Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and I hope everybody is having a wonderful summer of 2019 I used to spend a lot of summers working harder or Writing more because I wanted to prepare for the inevitable boomerang or slingshot in the third quarter and fourth quarter But now as I get older, I'm taking my time more I'm slowing down and kind of smelling the roses and we plan to spend end of July or early August in Hawaii To test drive whether we'd like to live in Hawaii, especially during the hottest summer months So this episode it really is about more reflection It's about what I would do differently if I could retire all over again So I've been writing about early retirement since 2009 The first three years of Financial Samurai was me mainly trying to figure out how to retire early How to do so in a comfortable manner where I wouldn't regret it and then the subsequent Seven plus years has been me touching upon various aspects of post retirement life And for the most part early retirement has been everything I hoped for Freedom truly truly is priceless But I've also highlighted a lot of negatives about early retirement that I could not have expected Until living as an early retiree for several years We can really pontificate all we want about what it's like to do something or be in a particular scenario But until you experience it for yourself, there's no amount of planning that can prepare you for some of life's biggest moments And one thing I'm thinking about in particular is how difficult it is being a stay-at-home parent It's joyous for sure, but unless you're a stay-at-home parent or unless you have kids Man, it is so hard to keep your wits about you So now that I'm deep into early retirement I like to share what I do differently if I could rewind time and go back to when I first left work in 2012 and there are basically five five things I would do differently or do a little bit better So one I would have worked for at least one more year in 2013 I wrote about the trap of the quote one more year syndrome Where people can't leave their jobs due to the money and security provides It's always one more year to see if you can get a promotion or one more year one more bonus to feel more secure financially that locks people in and then 10 15 20 years of one more year later and People wonder where all their time went.

So I left work at 34 years old now that I'm 42 years old I look back and think how Absurdly young that was to retire leaving a good job at that age now seems irresponsible and reckless I left because I was sick of office politics. I was bored with my job and wanted to do something new These reasons now all sound like I was an entitled Impatient brat and I probably would have told myself My younger self to suck it up already if my son was thinking about this at the age of 33 I would definitely tell him to suck it up because 34 That just seems it just seems way too young But in my defense I had been with the firm for 10 years 10 consecutive long years before I thought about Getting out so it ended up being 11 consecutive years with that firm So if I had stayed for one more year, it would have given me more time to prepare for my post work future I would have lived like a pauper for my final year and saved another $100,000 plus for retirement on my firm's dime I would have gone on more international business trips.

I would have taken out for lunch or drinks all my colleagues Competitors and clients I had gotten to know over my 13 years in the business and generally savor Savor my final year at work instead. I now feel like I rushed my departure. I only came up with the concept of negotiating a severance in November of 2011 five months before I ultimately did and you know what the first Three months of the concept after coming up with the concept was just filled with a lot of uncertainty Therefore I did make some mistakes like taking a week of vacation the year I left I also almost lost all my corporate card points because I shut it off before redeeming them But ultimately I got them back.

Whoo, if I had stayed for at least one more year I also would have aggressively tried to find a new role within the firm in a different office You know, that's kind of like a new adventure changing jobs But with the same firm and having all your credits and goodwill that you've built along the way it is 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 If I had been able to find a new job within the firm in Hong Kong Taiwan Beijing or London I think my interest in work would have been rejuvenated and I could have worked for at least another three years I was thinking about it and a new country new city new friends new activities new culture new food It would have been awesome to just relocate to another country and I have an expat package Where you know, you get maybe subsidized housing and then the first I think $96,000 you earn is Tax-free not bad.

If you already know you're gonna leave a job and negotiate a severance Let's say a year from now your work life could become much much less stressful and much more interesting Think back to when you're in high school or college When you knew where you were going to college or going for work by leaving so quickly I fail to uncover more opportunities So today I encourage folks to try to get it out until age 40 or for at least one more year than originally planned if you're burning out take a sabbatical or Multiple extended two-week vacations to recharge use up all your vacation days, please Please if you are feeling burnt out, but on the flip side don't use your vacation days if you absolutely know you want to leave work because Vacation days are worth a daily pay rate So if you wait until age 40 or for at least one more year than you think you want to leave not only will your finances be stronger, but you'll also be able to eliminate more completely any potential work regret and Maximize your chances of never returning Over the years I've seen plenty of idealistic young fire dreamers truncate their careers Probably because of fire FOMO only to realize they had made a big mistake and when they tried to get back to work they had a hard time getting the same job with similar pay and You know, they felt a lot of I think stress and anxiety and sometimes ridiculed by others for you know Quote retiring at the age of 28 or 30 or whatever again It just seems so ridiculous to try to retire in your 20s or early 30s when life There's just like so much more you could do at work and in life and it's not just an NLBL and life Does seem kind of long in retrospect?

