Hello, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and in this episode we're going to talk about the negatives of early retirement life that nobody enjoys talking about. Now it's been over six years now since I left my day job in 2012 and I must say that for the most part it's been pretty good, but I've also discovered plenty of negatives since the time I left.

I know why we revert back to our baseline state of happiness no matter how much freedom and how much money you have. So let's go through five of the negatives of retiring early now that I'm a grizzled veteran. So the first negative is you will suffer an identity crisis for an unknown period of time.

When you've spent at least a decade working in a profession, you'll find it incredibly jolting to no longer be identified as the person who is a marketing expert, an investment professional or the management consultant who can figure out how to optimize a business. It's only after you leave where you truly realize how wound up you were in your profession.

It's always the case where you never really fully appreciate what you have until it's gone. Your identity crisis may last as short as let's say two or three months or it may last for years. It all depends on how wrapped up you were in your job, how much you cared about that job, how long you spent getting educated after high school to get that job and whether you have a clear plan post-retirement.

So for example, doctors who spend what, years and years, four years at least after college and then three years of residency to become full-fledged doctors are the people who suffer the most after leaving their occupations with regards to having an identity crisis. Conversely, high school graduates who somehow strike it rich with a product or an invention or who simply just make a good amount of living and save and save and just decide, "You know what, I'm not going to do this anymore," seem to adjust much easier in post-retirement life based on the people I've talked to over the years.

Job titles can be incredibly addictive. Why else do people get so depressed when they're passed over from promotion? Why else do people try so hard to get promoted sooner and faster than everybody else? Do not underestimate the importance of being a manager, a director, a vice president or even a C-level executive.

It really does mean a lot to your identity. After all, the most common question most people ask when they first meet each other is, "What do you do for a living?" And if you tell them you don't do anything for a living, well, then you might just feel like a sheepish loser.

And you'll want to try to explain yourself, but by then, your three-second first impression will no longer hold the person's attention and they'll probably just move on. So in my case, after working in the Asian equities business for 13 years, it felt hollow to no longer have my executive director title or be identified with my investment firm.

After all, I was there for 11 years. I felt sad that I could no longer go to Asia for conferences or with clients. For so long, I would take a business class trip to Hong Kong or India or China or Taiwan that it was part of my quarterly routine.

I felt special every time I was allowed to board first. You know, business class, board three, four, economy class. Because generally, I'm just flying economy like I am now. And I felt important when clients would entrust me to show them around in a foreign land. So for the first year after leaving my job, I wondered how the business was going to do without me.

Could they really survive without my relationships and expertise? After all, my partner and I built the business to the foundation it is when I left. So surely they needed my relationships and my skills. But after months went by with no email or no phone call from my old employer saying, "Hey, we want you back," I had to come to terms that I was no longer important to them.

I wanted to believe that my position meant something to the firm and to the people that I serviced. But at the end of the day, the person I trained to replace me as part of my severance agreement was good enough. And because he was good enough, I concluded that I was no longer any good.

So this ego hit took me a full year to get over where I was finally like, "You know what? I'm going to leave this world behind because I've got a new world with me with Financial Samurai." Two, you will be stuck in your head. There is this disease called locked-in syndrome.

It's where the patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except for vertical eye movements and blinking. So that is kind of like my worst nightmare. And when you retire early, you're stuck in your head because when you suddenly have an extra 10 to 14 hours a day of free time, it's very difficult to optimize your time wisely.

Just like how bedrooms and kitchens and living rooms naturally get messier and messier and messier, your mind naturally gets lazier and lazier the more time you have to do anything. So your productivity will suffer. You will no longer feel motivated to achieve great wins. And as a result, you might slowly start to get depressed.

Only after some really deep soul searching and some "What the hell am I doing with my life?" questioning will you begin to organize your time better and become more productive. Your mind really can be dangerous because it can always second-guess your actions. You're going to ask yourself, "Did I retire too soon?

What if I run out of money? What if people think I'm a loser? What if I can't get back into the workforce if things go wrong?" When you have a lot of time to think, your doubts go on and on. Therefore, retiring early may render you inoperable for an unknown period of time.

So what happened to me? Because I left work at the age of 34, I was worried for the first two years whether or not I had made the right choice. Originally, my plan was to work until age 40. But then I was like, "Well, I found Financial Samurai and I negotiated my severance, so why not?" But still, I had my doubts.

