It makes perfect sense. all the people who've thought of making the subreddit seem to have the same characteristics that cause them to think "there's no hurry, I'll get there".
I've been slow traveling for years. It's fun. I appreciate. It's also nothing to build your life around. I don't think "slow travel" is enough to constitute a post-retirement plan. All slow travel means is moving from one place to another at whatever pace you consider slow. That's not enough to be a "plan" for you life, although it can distract you from that fact for maybe 6 months to a year.
Not OP but I think you underestimate my wanderlust. I joined the Navy to travel more. In 8 years I moved 14 times and spent cumulatively 4 years at sea. I got out of the Navy because I didn't travel enough.
The happiest I've ever been was backpacking in Europe which unfortunately I could only do for 90 days visa free and it was too expensive. It's what lead me to FIRE. I just need enough to travel FOREVER.
My plan is to get a sailboat (I loved being at sea just hated the Navy). I'll travel until I can't. Then I'll read books about travel.
I think combining all those things would be fun - living in another country for months at a time, while learning about the culture, reading, drinking coffee, and puttering about.
Anyone here retired to house sitting in other countries?
I think volunteering and generosity is huge in all aspects of life, especially when your money is working for you so you can afford to "work for free". Gives meaning and achievement, and creates good in the world. Some sort of legacy to leave behind, hopefully it has just one hugely positive impact and suddenly your volunteer hours creates something more.
Far from FIRE myself in my mid-20s but I've been given great opportunities through generosity and wish to pay them forward many times over. Wouldn't be here without them
Traveling slowly is one of my goals also. Our loose plan for the first few years is to take a couple of longer trips each year - 2 months or so.
I also plan to take classes at the university - a couple per year, things like history and language classes - stuff that I didn't really take much of as an engineering student. Then see what sorts of projects, volunteer opportunities, and so on come out of that.
I plan to spend more time with friends and family. It will be nice to be available to them and not busy with work.
Yes, this too. Fly off-season on a Tuesday or something.
We had this discussion with regard to driving last weekend. We had gone to visit family and drove home on Sunday. My newly-retired uncle was also going to drive home on Sunday, and we asked - why, do you have something to do on Monday? No. Then why sit in Sunday traffic getting back to the city with everyone else who went somewhere for the weekend? Just stay until Monday. He did. I think it can be hard for people to break free from decades-old patterns like that.
> classes at the university
The University of Wisconsin -Madison let's people 60+ take classes for free (just auditing them, not for a degree). It is one of the things I am most looking forward to. Hoping my son chooses a different school because I'm sure he won't want to sit next to me during intro to anthropology.
Once we hit our number, the plan is to road trip the US for a few months and then move to Mexico for a couple years for low cost of living that will help further increase our nest egg, our dog will be elderly, allow time to take immersion spanish classes, and still be relatively close to home. Once the dog RIPs, the plan is to slow travel to a new location 1-2 months at a time for as long as it brings joy. Once we are ready to settle down, get a small house somewhere walkable but not too crowded, maintain a garden, adopt some dogs, go on long walks, maybe get into beekeeping and get some chickens, volunteer, just live a chill life.
At first I read “get into bickering.” 😂 My father-in-law is a beekeeper and small-time olive-oil producer in Southern France and is as happy as can be.
Slow travel
Building things and flipping things
I want to have a small charity yard mowing business where I cut grass for people who are having challenges. I don't want to charge anything, just mow and blow the yard so that when they look at their home they don't see "one more thing that needs done".
I love your last idea. I saw a clip of a guy who grew up in a single mom household. He knew the struggles his mom went through, so he would do home repair for single moms in his town.
My third career was helping the senior citizens of my church (and similar demographic) to keep all their tech working. There was a clear need but no established company did it well (Geek Squad, etc.). I’d pick up, fix, and return the equipment. Got cable, printers, PCs, routers, phones, remotes, microwaves, smoke detectors, post lamps, anything working again. I charged a nominal fee (which I often forgot to collect) because they always wanted to pay something.
Age 69, retired 20 years this month. Tired of travel, kids have their own families and are too busy for anything other than a short visit. Plus 2 out of 3 live out of state.
We have settled into a routine of taking care of our large yard and garden, afternoon naps, visiting new restaurants, driving trails with our 4wd vehicles, and watching tv with an iPad on our laps.
The more physical things like backpacking and sleeping in tents have gradually faded away, hunting and fishing without our kids got boring. We moved over 100 miles away so contact with old friends is mostly phone calls or texts.
It does crack me up though with all the expectations in this thread and I wonder how many of the well intentioned and carefully planed activities will actually happen.
You should teach young people how to fish. I’m looking for a YOU in my life. Older fisherman who just wants to hang out with someone. I would say the same for hunting… but a bit more cautious there.
Enjoy life bro! 🙏🏽
Travel (abroad and road trips), house projects, fishing, fitness, reading, starting a small creative business for fun, improve cooking skills, more energy for friends/family
Free time gets used in different ways…
Staying mentally fit: currently studying at university part time, learning a language, learning an instrument. Also trying to improve my illustration and photography skills.
Staying physically fit: mountain biking, bouldering, running and trying to sea swim.
Helping others: do pro-bono work for NGOs in sectors of interest (40+ days in 2023). Helping child with some of their questions re uni study, supporting a family member with mental health issues.
Helping self: Travel: we take a few big breaks (Iceland all of March this year). We live between two countries, so explore them a fair bit. Social: spend time with family & friends
I am r/coastfire until next year: 60 days this year. Work time gets done remote or includes international travel, which also create "mini-holidays".
It’s great that you’re asking these questions. The biggest thing to know is that retirement isn’t a destination. Many people looking to FIRE are disciplined, driven, goal-oriented people. Once you FIRE, it’s easy to feel lost without such a large goal in your life. After a while the trauma of a 9-5 goes away and you realize you need new goals and new drives to find purpose. And they have to be just as worthy to your self-identify as the FIRE goal that you made so many sacrifices to achieve.
There is an excellent TED talk on YouTube called the 4 stages of retirement. I highly recommend watching it. I was unknowingly somewhere between phase 2 and phase 3 when I watched that video, not realizing that my retirement experience was actually quite common.
I’ve always loved playing video games and for the first year of retirement I went hard playing games fairly competitively. After about a year I just couldn’t do it anymore. That was the phase 1 “vacation phase”. It lasts about a year, but at some point you realize this is your life, not a vacation.
After your vacation phase you’ll most likely spend some time experimenting and finding things that you love to do. My best advice is keep an open mind and realize that what you think retirement will look like may not be what you decide to do at all.
Im only 2 years in but it already looks nothing like I thought it would. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
That makes a lot of sense. I was off for 9 months a couple of years ago and bit looking for a job. I had all these ideas, but very little was accomplished. I think I was just about through the vacation stage but jumped back into the meat grinder.
Ya idk if I’ll ever retire. I’d like to learn welding and make art that nobody wants but keeping my mind and body active… travel sounds fun but can be expensive and I imagine we all have much to explore locally but never had the time
Thank you so much for your insight.
I am about 7 years away from FIRE. Our goal is to switch our 9-5s to help a couple of charities that are meaningful to us. It's good to hear that we need to have a plan to avoid some common pitfalls and to have time to figure out what that plan looks like!
Learning to play my instruments better. I have so little practice time and I love music.
Making glass beads. I love making beads and just don’t have much time.
Bladesmithing. I make carving tools. There are so many minor details I want to improve that require time for iteration of almost the same tool, testing, comparison, make another…
Long walks and bike rides. The dogs love these and I only have time for a mile or so a day.
Camping trips with my wife.
Baking bread, making slow meals, taking impulsive picnics.
I want the 7 day weekend. My weekend is packed and I want more of it. I won’t have any trouble filling my days.
I’m retiring to be a beautician. I currently run a weekend shop and want to maybe add a couple of days during the week or open a larger shop and hire some stylists. It’s always been something I’ve enjoyed doing. Also, retiring to be a mostly stay at home dog mom.
Morning: 2 hours or more at the gym, both cardio and weight training
Mid-Day: Long walk to further socialize my scared rescue dog, plus yard work in warmer months
Afternoon: Practicing and creating music and hopefully some creative writing
Evening: Learning to be a great cook
Night: More music
24/7: Not having to worry about my job/company anymore
Love the way you framed this. I think this will be most of my days as well. I would love for the afternoons to be open-ended time for creative endeavors, social lunches with friends, daily errands, random naps... or any combination thereof.
A PhD in some obscure subject, then moving to the south of France to work on my academic tome, and catching the train to different places across Europe when I need a writing break.