The second thing I would have done differently was try to have children while working. One of my regrets was waiting until Age 37 or three years after I left work to try Seriously having children my wife was 34 at the time and had just negotiated her severance We waited so long mainly because I was overly focused on my career I didn't think I was mentally ready to be a dad without first having an enormous financial buffer So when I was in college and also after working for a couple years, I was thinking myself I I think I need like a million dollars to raise a kid in Manhattan or in San Francisco And so logically I felt that having children would delay my permanent escape from work Friends kept telling me once their children were born.

They felt they had a responsibility To work until they graduated college So working for another 21 to 23 more years sounded like a prison sentence Therefore I decided to avoid prison altogether and selfishly focus on me but If I could do it over again I would have tried to have kids in my early 30s rather than at 39 years old because sometimes Not everything goes according to plan.

I mean you can't just say hey, I want to have a kid on August 15th at 10 p.m. No, it just doesn't work that way, right? Normal couples take seven to eight tries to get pregnant and then you know Staying pregnant is another issue. So Prayers to all those on board kids who never made it and my heart goes out to all the parents out there as well Life is truly truly precious And as I look back, I would have ideally liked to have my first at age 33 Have another little one by age 36 and like my job enough to retire at age 40 after 19 years with the firm I think a couple things Would have happened one I would have better appreciated work and all its benefits more if I had kid while I was working and Then I know I would have probably started resenting work for keeping You know me away from my kid After about one or two years, so then I would have appreciated early retirement more after Let's say negotiating a severance at least one year after my son was born So these you know, there are definitely some positives and negatives To having kids while working a stressful job But I think these are some positives that would have happened if I did three I Would have worked on my side hustles sooner and more aggressively I've mentioned this before and I just want to encourage everyone to work on something Outside of work time because you never know what will happen, you know The key I think to maintaining a steady state of happiness is being able to consistently forecast your potential misery And taking steps beforehand to counteract that misery and ideally we can all consistently plan three to five years ahead But it's not a natural act right just like going to lift weights is not a natural act You've got to regularly work on it.

It wasn't until the stock market melted down in 2008 and 2009 When I started seriously forecasting my misery on a regular basis and before then I was just too lazy You know, it's too lazy to think about a side hustle because things were pretty much going well, right? I had got a new job in 2001.

I moved out to San Francisco I got into business school part-time and my career and my pay was going up up up until the financial crisis If I had started financial samurai in 2006 when I first came up with the idea Perhaps I would have felt much more settled than I did when I left work in 2012 with more financial certainty More confidence and a clear purpose.

I may have had the guts to try having children three years sooner as well But the desire for money and the necessity to live in an expensive city like San Francisco in New York for this money Got to me and I just realized man. I had to really grind it out and be financially stable To be a responsible parent.

I mean, I don't know why I felt I needed to be so responsible before having children 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 my side hustle sooner But ever since I started working in the finance industry in 1999 I've always felt that my years were numbered because of the company long hours and great stress.

All right for I Should have bought more real estate in 2012 real estate is my absolute favorite asset class to build wealth 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 and worked But I was too focused on engineering my layoff in 2012 The last thing on my mind was leveraging up to buy more property In fact, I try to sell my primary residence in 2012, but couldn't find a buyer.

Thank goodness you know I was trying to sell and then just downgrade to a two-bedroom one-bath rental and Really live frugally my first year post early retirement, you know, I just didn't want to you know Mess things up and come back with it my tail between my legs and say please give me a job again So if I had planned on working until let's say age 40 or five and a half six more years I would have had greater confidence to buy at the bottom of the existing cycle 2012 literally was right before everything started going crazy in San Francisco real estate and in real estate across the country a 900,000 rental property I would have bought in 2012 would be now worth about 1.6 million today So that lost seven hundred thousand dollars in gross gains hmm, that's that could pay for College tuition private school for two kids, I would think Hmm.

