Hello and welcome to Scotch Street!

Today, I’m happy to share an article from, My Early Retirement Journey.

This is a unique Scotch Street article in that it is a niche beverage –  Moscato Spritzer – and a a creative pro and con list of early retirement.

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We write stream-of-consciousness articles on the topic of money while drinking scotch (or an alternative beverage, in this case, Moscato Spritzer).

At the end of the article is a link to all the great Scotch Street articles.

About My Early Retirement Journey

My Early Retirement Journey chronicles an early thirty-something’s road to retirement.  You can read about her journey, and read her financial calculations/budget to get to retirement at myearlyretirementjourney.com

Scotch Street Guest Post – My Early Retirement Journey

Intro.

Just last week a  sour day at work got me back to thinking about the exit ramps I had recently discovered on My Early Retirement Journey.   Basically, when I first discovered FIRE, I calculated that I could reasonably leave the work place in 10 to 20 years in my 40s or 50s.  A few months later I did some more calculations  and realized I could probably take a mini-retirement in 2 or 3 years, and I’d still be in my 30s. I would have worked full time for about 5 years by then.

What would be better?

That got me thinking, what would be better:  take a Sabbatical in 5 years or FIRE for good in 10 years?  On a day like the one I just had, my immediate thought  was get me out of here. The sooner the better! These humans suck!

Here’s what I came up with.

Ultimately, I keep saying my primary objective for a break is: HEALTH. I want to be able to heal. I want my body to heal on its own when I get sick. It’s not as though I won’t get sick ever just because I’m retired but a) I want to minimize these occurrences and b) I want to have the time for my body to get there in its own time instead of trying to get back to work so I don’t use up all my vacation days. So in typical Scotch Street fashion, I streamed the pros list for Sabbatical in 5 years based on the previously stated objective.

Pros list for Sabbatical in 5 years:

• Health overall
• Health seems to be declining
• Enjoy good health while I still have it
• Recover stress on body from last 5 years of work, school, heartache…
  • Carpal tunnel (e.g. gives hands/wrist a break)
  • Gut health
  • Mental health (relationships, family, society, friends, etc…)
• Repair any damage already done (seen and unseen)
• Prevent any new damage
• Keep any minor damage from worsening
• 5 more years may cause irreversible damage or make any chronic conditions worse
• Get close to whole vs. farther away
• Other: spiritual growth;  nurture relationships; build community; do good works
• Given the field I’m in where I do adverse event reporting for prescription drugs, it’s become evident that sometimes your body just doesn’t recover and it’s not always in a predictable way. Someone has to be the 1% in which some of these serious adverse events occur.
• I’m fighting a biological clock – but for life, not baby making.
• Given the last 12 months of my health history, I don’t seem to be getting better health wise. I’ve never been sick so many days in any time frame or paid so much for healthcare.
• Lots of people take time off from work to nurture their family; in this case I can take time off to nurture myself. And besides, 5 years seems to be the going rate for care-giving, anyway.

Pros list for FIRE in 10 years (aka big cons for Sabbatical in 5 Years):

• In 10 years when I have to go back to work because I took five years off, I would probably regret that I wasn’t already FIRE’d.
• Also, would I really be able to relax on a 5-Year Sabbatical knowing I still had to go back to work?

But then…

The real wrench in the situation is I still don’t know what exactly to do once I retire. In fact, once early retirement became a possibility, I found myself retreating a bit. I had  gotten used to this idea that I’d have to work for the rest of my life. It was my security blanket of sorts. I had gotten comfortable in my mediocrity and my pursuit of nothing. I got comfortable having work be a time-suck and energy-drain.  Because if work was sucking all the life out of me, no one could blame me for holing up in my house every night and weekend, right?

I mean who says just because I have time to do it that I’m suddenly going to start eating more vegetables; exercising more; flossing twice a day; communing with nature on nature walks; be a service to my community; end world hunger;  bring about world peace; find a church family; find my purpose; or experience life altering, past hurt-erasing joy?

So maybe I’m just covering.  Perhaps the question isn’t whether to FIRE in 5 years or 10 years, but rather what if I do all this, and it doesn’t work?  What if after 2 or 5 or 10 years, I’m still just as aimless and discontented as I am now?  I’ll be out of options, then what?