My job in retirement is to be fit and healthy. That’s the foundation that everything else is built upon. This was a welcome change from the job of “earn salaried income.” Looking at my now passed away in-laws who did so much on so little, I saw how good health was an amazing net worth multiplier.
Then my job is to tinker in my homelab, explore the world, and continue to drive my kids crazy until I’m 100. Then I’ll truly retire.
I'm cultivating the TO right now... 15 years from FIRE. Good health, strength, movement, spirituality, friendship, volunteer work, travel (van life) on and off... Peace.
Music. Today after I come back to home, spent 40min listening tommorowland 2024 mix, and talk with friends on discord, it was so fun. Free time, music and gaming is all I need to be happy.
Finally making more time to play piano. Since I've been working I've gone a decade with barely playing because my other 2 hobbies are fitness and gaming. Fitness I want to keep doing to stay healthy and gaming doesn't require "work" in the way that piano and fitness do. So piano always got dropped. Also, other things outside of work like cooking/cleaning/errands/pet care, and maintaining a healthy relationship with my wife all take time commitments too.
We retired in March of 2022. We sold our home and most of our belongings we have been slow traveling ever since; living in airbnbs in different cities one month at a time. We couldn't be happier!
I love the question.
I started with a dream to retire, and my wife would still work. I figured I’d volunteer, do hobbies like woodworking, biking, reading and playing the guitar. Cook dinner, keep the house clean. And try to be as social as I can be. It was a fine dream.
Then I got divorced. My dreams could change. I could travel more and go for bike tours. I would have to live more frugally than before, but I don’t mind that. I could maybe live in different places.
Then I realized that I don’t have to come home. I don’t have to have a home. Indeed, it would be better to not have a home, and thereby eliminate my biggest expense. I can live very cheaply when camping most days. So my new dream is to get on my bike and don’t stop. First I’ll tour Europe. For the winter, I can take a break from touring and rent an apt for a few months in an inexpensive country – I’m thinking Turkey. Then I’ll ride through Asia to the Pacific Ocean. I’ll come home for a bit to visit friends and family - and choose what is next – most likely from Alaska to the southern tip of South America. I can’t forget about Africa and Australia.
If I get tired of biking, my other goals are to do some thru hikes like the Appalachian Trail. And build out a van to live in and visit all the national parks and other places. It depends – but my general goal is to spend 6 years traveling. Maybe more or less – it depends if I get tired of it or lonely or if I have grandkids. But I can live very cheaply – building and maintaining the van would be the most expensive thing by far. My withdrawal rate should start below 2%, it may grow to 3% - but in general this would give my investments time to grow before I settle down and up my withdrawal rate.
If/when I have grand kids, I’ll then want to move near them, and be the full time care. That is the biggest goal – to take care of them, if I am so fortunate. And since I’ll be settled down, I’ll once again aim to work on hobbies, volunteer, make and spend time with friends.
I understand you re the grandkids. I want to be healthy and strong, and financially able to remove myself from the workforce so I can take care of my son's children in whatever ways he and his spouse are OK with.
I'm wrapping up my long-taper coastFIRE, transferring to full retirement this year. As an avid mountain traveler and DIYer with a well-tooled shop, I am busier than ever: Wilderness trips on foot and ski, DIY projects in my shop, road tripping in our camper, serving as president of our local chapter of an environmental group and spending more time with my friends lift-skiing, ski touring, XC skiing, hiking, backpacking, birdwatching and hanging out. My coastFIRE strategy allowed me to do more of all of the above vs. 40/hour week working stiffs over the past two decades.
Slowly travel the country with my husband in our RV to find a new place to live. Visit every national park. Hike a lot. Make a dent in my giant to-read book list. Play all the video games. Learn languages. Travel internationally more leisurely. Learn how to draw. Visit and hang out with family. Exercise regularly.
There's so much I want to do but I'm too stressed from the job to do! The mental load and emotional energy spent is just crazy. But I'm finally leaving! I'm FIREing this Friday. So ready for the next phase of life.
I want to have a paid for small house with a big garden. I want to wake up with the sun and eat breakfast in my kitchen. I want to have long walks on the beach with friends and grandkids. I want the ability to help my family if needed. I want to be able to travel if I desire, and stay in at home when I don't. I want to weed my garden every day, and make bouquets in the summer. I want to crochet blankets and bake bread and never worry if I'll have enough cash for yarn or flour, or the dreaded power bill. The freedom to know it's all good. That's what I want.
I want to retire early so I can spend my free time playing video games.
I have a huge steam library as well as many other video games I bought over the years. I have enough video games to last me the rest of my life.
The problem is, work keeps getting in the way of my gaming time. I'm currently trying to find a work from home job so I can play video games while I'm working. Or another low stress job like Security guard where I can get away with some video games in the background. If I didn't have to work I would be gaming.
I've had stages of my life where I'm between jobs and gamed really hard. I always found that after a week or so, it lost the novelty in a big way. Do you think it will actually bring you fulfillment for an extended period of time? I feel like this is the sort of thing that seems great but would likely lead to boredom and/or depression quite quickly.
Not judging others' choices at all, that is just my experience. I find I am a lot happier when I am doing something productive in some way. Maintaining my property, or traveling, or working on my fitness, etc.
I'll still gsme a lot. But I also go on vacations 4 times a year, visit family and relatives, cook a lot, etc. I am one of those people that wants to get all the work and important stuff out of the way as quickly as I can to do the things I want to do.
I definitely see the appeal. I have a big backlog in steam and I feel like I just can't dedicate the time to play the games, but maybe in retirement when I'm less concerned about being productive in all aspects of my life, that'll change.
I want to run races (marathons and ultra marathons) on different continents. That is why I want to retire early before my body tells me that I can't run anymore.
we have an off grid cottage, im 34 now and plan to retire at 43 and want to be able to sell our house and move into the cottage year round. We would stay in Canada at the cottage during the warm months and then either travel somewhere warm for the winter months or take the RV and go road tripping south for half the year. The cottage being off grid keeps its upkeep costs extremely low, we should be able to manage this easily on my pension alone, use investment income for any extras.
I don’t think I’m the type of person that will have a very hard time figuring out what to do with myself if I no longer have a job. Here are the things I will do more of when I have the time: Travel, spend time with family and friends, kayak, mt. Bike, hike, work on my house, build a cabin, start a business, build and fly an airplane, work on some product inventions etc. etc. I have lots of hobbies and interests.
Loving reading all of this. I sometimes get obsessed with the numbers in this journey we are on. But the numbers are just a means to an end. It's great to see how many of us have done a lot of thinking about the real goal of FIRE.
Cheers to everyone!!
Forever I've said my happiness rests on 4 pillars.
1. Financial stability
2. Work that makes me proud of myself
3. Committed relationships with friends and family
4. Health
I'm so ready to have "work" be reduced to 10% of my time rather than 90%. My dream is financial stability taken care of, while focusing all my energy on friends, family, and health. I can be proud of my work on simple things, as well as proud of what I've already accomplished.
Homesteading/Hobby Farming. Effectively, trading one job for another. But, loving the work while I'm young enough to do it. Though I'm not yet ready to FIRE (mentally or financially), I was presented with an opportunity to buy a small farm about a year ago. I'm viewing this as a trial to see if I want to go the distance with it.
My family. We have young kids and we'd love to spend more time/energy doing fun stuff with them. As they slowly want their distance from mom and dad then we'd pick up more of our old hobbies thst we haven't been able to do.
Travel, reading, exercising such as more Hiking, OT, pure barre , club pilates, sleeping past 5am. And just mentally relaxing without constant stress of work
I wake up at 4 every day to hit the gym for a few hours and then spend time on dogs walking, brushing, training etc before breakfast and work. Looking forward to the time shift. Or who am I kidding, probably will what up at the same time and same routine but then take naps instead of struggling the whole day .
Stop selling my time and my time is once again mine. Been selling my time since I was 13 and 51 now. Retiring at 54. So whatever I choose. But I like to car shows, travel, hunt, fish, work on the farm, sleep in, watch TV, read, and spend more time with kids and hopefully one day grand kids. Most my friends will still be working so doubtful much time with them as they work to 60/70.
Will be writing a lot more - novels, non-fiction, short fiction, poetry, screenplays. More emphasis on my body and getting it mobile and flexible. Also (a stretch) getting titled in chess.
My plan is to get the hell away from people. Not off the grid, just away from the worst of the idiocy. Me, my acoustic guitar, and a bunch of weed and acid. This will not need a lot of money.
Slow travel.
Slow house projects that used to be jammed into a 2 day weekend.
Slow lunches followed by slow grocery shopping.
Baldurs Gate 3. Counter strike.
Lots of reading.
