your family and
00:17:57.440 | Be a solid stable provider
00:18:00.600 | So in conclusion, I encourage all of us to live in the present and consistently plan for the future
00:18:06.560 | It's worth being patient. It's worth being
00:18:10.040 | Methodical in your planning because you want to do it right the first time and you want to minimize mistakes and regret
00:18:17.960 | So hopefully my five mistakes can help you better plan for the future and the way I'm gonna rectify my mistakes is
00:18:26.160 | To one live as long and as healthy a life as possible if I can do that
00:18:32.000 | Beyond what I was supposed to live, you know
00:18:35.440 | I think that would mitigate a lot of these mistakes too, but I'll never know for sure whether I made a difference in my longevity
00:18:40.520 | or not and
00:18:42.360 | The other thing to do is to just really appreciate the moment that you have that I have, you know
00:18:49.000 | I just can't rewind and change the past so I've got to continue to focus on the present and the future
00:18:55.680 | The older you get the more you will feel the race against time
00:18:59.200 | The good thing is that money and status gradually fade away in your personal hierarchy of importance
00:19:06.040 | Desiring to spend more time with family and enjoying more free time is a natural part of life
00:19:11.240 | So if you're thinking about retiring early, please ask yourself the following questions
00:19:15.860 | Why am I rushing to retire early?
00:19:18.520 | Am I running away from something?
00:19:21.880 | What will I do after I retire early? Am I running towards something? This is really important difference folks
00:19:28.120 | How will retiring early change my life for the better or worse?
00:19:32.760 | Am I sacrificing too much to retire so early?
00:19:36.880 | Would one more year or maybe five more years be more beneficial?
00:19:41.160 | Have I gained enough perspective from those who've already retired?
00:19:45.600 | And so hopefully by listening to this podcast you gain more perspective
00:19:50.440 | It'll help you in your decision when it comes to retiring. There are no perfect answers nor is there perfect timing?
00:19:57.120 | You can only do your best with information, you know at the time
00:20:00.600 | It's only after several years of living an early retirement lifestyle
00:20:04.720 | That you will know what you could have done differently or better to make it an even more wonderful retirement
00:20:11.320 | So stay optimistic live in the present and consistently spend time planning for the future
00:20:16.320 | Chances are really high. You'll live to see another amazing day
00:20:20.600 | Thanks so much folks
00:20:22.280 | And I'd love to hear from all of you on what you would do differently or what are some of your takeaways from this podcast?
00:20:28.920 | and in the post