No rational person leaves a well-paying job to be unemployed in their mid-30s. Because once you're in your late 30s, that's when the money really starts getting good. And by the time you reach your 40s, you should be at your maximum earnings power. During my first year of early retirement, to the outside world, I proudly proclaimed I was retired from a career in finance.

But on the inside, I was second-guessing my decision to leave. Because of my uncertainty, I decided to do some part-time consulting with some financial technology startups for about 20 hours a week. It was a great way to distract my mind from all my fears, earn some side income, and re-plug myself into society.

I also dived deep into my writing on Financial Samurai, writing three posts a week. Writing has always been my most cathartic way to deal with any uncertainty or problems I might have. I wasn't afraid to tackle any topics that concerned me. For example, recently I talked about earning $300,000 a year in order to live a middle-class lifestyle in San Francisco.

And the reason why I did that was I wanted to look at the numbers to see how much you would need to live a comfortable lifestyle in San Francisco if you had to pay for private school tuition. Now the reason why is because there's a lottery system in San Francisco where there's no guarantee that my son could get into a public school in my neighborhood.

And if that's the case, then I guess I have to pay for private school or I've got to move away. And so $300,000 is more than my current passive income, and that provides some stress, but at least that gives me a goal to try to make more money by the time he goes to kindergarten.

Alright three, people will treat you a little weirdly. Like you're a misfit or a miscreant. You know, whether it's because retiring early is unconventional or because people are secretly jealous you aren't grinding away at a day job, people won't give you the same amount of respect as working class citizens.

After all, if they can't describe what you do for a living, then they can't pigeonhole you into an archetype that is comfortable for them. Having a job means you are a productive member of society. If you retire at a young age, people will assume you are simply slacking off and not paying your fair share of taxes.

They'll sometimes look at you as a leech they want to just flick off. Further, if you're an outcast, then you won't be invited to parties or events that other working people always get to attend. You're simply not top of mind to them. So if you're an extrovert, early retirement will be more difficult than if you're an introvert.

So regards to what happened to me, after the first year of early retirement, I no longer told anybody I retired early. Instead, I told them, you know, I was a writer or a tennis teacher or a fintech consultant or simply in between jobs. Prior to that, I think a lot of people just assumed I was a trust fund baby who did not have to work and that's the last thing this middle class guy who attended public school wants to be known as.

My favorite time of the year was during the winter holidays. I loved going to all the holiday parties and getting tipsy with fellow revelers. Now I get invited to zero holiday parties because I don't work for anyone, nor do I get invited to client holiday parties either, even though I have several partners who are based in San Francisco Bay Area where Financial Samurai does really good business with them.

So it may sound silly or a little petty, but having a drink with good people with shared interests really means a lot to me because I am pretty extroverted. I would say like an eight out of 10. And the thing is, since I've left, I've continued to pay tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands in taxes since because my online business has continued to grow and I sold my rental house, sold some investments.

So you know, I'm still paying my taxes, folks. I'm not leeching off society. I think I'm actually continuing to contribute to the redistribution of wealth in America. Four, you'll be disappointed that you aren't much happier. So many people think that once they achieve financial freedom or leave a job they dislike, they'll suddenly be permanently happier.

The truth of the matter is your elevated happiness will only last at most three to six months. Three to six months, folks. It's a good time, but it's not a permanent increase. Eventually you'll revert to your natural state of being. And if you don't believe me, just look back to your high school or college years when you didn't have any money at all.

I'd venture to guess you were just as happy as you are now, if not happier when you were a broke college student. So that happiness barometer doesn't fluctuate too much. Having the freedom to do what you want is priceless, but you will eventually take your freedom for granted like the air that you breathe every single day.

And during the times that you do feel kind of angry or annoyed or unhappy, you're going to feel like what's wrong with you since you have all this financial freedom and time? Just think about the citizens in the happiest countries in the world like Norway or Sweden. They're always in the top five.

But imagine if you're not a happy person there. Gosh, you'd probably feel like a loser. So what's going on with me? I thought I'd be much happier not having to report to a micromanager boss I did not respect. I really didn't respect him. He was kind of overweight. He wasn't that smart.

And he just wasn't really charismatic at all. But my happiness after I left my job was fleeting and only lasted about a week before I was back to my regular self. One week, folks. Instead of my happiness was weighed down by months of uncertainty on whether I'd made the right move to leave my job.