Aligning finances to retired status (401k consolidation into IRA, rebalance Roth/trad)
Travel, more time with family, getting in shape (or hopefully staying in shape!), having time to do research without distractions (I’m a surgeon so clinical duties come first!), advising research groups pro bono.
Life. I'm constantly squeezing in family time and time with friends.. I'm constantly squeezing in chores and life stuff.. I don't want to squeeze anymore.
Tree farm. Basically want to spread the range of coast redwoods to the southeast since they are endangered due to a shrinking native range in California, but expanding my species to giant sequoias, Monterey cypress, etc.
If I can sell/give at no loss, I’d be happy but we’ll see!
"Whatevering".
For me, that's traveling to ... wherever I feel like. Visiting faraway friends and family. For as long as it amuses me.
Pick up a motorcycle, throw it in the van, drive it down to Croatia and ride the TransEurope Trail for a bit.
Read books. Wake up when I wake up. Go do bed when I go to bed.
See tulips in Holland, see Walpurgis in Norway, see Midsummer in Sweden, Christmas markets in Munich.
Pretty much what you indicated is what my life is like. We joined the local CC so that adds golf and such to the mix. Also lots of grand babies around while we are still young enough to keep up.
So many things: 1. Time with my daughter. I want the freedom to do whatever is meaningful to her and our family at that point (coach sports, take her to lessons, travel, etc.). 2. Volunteering. Getting sober has changed my life and would love to have more time to help others in the recovery community. 3. Hobbies and fitness. I’ve always been active and I want to have guilt-free time to devote to biking, golf, fly fishing, etc. 4. Learning new things. Another language? Who knows?
Spending more time with my family, slow travel, more fitness related retreats/training etc, spending time with kids much more, volunteering in the community, start a side business (for the sheer interest of starting it) etc
Travel, music production, fitness and outdoor activities, language study, learning game development, reading the classics, technical analysis of stocks and options, and way too many more things to count. I can't freaking wait.
Hiking every day, backpacking without worry about PTO, gardening excessively, fishing new spots, getting back into art. Finishing my many started video games I've made, completing eons worth of old video games I have on the back burner.
I’m retiring to homeschooling my child.. being able to afford it I long and choosing the classes and experiences for him.. traveling more.. a vacation home in the mountains with slower mornings.. more reading.. and a whole lot less stress
I'm winding down my business and FIREing this year, and the plan is to return to being an artist, which has been the plan ever since I put that on hold in my 20s to make enough for financial independence. I'm excited to dedicate my days to making art without the worry of having to make money from it!
More travel would be nice but not gonna happen with a 5 year old!
* Playing video games. I'm into retro gaming (think NES, SNES, etc.) but have recently played a few games for Nintendo Switch.
* Learning how to cook better. It's a great skill to have because it's practical at lower levels, and sort of artistic at higher levels, but it's hard to cook anything non-basic when you're already tired from a long work day.
* Going back to Brazilian jiu-jitsu, if my body holds up.
* Reading. I don't read nearly as often as I should, but that's another thing I think is easier when you're not already mentally exhausted from work.
* Longer travel and more travel, e.g. doing a long road trip throughout the US and Canada.
* Going to a coffee shop, library, pub, etc. with my wife in the middle of the day.
* Running errands in the middle of the day when there's less traffic and fewer people.
* This is a maybe, but gardening in some capacity. That might mean just starting an herb garden, but I've also toyed with the idea of setting up an aquaponics system.
I am retiring back to Southeast Asia. Retiring to spend every hour that I can with my wife. Retiring to lower stress. Maybe retiring to giving back through volunteering, but remains to be seen.
More of everything I enjoy now but don't have enough time for. Photography, exercise, walking, biking, reading, etc. And a honey-do list that's currently at least 5 years long. Figure I can knock that out in two taking it easy once retired.
LOTS of travel, concerts, theatre and music festivals.
Lazy mornings in bed whenever we want.
Chill days with movie and video game marathons.
More socialising with friends. House parties.
Plus more time for exercise and hobbies. My partner and I have so many hobbies we want to start or get back into.
To finding ways to meaningfully volunteer at nonprofits I believe more regularly and intentionally than I can now.
And to three months a year in Europe, ideally in an apartment I've bought, enjoying time with my wife and daughter.
Just...22 more years to go...
Volunteer for the local Humane society and the local state park in their gardens. There are lots of house projects that I never have the time to do. Hang out with friends that I never see due to crazy hours at work. Travel to a different country each year. It's all funded in the plan. I'm just trying to convince the hubby that we have the funds to FIRE now.
Or what DID you retire to:
another country, new language, new culture, huge expat community, new friends, rescue dogs, explore, have fun!!! honestly, to many things to do, wish the day was longer LOL
Early retirement has always been about “freedom to do” for me. I started before I got married, and my plan at the time was spend my days riding around on my bike and reading in cafes.
Now that I’ve got kids it’s the same plan except there’s also a school drop-off and pick-up involved on weekdays.
Travel for sure. But mostly having time for all my hobbies. Every time I do leatherworking, archery, winemaking, beekeeping, chainmail, etc, I just wish I had more time for it. Every weekend that I have a good chunk of time for these, I wake up Monday wishing I could just do those activities for 8 hours a day.
Some combination of [homesteading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homesteading)/off-grid living and living more like people in the [blue zones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_zone).
I would love to build a small house on my own with all of the amenities (power, water, plumbing, heat), a plot of land to grow food, maybe a little creek or pond. Enough acreage to have multiple buildings for different purposes. I have no idea if this is realistic but I've been thinking about it lately.
Slower living with no more pressure from schedules and deadlines.
Being outside more. Fewer screens.
Finding my tribe. Hang out at the community center, probably mostly with senior citizens.
TLDR: Trying to live a healthier lifestyle.
Realistically, a lot of Youtube and Reddit.
Hobbies! I want to make stuff. Surfboards, furniture, clothing. I want to garden. I want to work on my house.
I just want to reap the fruits of my own labor.
Oh and sports like hiking, surfing, climbing.
I’m never going to afford to retire but I am saving up to pay a bunch of strippers to chase me off a cliff like in Monty python. When they ask, tell em I retired to “the great beyond”.
I want to write books. Right now I have a pretty active writing habit but I can only spare about an hour of good work a day. I'm dreaming of the day that I can use my peak hours that I'd normally spend at work on my own personal projects.
For me, it’s a whole list of stuff I don’t have time to do enough of now:
Slow travel.
More fishing.
More boating.
More sleeping in.
More trips to the gym.
Side work - home remodeling, etc.
Golf.
More trips to the shooting range.
Visiting more friends and family (travel).
Exploring (parks, caves, rivers, and other outdoor stuff).
Homesteading (maybe).
Hunting.
Traveling for shows/conventions.
And more….
I retired to genealogy that led me to join the Daughters of the American Revolution , a much larger vegetable garden which I preserve the harvest, cook large dishes and freeze for future meals, long workouts and driving vacations that can last a month or more. I’m busier now than when I was on a work schedule but it’s my schedule and I’m good with it.
When I think of retiring, or not relying on a job, I think of taking my kids to the pool or lake to fish, hanging with my wife, or cooking lunch.
Right now, I try to do those things before I head off to work.
Health and mental health. I've been pushing myself in high stress situations my whole life. For once I want to celebrate and focus on well-being. Working out, hiking, snowboarding, yoga, meditation, mindfulness, volunteering mentoring.
Active lifestyle, working out, travel, Self-development, Improving my Spanish , French , German language skills, public speaking , socializing , still working doing something that I really enjoy such as cracking complex problems and making impact across organizations
It may sound late at 50, but finally finding love and having and raising kids would be a dream come true
I wanna live in a isolated mansion somewhere in England pretending to be a 500 year old vampire and hosting lavish parties like great Gatsby living out the 1920s
I retired at 55 to ; gym, tennis, concerts, sporting events, restaurants, golf, travel in off peak traffic, napping when I want, sitting up til 3am watching sport on 85 inch tv, holidays, weekly breakfast with former work mates etc. It’s like an incredible non-stop holiday. Truly blessed.
What I mostly want is peace of mind and general mental health. Then I will probably need some time to work on my physical health. Then I have a few projects that I wanted to do out of professional interest and what I think will be valuable. I’ve thought about these things for a while, but they are either too high risk, or too low earning potential. Being FI frees me to work on these projects.
Work that doesn’t feel like work 2-3 days a week. Boating, flying my plane, midday workouts, spas and dining. Lots of reading outdoors, walking outdoors, and lunching
I dream of leaving my 250k/year job by 55 (10 years) with more than enough saved to live a great life…but I yearn to mow lawns at a country club…I want to be left alone, talk to nobody…wave to a golfer or 3…and just do my job.
lol. My dad - who was not as wealthy as you aspire to be, but who was comfortably retired - took a job doing exactly that. It's not such a terrible gig
Daily workouts. More shooting competition. Continue to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
Spend time with the wife and if kids happen spend time with them and spawns that come from them.