So my failure to buy in 2012 That really kind of is painful when I really think about it and I really do the math But at least I did buy a fixer-upper in 2014 and I continued to contribute to my tax advantageous Retirement accounts. It's all better than nothing All right fifth and finally I didn't fully capitalize on my position as an early retiree So the fire movement is very very hot right now and you can't go a week without some major media publication talking about retiring early and Although I've been writing about early retirement since 2009 Financial samurai is often left out of the mainstream fire conversation because I write about so many topics in addition to early retirement I'm more focused on wealth maximization through equity investing Entrepreneurship career strategies and real estate my favorite asset class Over the past couple of years.

I've discovered new joy talking about family finances and estate planning So I'm basically writing about my journey and the things that interest me as I involve Becoming a father and becoming older and so forth once I retired early I felt like there was no need to talk incessantly about early retirement Instead I just got on with my life because my goal of financial independence had been met Further I didn't want to rub it in people's faces that I was done with work You know offline after a year of telling folks who asked what I did that I was retired I started changing my response so that I wouldn't feel as stupid and guilty I changed my response to say that I was a writer or a tennis coach Just to feel more comfortable 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 Amsterdam because we are retired early and then just taking selfies and pictures or that just obnoxious photo of your toes Dipping into the sand on the beach somewhere and just saying look at my wonderful life I'm not like that and I don't do that on social media And I certainly don't want to do that regularly on my site if at all, you know Maybe once a year something like that, but not every week every month saying hey, this is early retirement early retirement Ha ha ha ha right.

It just felt unseemly. I also naively believed More people would give finance samurai credit for being one of the pioneers of the modern-day fire movement. I mean 2009 Not many people Were talking about retiring early online But just like at work those who self-promote the loudest tend to get the most attention And while those who stay silent and believe their good work will get them Recognized usually get left behind So in retrospect if I was a little bit more self-promotional a little bit more Proactive and a little less naive.

I think I would have grown financial samurai faster and larger and I would have done better at branding the site as Now we're so focused on early retirement lifestyle in the personal finance blogosphere and in the media But I do think there is opportunity because half the US population lives in the expensive coasts, right?

San Francisco, New York, Boston LA San Diego, and I don't know many if any early retirement bloggers Living off investment income in these areas as a result I feel like I'm often left on an island without a tribe of people to converse with in a similar situation But at the same time that is an opportunity to help represent and talk about issues that afflict half the population And as a father now with rising cost to cover and a full-time mom for a spouse I need to focus more on monetizing this site going forward I've been way too Lackadaisical about generating revenue due to our sufficient retirement income and my desire to only write about things that interest me 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 Long I'm really gonna focus on the monetization aspect whether it's writing new books doing courses building more affiliate partnerships and so forth because I see opportunity and I think it's the responsible thing to do to make enough money for your family and Be a solid stable provider So in conclusion, I encourage all of us to live in the present and consistently plan for the future It's worth being patient.

It's worth being Methodical in your planning because you want to do it right the first time and you want to minimize mistakes and regret So hopefully my five mistakes can help you better plan for the future and the way I'm gonna rectify my mistakes is To one live as long and as healthy a life as possible if I can do that Beyond what I was supposed to live, you know 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 or not and The other thing to do is to just really appreciate the moment that you have that I have, you know I just can't rewind and change the past so I've got to continue to focus on the present and the future The older you get the more you will feel the race against time The good thing is that money and status gradually fade away in your personal hierarchy of importance Desiring to spend more time with family and enjoying more free time is a natural part of life So if you're thinking about retiring early, please ask yourself the following questions Why am I rushing to retire early?

Am I running away from something? What will I do after I retire early? Am I running towards something? This is really important difference folks How will retiring early change my life for the better or worse? Am I sacrificing too much to retire so early? Would one more year or maybe five more years be more beneficial?

Have I gained enough perspective from those who've already retired? And so hopefully by listening to this podcast you gain more perspective It'll help you in your decision when it comes to retiring. There are no perfect answers nor is there perfect timing? You can only do your best with information, you know at the time It's only after several years of living an early retirement lifestyle That you will know what you could have done differently or better to make it an even more wonderful retirement So stay optimistic live in the present and consistently spend time planning for the future Chances are really high.

You'll live to see another amazing day Thanks so much folks 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? and in the post