So although corporate politics no longer pissed me off, other things end up filling the void. For example, drivers who decide to double park on a busy street in rush hour traffic really pissed me off. Dog owners who decide to let their dogs poop in front of my house and not pick up after them really pissed me off.

So in the past, I could only allocate a small amount of annoyance to such incidences. But now, my annoyance bucket has more capacity, so it just gets filled up by other things. Instead of being at a permanently happier level, I'm simply no longer as annoyed or angry at things as frequently.

Further, the volatility around my steady state of happiness is lower. So I guess in a sense, I'm more mellow. Alright, fifth and finally about the negatives of early retirement. You constantly wonder whether this is all there is to life. Most of us spend 13 years going to grade school so we can spend 4 years in college in order to get a decent job.

Then we spend decades trying to earn and save money in order to provide for our family and then one day retire by 65. With good luck, we'll live another 20+ years maybe and enjoy all the fruits of our labor. So when you retire at a much earlier age, you're constantly left wondering what's next.

You are mentally twiddling your thumbs waiting for the next big thing while your close friends are all at work working at their purpose or so it seems. Early retirement can get extremely mundane and boring because you have nobody to spend it with because they're all working. So it can get really boring and as a result, you're repeatedly forced to will yourself into action.

So this constant self-starting attitude can be very tiring to the point where you just want to rejoin the workforce and be told what to do. So what's going on with me? Well, I totally thought to myself, "What's next? What's next? What's next?" for the first couple of years and I probably drove my wife nuts during the first 2 years of early retirement as well because I constantly told her I was bored.

Only boring people get bored, right? Well, I think that's wrong because everybody gets bored at some point and when you're working, you don't have time to get bored because you're working. There's only so much tennis, golf, and softball I can play before my knees break and my shoulder gets strained and my lower back just can't move anymore.

And there are only so many churches to visit in Europe before they all start looking the same. She used to have vacations from me, my wife did, because I was always away traveling for work once a month. Now she sees me in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening because she too doesn't work because she's a stay-at-home mom which is a full-time job.

And so hey, it's great that we have 3 bedrooms. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure we'd both have gone crazy from seeing each other so often. It was only after our son was born in early 2017 that I felt a renewed sense of purpose. Before my boy, I felt my purpose was to help educate as many readers as possible about personal finance in order to one day be free as well.

After my boy, my purpose has expanded to keeping Financial Samurai long enough to teach him about operating an online business out of fear he may have a tough time getting ahead. And I fear this because he's a minority, he's mixed, he might have some issues with his vision, who knows?

And you know, kids are cruel and life is really, really competitive due to the globalization of the world. So with Financial Samurai, I can show him the ropes, I can talk to him about how to speak more eloquently perhaps with enough practice on my part, how to write good copy, how to be convincing in your prose, and how to, I don't know, build a brand and drive traffic to your site.

I think these are all good skills that everybody should have and now I just have to think, "Well, I got to make it last for at least 10 years or 15 years until he tells me, 'Dad, I don't want to learn any of this. I want to be a guitar player,'" which would be pretty cool.

Hopefully he's pretty good at it. In addition, I now need to live long enough until he finds someone who loves him as much as I love my wife. I don't think I'd be able to die in peace if there was nobody to replace his mom or me. I would really, really hope that he finds someone, hey, maybe it's a high school sweetheart.

Then I'd only have to wait, hmm, maybe 13 to 17 more years until he finds someone, settles down and lives happily ever after. That would be awesome. So as a result of needing to live longer and living for him, I'm exercising more, I'm watching what I eat more carefully, and I'm meditating longer to keep my mind fresh.

So in conclusion, there's no doubt in my mind that early retirement is a worthwhile goal to pursue. I strongly suggest you guys start building passive income sooner rather than later. Having the freedom to do what you want cannot be overstated. Just know that your mind will play games with your spirit during the first years after leaving work.

And some of you, frankly, won't be able to take the early retirement lifestyle and will end up going back to work. Just know that with enough conditioning, you will eventually embrace your freedom. Nobody I know who retired from corporate life early has stayed retired. They've found their purpose, whether it's a different type of occupation, whether it's volunteering, whether it's doing something entrepreneurial, and in my case, writing and doing something entrepreneurial.

Once you find that purpose, you will take steps. You'll take steps to ensure you remain free forever. So good luck everyone on your financial independence journey. I promise you, I promise you, you will not regret sacrificing things today for the freedom, the freedom you will enjoy tomorrow.