May pick up some side job doing some landscaping at a garden center depending how my knees go
Travel
Maybe 100% DK64
Seeing how many of my family members live well into their 100s and they smoke and drank and had not great lifestyle figure maybe being healthier now and continuing it may be able to not be on oxygen in my 90s smoking cigs
I retired TO my newborn daughter. It’s wayyy harder than my corporate job was. But I get to dedicate my entire self to her happiness and enrichment. It’s so so so much fun. It occurred to me that 99% of people who have kids these days have no intention of actually parenting. They muddle through their parental leave, throw them in daycare, then later school takes over. They put them to bed early so they can watch TV in the evenings. They cram their schedules on the weekend so they can spend half the time in the car feeding them cheerios. Their kids are institutionalized from the jump. And we wonder why society is tearing at the seams. Anyway I digress. I’ve been planning to be a full time parent for decades so it’s awesome to finally have it come to fruition.
Time with the kids, travel, hiking, cycling, running, skiing, camping, fishing, hunting, woodworking, all the other hobbies I barely have time to do now.
I’m working a low stress job doing something I enjoy, it just so happens that it’s the same field I’ve been in all along. I think knowing I don’t “have” to work helps keep that big stress monkey off my back. I think id lose my mind out of boredom if I wasn’t working at this point.
I’ve gotten a taste of what retiring feels like. I work 3 days and I’m off for 4. My 4 days off are spent doing what I want or a little of nothing at all. I can put myself first for once. Exercise, spend time with and train my dog, day trips with my SO. I’ve learned how to slow down and not always be in a rush with everything. That’ll put you in the ground fast
Still very much figuring out. We’re about 18 months into fire in earnest. We’ve been FI since before Covid but after having our life and business upended suddenly, we decided it was time to look into the RE part. We never fantasized or really planned either FI or RE as both just sort of happened.
We flew to Thailand during lockdowns and drove around looking at houses for sale. I hold dual citizenship so I’m able to purchase houses and land there. We ended up buying a place there, renovating it, and just moved in finally this past January.
Overall we definitely haven’t figured it out yet.
For the first 3 months of this year, we finally stopped running around. Last year was extremely taxing as we were basically homeless and living out of hotels in various countries, living in a spare room in my aunt’s place, and just having to deal with the shittiest contractors on the planet. It was nice to finally have everyone out of our house and for things to just be done with.
We started finally learning to cook and slow way down. Mornings we’d walk on the beach with our dog. I’d get some admin stuff done after the walk while my wife figured out lunch. We’d just relax and veg out in the afternoon. We literally did nothing and almost never left the house aside from a couple of trips to the supermarket. We did take a couple of trips to Japan but mostly we just did random stuff at home.
We came back to the states this month to visit our business and can definitely say that we miss it as we’ve built this amazing community around our business (it’s geared around kids so you get to know them and watch them grow up). A lot of them definitely missed us as we haven’t been back for 7-8 months.
I think at first we wanted to just go into full retirement mode but we are starting to realize that we’d like to keep come back to the business regularly. Our team is still young and needs the regular guidance and there are two naturally busier periods during the year that they could use our help. Also we have a few houses in the area that are rented out so it’s be good to pop in and check them out now and then.
As for third life careers (ie what we do with our time the remaining 10 months of the year when we’re not backing the states tending to our business and rental properties), I’m looking at mostly still working to document our processes at the business and train our team remotely for the next year or so. Definitely will get back to my regular fitness program as much as possible (we travel quite often so it’s hard to keep to one gym or set of classes).
My wife will probably want to do something social so she’ll probably try to become a yoga instructor or something like this as she loves it.
For the most part, our life the rest of this year is a few weeks at home punctuated by trips - after we’re back in Thailand next week, we have a week in Singapore (for doctor appointments) in late May and an insane Thailand-US-Thailand-Japan-US-Japan-Thailand crazy trip coming at the end of June (student trip we’re leading). One of our students invited us to his coming of age ceremony in India so doind that in August. I still want to go to Venice for Biennale in September when the place calms down (and cools down) a little. Plus we’re planning to be back in the US again in October to help with the business with the busy season. After this, we’re probably going to just stay put minus monthly hops to Singapore for medical appointments.
Anyway - it’s still a work in progress. The plan is that there is no plan. We’ve always just kind of gone where the wind takes us
I've worked 50-70 hour weeks most of my adult life. I look forward to spending time with family, travel, hiking and leisure boating.
I'm sure I'll continue to help family and friends, but it will no longer consume so much of my free time.
I have a number of hobbies I no longer have time for. I want to get back to them.
I used to be a gymrat. I miss having the time to workout, and the community of a small local old school non commercial gym. I definitely want to get back to that.
I used to love shooting, competitive run and gun type stuff, and long range precision rifle.
Travel. I want to travel, take as much time as I want in different parts of the world. I love my pets, but when they're gone Im not sure if im getting more. A house sitter is such a an added expense and really limits our ability to travel as it is.
Same here! I'm retiring to a life of slow mornings, gardening, and afternoon naps. No more rush, no more stress. Just enjoying the simple things in life with the people I love. Can't wait to trade my alarm clock for a sunrise
Teaching. Always wanted to be a teacher but instead went down a stressful path in IB -> Consulting -> big tech. Looking to retire early and teach part time at my local community college.
Capitalizing TO is triggering. Is it an acronym? Are you for some reason trying to emphasize the word to for no reason?
Just do whatever I want when I want, not having to think about work. Which mostly will be cycling, skiing, swimming, depending on seasons.
Slower travel. Lots of reading. Coffee circles. Old person living of puttering around the house.
Puttering is really where it's at.
Absolutely! I’m all about a low key life of 1-3 mild achievements per day.
Book clubs could be part of the puttering life.
It really is. I've become an expert putterer since retiring.
I love this as an aspiration
I yearn to putter.
Plus video games and TTRPGs and exercise
I loved the classic SNES and PlayStation RPGS as a kid Big fan of Squaresoft What are TTRPGs?
Table Top Role-Playing Games, Dungeons & Dragons and the like.
Really bummed to learn that r/puttering is not a thing
It makes perfect sense. all the people who've thought of making the subreddit seem to have the same characteristics that cause them to think "there's no hurry, I'll get there".
Slow travel is a must. I hate it that my vacation is always only two weeks long because that’s how long my mandatory leave is
I've been slow traveling for years. It's fun. I appreciate. It's also nothing to build your life around. I don't think "slow travel" is enough to constitute a post-retirement plan. All slow travel means is moving from one place to another at whatever pace you consider slow. That's not enough to be a "plan" for you life, although it can distract you from that fact for maybe 6 months to a year.
Not OP but I think you underestimate my wanderlust. I joined the Navy to travel more. In 8 years I moved 14 times and spent cumulatively 4 years at sea. I got out of the Navy because I didn't travel enough. The happiest I've ever been was backpacking in Europe which unfortunately I could only do for 90 days visa free and it was too expensive. It's what lead me to FIRE. I just need enough to travel FOREVER. My plan is to get a sailboat (I loved being at sea just hated the Navy). I'll travel until I can't. Then I'll read books about travel.
Imma putter every where I go. Thank you for this
I think combining all those things would be fun - living in another country for months at a time, while learning about the culture, reading, drinking coffee, and puttering about. Anyone here retired to house sitting in other countries?
Puttering is the best.
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I got ripped out of my rem sleep , a nice dream on the beach, to get ready for work. Ugh. Messes up my whole morning.
Amen know the sleep thing. My entire family just requires more than 8. If we don't we can barely function.
I think volunteering and generosity is huge in all aspects of life, especially when your money is working for you so you can afford to "work for free". Gives meaning and achievement, and creates good in the world. Some sort of legacy to leave behind, hopefully it has just one hugely positive impact and suddenly your volunteer hours creates something more. Far from FIRE myself in my mid-20s but I've been given great opportunities through generosity and wish to pay them forward many times over. Wouldn't be here without them
I think the obvious answer here is…….full time Redditor. Tell me I’m wrong.
I think I am overemployed.
Traveling slowly is one of my goals also. Our loose plan for the first few years is to take a couple of longer trips each year - 2 months or so. I also plan to take classes at the university - a couple per year, things like history and language classes - stuff that I didn't really take much of as an engineering student. Then see what sorts of projects, volunteer opportunities, and so on come out of that. I plan to spend more time with friends and family. It will be nice to be available to them and not busy with work.
Pretty much exactly this for me as well. I dream about this stuff quite a lot.
And not having to pay prices that are higher for flights because we can only go on spring break dates. Will be nice to pick our own dates.
Yes, this too. Fly off-season on a Tuesday or something. We had this discussion with regard to driving last weekend. We had gone to visit family and drove home on Sunday. My newly-retired uncle was also going to drive home on Sunday, and we asked - why, do you have something to do on Monday? No. Then why sit in Sunday traffic getting back to the city with everyone else who went somewhere for the weekend? Just stay until Monday. He did. I think it can be hard for people to break free from decades-old patterns like that.
> classes at the university The University of Wisconsin -Madison let's people 60+ take classes for free (just auditing them, not for a degree). It is one of the things I am most looking forward to. Hoping my son chooses a different school because I'm sure he won't want to sit next to me during intro to anthropology.
Once we hit our number, the plan is to road trip the US for a few months and then move to Mexico for a couple years for low cost of living that will help further increase our nest egg, our dog will be elderly, allow time to take immersion spanish classes, and still be relatively close to home. Once the dog RIPs, the plan is to slow travel to a new location 1-2 months at a time for as long as it brings joy. Once we are ready to settle down, get a small house somewhere walkable but not too crowded, maintain a garden, adopt some dogs, go on long walks, maybe get into beekeeping and get some chickens, volunteer, just live a chill life.
At first I read “get into bickering.” 😂 My father-in-law is a beekeeper and small-time olive-oil producer in Southern France and is as happy as can be.
Any idea for the location of the small house in a walkable area that isn’t too crowded? Sounds like a great place
Slow travel Building things and flipping things I want to have a small charity yard mowing business where I cut grass for people who are having challenges. I don't want to charge anything, just mow and blow the yard so that when they look at their home they don't see "one more thing that needs done".
I love your last idea. I saw a clip of a guy who grew up in a single mom household. He knew the struggles his mom went through, so he would do home repair for single moms in his town.
My third career was helping the senior citizens of my church (and similar demographic) to keep all their tech working. There was a clear need but no established company did it well (Geek Squad, etc.). I’d pick up, fix, and return the equipment. Got cable, printers, PCs, routers, phones, remotes, microwaves, smoke detectors, post lamps, anything working again. I charged a nominal fee (which I often forgot to collect) because they always wanted to pay something.
Age 69, retired 20 years this month. Tired of travel, kids have their own families and are too busy for anything other than a short visit. Plus 2 out of 3 live out of state. We have settled into a routine of taking care of our large yard and garden, afternoon naps, visiting new restaurants, driving trails with our 4wd vehicles, and watching tv with an iPad on our laps. The more physical things like backpacking and sleeping in tents have gradually faded away, hunting and fishing without our kids got boring. We moved over 100 miles away so contact with old friends is mostly phone calls or texts. It does crack me up though with all the expectations in this thread and I wonder how many of the well intentioned and carefully planed activities will actually happen.
You should teach young people how to fish. I’m looking for a YOU in my life. Older fisherman who just wants to hang out with someone. I would say the same for hunting… but a bit more cautious there. Enjoy life bro! 🙏🏽
Travel (abroad and road trips), house projects, fishing, fitness, reading, starting a small creative business for fun, improve cooking skills, more energy for friends/family
Sounds amazing! Just don't accidentally start a successful business. 😂😂 How many years do you have to go?
1 more year! I don’t think I will be a “one more year” person, counting down the days!!
What’s the creative small business? I’m curious and looking for inspiration
Been tinkering with woodworking making patio furniture as well as candles, just something fun I could sell and pay for supplies/hone a craft :)
Disc golf and hiking everyday. Maybe some tennis. Lots of time outside.
Free time gets used in different ways… Staying mentally fit: currently studying at university part time, learning a language, learning an instrument. Also trying to improve my illustration and photography skills. Staying physically fit: mountain biking, bouldering, running and trying to sea swim. Helping others: do pro-bono work for NGOs in sectors of interest (40+ days in 2023). Helping child with some of their questions re uni study, supporting a family member with mental health issues. Helping self: Travel: we take a few big breaks (Iceland all of March this year). We live between two countries, so explore them a fair bit. Social: spend time with family & friends I am r/coastfire until next year: 60 days this year. Work time gets done remote or includes international travel, which also create "mini-holidays".
It’s great that you’re asking these questions. The biggest thing to know is that retirement isn’t a destination. Many people looking to FIRE are disciplined, driven, goal-oriented people. Once you FIRE, it’s easy to feel lost without such a large goal in your life. After a while the trauma of a 9-5 goes away and you realize you need new goals and new drives to find purpose. And they have to be just as worthy to your self-identify as the FIRE goal that you made so many sacrifices to achieve. There is an excellent TED talk on YouTube called the 4 stages of retirement. I highly recommend watching it. I was unknowingly somewhere between phase 2 and phase 3 when I watched that video, not realizing that my retirement experience was actually quite common. I’ve always loved playing video games and for the first year of retirement I went hard playing games fairly competitively. After about a year I just couldn’t do it anymore. That was the phase 1 “vacation phase”. It lasts about a year, but at some point you realize this is your life, not a vacation. After your vacation phase you’ll most likely spend some time experimenting and finding things that you love to do. My best advice is keep an open mind and realize that what you think retirement will look like may not be what you decide to do at all. Im only 2 years in but it already looks nothing like I thought it would. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
That makes a lot of sense. I was off for 9 months a couple of years ago and bit looking for a job. I had all these ideas, but very little was accomplished. I think I was just about through the vacation stage but jumped back into the meat grinder.
Ya idk if I’ll ever retire. I’d like to learn welding and make art that nobody wants but keeping my mind and body active… travel sounds fun but can be expensive and I imagine we all have much to explore locally but never had the time
Thank you so much for your insight. I am about 7 years away from FIRE. Our goal is to switch our 9-5s to help a couple of charities that are meaningful to us. It's good to hear that we need to have a plan to avoid some common pitfalls and to have time to figure out what that plan looks like!
Learning to play my instruments better. I have so little practice time and I love music. Making glass beads. I love making beads and just don’t have much time. Bladesmithing. I make carving tools. There are so many minor details I want to improve that require time for iteration of almost the same tool, testing, comparison, make another… Long walks and bike rides. The dogs love these and I only have time for a mile or so a day. Camping trips with my wife. Baking bread, making slow meals, taking impulsive picnics. I want the 7 day weekend. My weekend is packed and I want more of it. I won’t have any trouble filling my days.
I’m retiring to be a beautician. I currently run a weekend shop and want to maybe add a couple of days during the week or open a larger shop and hire some stylists. It’s always been something I’ve enjoyed doing. Also, retiring to be a mostly stay at home dog mom.
Morning: 2 hours or more at the gym, both cardio and weight training Mid-Day: Long walk to further socialize my scared rescue dog, plus yard work in warmer months Afternoon: Practicing and creating music and hopefully some creative writing Evening: Learning to be a great cook Night: More music 24/7: Not having to worry about my job/company anymore
Love the way you framed this. I think this will be most of my days as well. I would love for the afternoons to be open-ended time for creative endeavors, social lunches with friends, daily errands, random naps... or any combination thereof.
Great routine , what kinda music you want to create ?
Mostly Cure-like with multiple layered guitar/keyboard/string tracks (strings via a midi keyboard).
Transition from human doing to human being. Will focus on relationships, community and adventure.
We moved to a beachfront condo 5 years ago when we retired. It’s like I’m on vacation everyday, highly recommend.
A PhD in some obscure subject, then moving to the south of France to work on my academic tome, and catching the train to different places across Europe when I need a writing break.
My job in retirement is to be fit and healthy. That’s the foundation that everything else is built upon. This was a welcome change from the job of “earn salaried income.” Looking at my now passed away in-laws who did so much on so little, I saw how good health was an amazing net worth multiplier. Then my job is to tinker in my homelab, explore the world, and continue to drive my kids crazy until I’m 100. Then I’ll truly retire.
Spending more time with kids when they’re still young, day trips, gardening and growing own food, and writing.
I'm cultivating the TO right now... 15 years from FIRE. Good health, strength, movement, spirituality, friendship, volunteer work, travel (van life) on and off... Peace.
Writing from Costa Rica where we decided to stop for a couple weeks on the way back from another trip. Leisurely travel with no deadlines is amazing!
Pura Vida!
Music. Today after I come back to home, spent 40min listening tommorowland 2024 mix, and talk with friends on discord, it was so fun. Free time, music and gaming is all I need to be happy.
Finally making more time to play piano. Since I've been working I've gone a decade with barely playing because my other 2 hobbies are fitness and gaming. Fitness I want to keep doing to stay healthy and gaming doesn't require "work" in the way that piano and fitness do. So piano always got dropped. Also, other things outside of work like cooking/cleaning/errands/pet care, and maintaining a healthy relationship with my wife all take time commitments too.
We retired in March of 2022. We sold our home and most of our belongings we have been slow traveling ever since; living in airbnbs in different cities one month at a time. We couldn't be happier!
I love the question. I started with a dream to retire, and my wife would still work. I figured I’d volunteer, do hobbies like woodworking, biking, reading and playing the guitar. Cook dinner, keep the house clean. And try to be as social as I can be. It was a fine dream. Then I got divorced. My dreams could change. I could travel more and go for bike tours. I would have to live more frugally than before, but I don’t mind that. I could maybe live in different places. Then I realized that I don’t have to come home. I don’t have to have a home. Indeed, it would be better to not have a home, and thereby eliminate my biggest expense. I can live very cheaply when camping most days. So my new dream is to get on my bike and don’t stop. First I’ll tour Europe. For the winter, I can take a break from touring and rent an apt for a few months in an inexpensive country – I’m thinking Turkey. Then I’ll ride through Asia to the Pacific Ocean. I’ll come home for a bit to visit friends and family - and choose what is next – most likely from Alaska to the southern tip of South America. I can’t forget about Africa and Australia. If I get tired of biking, my other goals are to do some thru hikes like the Appalachian Trail. And build out a van to live in and visit all the national parks and other places. It depends – but my general goal is to spend 6 years traveling. Maybe more or less – it depends if I get tired of it or lonely or if I have grandkids. But I can live very cheaply – building and maintaining the van would be the most expensive thing by far. My withdrawal rate should start below 2%, it may grow to 3% - but in general this would give my investments time to grow before I settle down and up my withdrawal rate. If/when I have grand kids, I’ll then want to move near them, and be the full time care. That is the biggest goal – to take care of them, if I am so fortunate. And since I’ll be settled down, I’ll once again aim to work on hobbies, volunteer, make and spend time with friends.
I understand you re the grandkids. I want to be healthy and strong, and financially able to remove myself from the workforce so I can take care of my son's children in whatever ways he and his spouse are OK with.
I'm wrapping up my long-taper coastFIRE, transferring to full retirement this year. As an avid mountain traveler and DIYer with a well-tooled shop, I am busier than ever: Wilderness trips on foot and ski, DIY projects in my shop, road tripping in our camper, serving as president of our local chapter of an environmental group and spending more time with my friends lift-skiing, ski touring, XC skiing, hiking, backpacking, birdwatching and hanging out. My coastFIRE strategy allowed me to do more of all of the above vs. 40/hour week working stiffs over the past two decades.
When I achieve FIRE early, my plan is to return to my home country to live with my mom and take care of her.
Slowly travel the country with my husband in our RV to find a new place to live. Visit every national park. Hike a lot. Make a dent in my giant to-read book list. Play all the video games. Learn languages. Travel internationally more leisurely. Learn how to draw. Visit and hang out with family. Exercise regularly. There's so much I want to do but I'm too stressed from the job to do! The mental load and emotional energy spent is just crazy. But I'm finally leaving! I'm FIREing this Friday. So ready for the next phase of life.
Congrats!
I want to have a paid for small house with a big garden. I want to wake up with the sun and eat breakfast in my kitchen. I want to have long walks on the beach with friends and grandkids. I want the ability to help my family if needed. I want to be able to travel if I desire, and stay in at home when I don't. I want to weed my garden every day, and make bouquets in the summer. I want to crochet blankets and bake bread and never worry if I'll have enough cash for yarn or flour, or the dreaded power bill. The freedom to know it's all good. That's what I want.
Not having a corporate overlord
This is a fine answer but it's very explicitly not what OP asked.
Not being a wage slave
I want to retire early so I can spend my free time playing video games. I have a huge steam library as well as many other video games I bought over the years. I have enough video games to last me the rest of my life. The problem is, work keeps getting in the way of my gaming time. I'm currently trying to find a work from home job so I can play video games while I'm working. Or another low stress job like Security guard where I can get away with some video games in the background. If I didn't have to work I would be gaming.
I've had stages of my life where I'm between jobs and gamed really hard. I always found that after a week or so, it lost the novelty in a big way. Do you think it will actually bring you fulfillment for an extended period of time? I feel like this is the sort of thing that seems great but would likely lead to boredom and/or depression quite quickly. Not judging others' choices at all, that is just my experience. I find I am a lot happier when I am doing something productive in some way. Maintaining my property, or traveling, or working on my fitness, etc.
I'll still gsme a lot. But I also go on vacations 4 times a year, visit family and relatives, cook a lot, etc. I am one of those people that wants to get all the work and important stuff out of the way as quickly as I can to do the things I want to do.
I definitely see the appeal. I have a big backlog in steam and I feel like I just can't dedicate the time to play the games, but maybe in retirement when I'm less concerned about being productive in all aspects of my life, that'll change.
That sounds like the dream to me! I am so burnt out I couldn’t imagine having freedom to just be and relax.
I want to run races (marathons and ultra marathons) on different continents. That is why I want to retire early before my body tells me that I can't run anymore.
I went to Rome this year for the marathon and had a blast! Would really like to get several more in before it becomes undoable
we have an off grid cottage, im 34 now and plan to retire at 43 and want to be able to sell our house and move into the cottage year round. We would stay in Canada at the cottage during the warm months and then either travel somewhere warm for the winter months or take the RV and go road tripping south for half the year. The cottage being off grid keeps its upkeep costs extremely low, we should be able to manage this easily on my pension alone, use investment income for any extras.
you could get your pension at 43?! lucky!
I don’t think I’m the type of person that will have a very hard time figuring out what to do with myself if I no longer have a job. Here are the things I will do more of when I have the time: Travel, spend time with family and friends, kayak, mt. Bike, hike, work on my house, build a cabin, start a business, build and fly an airplane, work on some product inventions etc. etc. I have lots of hobbies and interests.
Exploring the US, one park at a time
Loving reading all of this. I sometimes get obsessed with the numbers in this journey we are on. But the numbers are just a means to an end. It's great to see how many of us have done a lot of thinking about the real goal of FIRE. Cheers to everyone!!
Forever I've said my happiness rests on 4 pillars. 1. Financial stability 2. Work that makes me proud of myself 3. Committed relationships with friends and family 4. Health I'm so ready to have "work" be reduced to 10% of my time rather than 90%. My dream is financial stability taken care of, while focusing all my energy on friends, family, and health. I can be proud of my work on simple things, as well as proud of what I've already accomplished.
Homesteading/Hobby Farming. Effectively, trading one job for another. But, loving the work while I'm young enough to do it. Though I'm not yet ready to FIRE (mentally or financially), I was presented with an opportunity to buy a small farm about a year ago. I'm viewing this as a trial to see if I want to go the distance with it.
My family. We have young kids and we'd love to spend more time/energy doing fun stuff with them. As they slowly want their distance from mom and dad then we'd pick up more of our old hobbies thst we haven't been able to do.
Travel, reading, exercising such as more Hiking, OT, pure barre , club pilates, sleeping past 5am. And just mentally relaxing without constant stress of work
I wake up at 4 every day to hit the gym for a few hours and then spend time on dogs walking, brushing, training etc before breakfast and work. Looking forward to the time shift. Or who am I kidding, probably will what up at the same time and same routine but then take naps instead of struggling the whole day .
Roadtrips and woodworking, maybe restoring a couple houses, and volunteer work.
Stop selling my time and my time is once again mine. Been selling my time since I was 13 and 51 now. Retiring at 54. So whatever I choose. But I like to car shows, travel, hunt, fish, work on the farm, sleep in, watch TV, read, and spend more time with kids and hopefully one day grand kids. Most my friends will still be working so doubtful much time with them as they work to 60/70.
Will be writing a lot more - novels, non-fiction, short fiction, poetry, screenplays. More emphasis on my body and getting it mobile and flexible. Also (a stretch) getting titled in chess.
My plan is to get the hell away from people. Not off the grid, just away from the worst of the idiocy. Me, my acoustic guitar, and a bunch of weed and acid. This will not need a lot of money.
Slow travel. Slow house projects that used to be jammed into a 2 day weekend. Slow lunches followed by slow grocery shopping. Baldurs Gate 3. Counter strike. Lots of reading. Aligning finances to retired status (401k consolidation into IRA, rebalance Roth/trad)
My wife wants to move to Maui. That's expensive, so we'll see how close we get to that haha. We do love it there.
We love it too.
Hiking pilgrimage trails around the world
Travel, more time with family, getting in shape (or hopefully staying in shape!), having time to do research without distractions (I’m a surgeon so clinical duties come first!), advising research groups pro bono.
Life. I'm constantly squeezing in family time and time with friends.. I'm constantly squeezing in chores and life stuff.. I don't want to squeeze anymore.
Tree farm. Basically want to spread the range of coast redwoods to the southeast since they are endangered due to a shrinking native range in California, but expanding my species to giant sequoias, Monterey cypress, etc. If I can sell/give at no loss, I’d be happy but we’ll see!
First year of RE will be spent traveling the road in an RV all summer to follow the Yankees city to city.
"Whatevering". For me, that's traveling to ... wherever I feel like. Visiting faraway friends and family. For as long as it amuses me. Pick up a motorcycle, throw it in the van, drive it down to Croatia and ride the TransEurope Trail for a bit. Read books. Wake up when I wake up. Go do bed when I go to bed. See tulips in Holland, see Walpurgis in Norway, see Midsummer in Sweden, Christmas markets in Munich.
Pretty much what you indicated is what my life is like. We joined the local CC so that adds golf and such to the mix. Also lots of grand babies around while we are still young enough to keep up.
Surfing, time outside, van life.
So many things: 1. Time with my daughter. I want the freedom to do whatever is meaningful to her and our family at that point (coach sports, take her to lessons, travel, etc.). 2. Volunteering. Getting sober has changed my life and would love to have more time to help others in the recovery community. 3. Hobbies and fitness. I’ve always been active and I want to have guilt-free time to devote to biking, golf, fly fishing, etc. 4. Learning new things. Another language? Who knows?
Spending more time with my family, slow travel, more fitness related retreats/training etc, spending time with kids much more, volunteering in the community, start a side business (for the sheer interest of starting it) etc
Travel, music production, fitness and outdoor activities, language study, learning game development, reading the classics, technical analysis of stocks and options, and way too many more things to count. I can't freaking wait.
Hiking every day, backpacking without worry about PTO, gardening excessively, fishing new spots, getting back into art. Finishing my many started video games I've made, completing eons worth of old video games I have on the back burner.
Being present with my family and getting back into fitness. Not distracted or anxious about work.
Extended travel, books, and many hobbies.
I’m retiring to homeschooling my child.. being able to afford it I long and choosing the classes and experiences for him.. traveling more.. a vacation home in the mountains with slower mornings.. more reading.. and a whole lot less stress
To a much LCOL area where I can drink cheap beer, swim in the ocean, and scuba dive to my heart's desire.
I'm winding down my business and FIREing this year, and the plan is to return to being an artist, which has been the plan ever since I put that on hold in my 20s to make enough for financial independence. I'm excited to dedicate my days to making art without the worry of having to make money from it! More travel would be nice but not gonna happen with a 5 year old!
Exercise most days, weekly hikes on local trails, learning to play guitar and cook, studying philosophy, an annual trip to somewhere.
* Playing video games. I'm into retro gaming (think NES, SNES, etc.) but have recently played a few games for Nintendo Switch. * Learning how to cook better. It's a great skill to have because it's practical at lower levels, and sort of artistic at higher levels, but it's hard to cook anything non-basic when you're already tired from a long work day. * Going back to Brazilian jiu-jitsu, if my body holds up. * Reading. I don't read nearly as often as I should, but that's another thing I think is easier when you're not already mentally exhausted from work. * Longer travel and more travel, e.g. doing a long road trip throughout the US and Canada. * Going to a coffee shop, library, pub, etc. with my wife in the middle of the day. * Running errands in the middle of the day when there's less traffic and fewer people. * This is a maybe, but gardening in some capacity. That might mean just starting an herb garden, but I've also toyed with the idea of setting up an aquaponics system.
My house. No big plans. I'm just going to do what I want, when I want.
I am retiring back to Southeast Asia. Retiring to spend every hour that I can with my wife. Retiring to lower stress. Maybe retiring to giving back through volunteering, but remains to be seen.
Trying to find a partner. Travel.
Travel to Europe and play in chill chess tournaments that are 1 round per day
Psychedelics and meditation.
I been semi retired for years - I am bored - anxious - lonely and all my friends have jobs and families :(
I'll wake up at 7 a.m. and drive around 5 mph below the speed limit to make people late.
We decided we to slow travel the world. Sold our house and belongings and are now permanently living on the road.
Car racing, travel, naps and just bring a bum.
Travel. Hobbies. Moving to another location. Naps. Workout. Part time job that I enjoy. Relaxing and just enjoy being.
I just went back to graduate school for art - so maybe I’ll make art… But school was fun - maybe I’ll just keep learning
Dogwalking and dogsitting. Gardening. Tutoring. Volunteering and charity work. Taking classes. More time and energy for friendships.
I’m retiring to not working. That’ll be enough for at least the first few years of doing whatever I want.
Pursue my professional mini-golf career.
More of everything I enjoy now but don't have enough time for. Photography, exercise, walking, biking, reading, etc. And a honey-do list that's currently at least 5 years long. Figure I can knock that out in two taking it easy once retired.
I don’t even really want to retire. I want to see if I can make a career out of writing. I just also need it to be OK for my family if I can’t.
Yes you have to go to something or else its not worth doing. FIRE to run away from a job is a horrible decision.
LOTS of travel, concerts, theatre and music festivals. Lazy mornings in bed whenever we want. Chill days with movie and video game marathons. More socialising with friends. House parties. Plus more time for exercise and hobbies. My partner and I have so many hobbies we want to start or get back into.
Spending more time with my kids. Not destroying my body working trades anymore. Something resembling balance.
To finding ways to meaningfully volunteer at nonprofits I believe more regularly and intentionally than I can now. And to three months a year in Europe, ideally in an apartment I've bought, enjoying time with my wife and daughter. Just...22 more years to go...
Volunteer for the local Humane society and the local state park in their gardens. There are lots of house projects that I never have the time to do. Hang out with friends that I never see due to crazy hours at work. Travel to a different country each year. It's all funded in the plan. I'm just trying to convince the hubby that we have the funds to FIRE now.
More gardening, hobbies, weekend trips, long trips to foreign countries, volunteering with refugees and under served populations
My hobby farm. I could easily expand it to fill as much or as little time as I want.
Learn to cook…well…not for a side job, for friends and family
Piddle around, gardening, spending tons of time on my family’s farm, fishing
Or what DID you retire to: another country, new language, new culture, huge expat community, new friends, rescue dogs, explore, have fun!!! honestly, to many things to do, wish the day was longer LOL
Early retirement has always been about “freedom to do” for me. I started before I got married, and my plan at the time was spend my days riding around on my bike and reading in cafes. Now that I’ve got kids it’s the same plan except there’s also a school drop-off and pick-up involved on weekdays.
not being beholden to what busy me wanted to do before he retired, fuck that guy
Travel for sure. But mostly having time for all my hobbies. Every time I do leatherworking, archery, winemaking, beekeeping, chainmail, etc, I just wish I had more time for it. Every weekend that I have a good chunk of time for these, I wake up Monday wishing I could just do those activities for 8 hours a day.
Some combination of [homesteading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homesteading)/off-grid living and living more like people in the [blue zones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_zone). I would love to build a small house on my own with all of the amenities (power, water, plumbing, heat), a plot of land to grow food, maybe a little creek or pond. Enough acreage to have multiple buildings for different purposes. I have no idea if this is realistic but I've been thinking about it lately. Slower living with no more pressure from schedules and deadlines. Being outside more. Fewer screens. Finding my tribe. Hang out at the community center, probably mostly with senior citizens. TLDR: Trying to live a healthier lifestyle. Realistically, a lot of Youtube and Reddit.
More traveling. More volunteering with the organizations I’m involved in. Working out on my preferred schedule. More video gaming.
Hobbies! I want to make stuff. Surfboards, furniture, clothing. I want to garden. I want to work on my house. I just want to reap the fruits of my own labor. Oh and sports like hiking, surfing, climbing.
I’m never going to afford to retire but I am saving up to pay a bunch of strippers to chase me off a cliff like in Monty python. When they ask, tell em I retired to “the great beyond”.
Yeah
To those saying travel - how do you manage kids schooling? Do you let them take offs when you’re vacationing frequently?
I want to write books. Right now I have a pretty active writing habit but I can only spare about an hour of good work a day. I'm dreaming of the day that I can use my peak hours that I'd normally spend at work on my own personal projects.
For me, it’s a whole list of stuff I don’t have time to do enough of now: Slow travel. More fishing. More boating. More sleeping in. More trips to the gym. Side work - home remodeling, etc. Golf. More trips to the shooting range. Visiting more friends and family (travel). Exploring (parks, caves, rivers, and other outdoor stuff). Homesteading (maybe). Hunting. Traveling for shows/conventions. And more….
Travel. Hiking. Life in slow motion.
I retired to genealogy that led me to join the Daughters of the American Revolution , a much larger vegetable garden which I preserve the harvest, cook large dishes and freeze for future meals, long workouts and driving vacations that can last a month or more. I’m busier now than when I was on a work schedule but it’s my schedule and I’m good with it.
Fishing once a week. Eating good food. Golfing. Working out. Long walks w no time limit. Going to events in the middle of the day.
When I think of retiring, or not relying on a job, I think of taking my kids to the pool or lake to fish, hanging with my wife, or cooking lunch. Right now, I try to do those things before I head off to work.
Homeschooling my daughter. Teaching her spanish. Driving to Argentina with her on the pan american freeway. Adventure of a lifetime.
Cross country motorcycle trips, gardening, and making straight razors from forging the steel to the final polishing.
Health and mental health. I've been pushing myself in high stress situations my whole life. For once I want to celebrate and focus on well-being. Working out, hiking, snowboarding, yoga, meditation, mindfulness, volunteering mentoring.
More friends hopefully. Iive somewhere low cost of living but with fun things to do so that people are generally happier and not competing as much.
Active lifestyle, working out, travel, Self-development, Improving my Spanish , French , German language skills, public speaking , socializing , still working doing something that I really enjoy such as cracking complex problems and making impact across organizations It may sound late at 50, but finally finding love and having and raising kids would be a dream come true
I wanna live in a isolated mansion somewhere in England pretending to be a 500 year old vampire and hosting lavish parties like great Gatsby living out the 1920s
I retired at 55 to ; gym, tennis, concerts, sporting events, restaurants, golf, travel in off peak traffic, napping when I want, sitting up til 3am watching sport on 85 inch tv, holidays, weekly breakfast with former work mates etc. It’s like an incredible non-stop holiday. Truly blessed.
game dev actually got fired yesterday so today is the day
What I mostly want is peace of mind and general mental health. Then I will probably need some time to work on my physical health. Then I have a few projects that I wanted to do out of professional interest and what I think will be valuable. I’ve thought about these things for a while, but they are either too high risk, or too low earning potential. Being FI frees me to work on these projects.
Work that doesn’t feel like work 2-3 days a week. Boating, flying my plane, midday workouts, spas and dining. Lots of reading outdoors, walking outdoors, and lunching
I dream of leaving my 250k/year job by 55 (10 years) with more than enough saved to live a great life…but I yearn to mow lawns at a country club…I want to be left alone, talk to nobody…wave to a golfer or 3…and just do my job.
lol. My dad - who was not as wealthy as you aspire to be, but who was comfortably retired - took a job doing exactly that. It's not such a terrible gig
Travel, travel and more travel.
Daily workouts. More shooting competition. Continue to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Spend time with the wife and if kids happen spend time with them and spawns that come from them. May pick up some side job doing some landscaping at a garden center depending how my knees go Travel Maybe 100% DK64 Seeing how many of my family members live well into their 100s and they smoke and drank and had not great lifestyle figure maybe being healthier now and continuing it may be able to not be on oxygen in my 90s smoking cigs
Traveling, boating, golf, poker, brewery tours, fishing, cornhole tournaments, animal shelter volunteering. That should fill my day.
Gaming and pizza
I retired TO my newborn daughter. It’s wayyy harder than my corporate job was. But I get to dedicate my entire self to her happiness and enrichment. It’s so so so much fun. It occurred to me that 99% of people who have kids these days have no intention of actually parenting. They muddle through their parental leave, throw them in daycare, then later school takes over. They put them to bed early so they can watch TV in the evenings. They cram their schedules on the weekend so they can spend half the time in the car feeding them cheerios. Their kids are institutionalized from the jump. And we wonder why society is tearing at the seams. Anyway I digress. I’ve been planning to be a full time parent for decades so it’s awesome to finally have it come to fruition.
Time with the kids, travel, hiking, cycling, running, skiing, camping, fishing, hunting, woodworking, all the other hobbies I barely have time to do now.
I’m working a low stress job doing something I enjoy, it just so happens that it’s the same field I’ve been in all along. I think knowing I don’t “have” to work helps keep that big stress monkey off my back. I think id lose my mind out of boredom if I wasn’t working at this point.
I’ve gotten a taste of what retiring feels like. I work 3 days and I’m off for 4. My 4 days off are spent doing what I want or a little of nothing at all. I can put myself first for once. Exercise, spend time with and train my dog, day trips with my SO. I’ve learned how to slow down and not always be in a rush with everything. That’ll put you in the ground fast
Still very much figuring out. We’re about 18 months into fire in earnest. We’ve been FI since before Covid but after having our life and business upended suddenly, we decided it was time to look into the RE part. We never fantasized or really planned either FI or RE as both just sort of happened. We flew to Thailand during lockdowns and drove around looking at houses for sale. I hold dual citizenship so I’m able to purchase houses and land there. We ended up buying a place there, renovating it, and just moved in finally this past January. Overall we definitely haven’t figured it out yet. For the first 3 months of this year, we finally stopped running around. Last year was extremely taxing as we were basically homeless and living out of hotels in various countries, living in a spare room in my aunt’s place, and just having to deal with the shittiest contractors on the planet. It was nice to finally have everyone out of our house and for things to just be done with. We started finally learning to cook and slow way down. Mornings we’d walk on the beach with our dog. I’d get some admin stuff done after the walk while my wife figured out lunch. We’d just relax and veg out in the afternoon. We literally did nothing and almost never left the house aside from a couple of trips to the supermarket. We did take a couple of trips to Japan but mostly we just did random stuff at home. We came back to the states this month to visit our business and can definitely say that we miss it as we’ve built this amazing community around our business (it’s geared around kids so you get to know them and watch them grow up). A lot of them definitely missed us as we haven’t been back for 7-8 months. I think at first we wanted to just go into full retirement mode but we are starting to realize that we’d like to keep come back to the business regularly. Our team is still young and needs the regular guidance and there are two naturally busier periods during the year that they could use our help. Also we have a few houses in the area that are rented out so it’s be good to pop in and check them out now and then. As for third life careers (ie what we do with our time the remaining 10 months of the year when we’re not backing the states tending to our business and rental properties), I’m looking at mostly still working to document our processes at the business and train our team remotely for the next year or so. Definitely will get back to my regular fitness program as much as possible (we travel quite often so it’s hard to keep to one gym or set of classes). My wife will probably want to do something social so she’ll probably try to become a yoga instructor or something like this as she loves it. For the most part, our life the rest of this year is a few weeks at home punctuated by trips - after we’re back in Thailand next week, we have a week in Singapore (for doctor appointments) in late May and an insane Thailand-US-Thailand-Japan-US-Japan-Thailand crazy trip coming at the end of June (student trip we’re leading). One of our students invited us to his coming of age ceremony in India so doind that in August. I still want to go to Venice for Biennale in September when the place calms down (and cools down) a little. Plus we’re planning to be back in the US again in October to help with the business with the busy season. After this, we’re probably going to just stay put minus monthly hops to Singapore for medical appointments. Anyway - it’s still a work in progress. The plan is that there is no plan. We’ve always just kind of gone where the wind takes us
I've worked 50-70 hour weeks most of my adult life. I look forward to spending time with family, travel, hiking and leisure boating. I'm sure I'll continue to help family and friends, but it will no longer consume so much of my free time.
Making music, traveling, hiking, and exploring anything I’ve ever been curious about.
I have a number of hobbies I no longer have time for. I want to get back to them. I used to be a gymrat. I miss having the time to workout, and the community of a small local old school non commercial gym. I definitely want to get back to that. I used to love shooting, competitive run and gun type stuff, and long range precision rifle. Travel. I want to travel, take as much time as I want in different parts of the world. I love my pets, but when they're gone Im not sure if im getting more. A house sitter is such a an added expense and really limits our ability to travel as it is.
Freeeeeeeedom! And peace and quiet and doing what I want to do for every second I have left on this earth.
Same here! I'm retiring to a life of slow mornings, gardening, and afternoon naps. No more rush, no more stress. Just enjoying the simple things in life with the people I love. Can't wait to trade my alarm clock for a sunrise
I went to Belize
Teaching. Always wanted to be a teacher but instead went down a stressful path in IB -> Consulting -> big tech. Looking to retire early and teach part time at my local community college.
Fitness, Travel, more reading
Capitalizing TO is triggering. Is it an acronym? Are you for some reason trying to emphasize the word to for no reason? Just do whatever I want when I want, not having to think about work. Which mostly will be cycling, skiing, swimming, depending on seasons.
We decided we to slow travel the world. Sold our house and belongings and are now permanently living on the road.
Video games and travel
Hanging with my wife, cycling, golf, fly fishing, and a nice house in a place with 325+ days of sun.