Lessons Learned from A Mid-Life Retirement

This post comes after being fully retired for one full year.  As is common with most first time retirements, we have spent our year in a mad dash to go and do things that we have dreamed about for our entire lives.  We have lived fast during the past year that I am just now slowing down to reflect on what has been learned. I am grateful to have a first hand understanding of the effect of retirement on the mind, the body and the pocketbook.  I will talk more about each of these three details as I write.  Before I do that I want to say that this experience has been the best experience of my life and has lead me to reevaluate and validate my purpose. I have many years left in me to work and by taking a break to capture time, precious time with my family, I now feel prepared to take a break from taking a break and get back to work.  

The effect of retirement on my mind is something that I had not spent a lot of time preparing for prior to our trip. I was in "go" mode prior to leaving and focused on getting our wheels rolling.  One thing I told myself was that I would have time to think when I didn't have so much work to do.  I would find myself saying things like "I look forward to being present, both personally and with my wife and kids", but I am not fully convinced that I did as good of a job at staying present as I dreamed it.  I think I did myself no favors trying to read mindfulness books to learn the art of staying present because unless you are a monk living in silence, life doesn't provide many opportunities to create the space to practice being present.  For instance, I have two children...need I say more!  I also spent the last year making little to no plans as to where we would be or for how long.  On one hand this helped me stay present, but it also added a lot of anxiety and stress to the trip that you just don't get when you are say...at a monastery or spending days as a traditional retiree who isn't traveling the world. So the mind has certainly been tested on this trip and what I found was that I thrive in a world that is constantly changing, something that I already knew about myself. When you have others with you, like kids, then you have to expect that conflict will arise often when you tell them your new plans for the next few days.  The kids could write their own blog about their experience and it would undoubtedly be very different...maybe we'll do that!  We went to twenty eight National Parks this year and every single one of them illicited the same excitement from Erica and I as we pulled up to them.  The kids did not care one bit about a National Park after about the third one we went to.  They made the most of it and sometimes left happy and surprised by what they got to experience but they kicked and screamed the moment we mentioned that we were headed out for hike at a National Park.  Being able to experience these activities as a family was very important to me and Erica. As I reflect, all the frustration that we went through this year as a family to get to retire together has been the best way to experience it. The tests on all of our minds has made us better prepared for the moments in the future that we will undoubtedly pull a tool from our mid-life retirement toolbelt. 

All the times that I looked at Erica and said, "Do you think it is time to stop or should we keep going?" has to number fifty...about once a week. She pondered, I pondered and then we both agreed that we never would give in so easily to quit on our chance to learn and grow through this experience.  One of those moments for me came when the stock market tanked six months into our trip.  We lost quite a bit of money that we were excited to have for this year long adventure.  It provided me with a lot of security and comfort to know that we had investments that were going to continue to grow as we slowing started taking income off of them to feed our adventure.  I was not expecting or at least was very hopeful that a correction in the stock market of twenty to thirty percent would never take place.  I learned first hand that when you live on a fixed income how important it is to have balance in your approach to managing your investments.  We always had more time to go back to work and would have should the need arise, but thankfully we had enough to survive a very worst case financial crisis.  We survived only because of our low fixed expenses that we put so much time and effort to reduce prior to our mid-life retirement.  This low-cost approach resembles how most people go into retirement and it works. I know now how quickly you can truly go from feeling rich to feeling poor in a day or two.  We lived poor for a few months until we could see that the stock market and our investments would recover and we have seen the balances of our losses come back.  I have not seen any growth in our net worth during our time in retirement which means we are spending one-hundred percent of our investment income. This is something I was hoping would be different.  It has been really eye-opening to see how passive income works in retirement and I look forward to going back to work and growing our nest egg again so that we might get another chance to retire one day. 

When you think about having a lot of free time most people don't fill it with exercise plans and yoga retreats.  That would be a select few people's idea of retirement but not me.  Prior to retirement, what I didn't grasp is how much your lifestyle truly impacts your health.  One thing that I quickly saw happening with all four of us was that we were putting ourselves into places and activities that allowed us to get all the exercise that we needed for the day.  Every three days I was having to set up and tear down camp to drive to the next place just to redo the same when I got there. All four of us, at every new campground couldn't wait to get out and explore the area.  Was there a river or trail nearby or even better somewhere to ride our bikes?  We were effortlessly sweating.  Prior to retirement, I spent all of my time at work inside, rarely breaking a sweat during the day.  My day would be preoccupied from the moment I woke up with the planning of my work day and then it ended with trying to create quality family time that I failed to incorporate physical activity into.  As we continued to travel more my physical health started to get better. I know some of it was mental improvement due to my excitement for travel.  But to my credit, and Erica's food plan for us, we all made better food choices as we ate more meals that Erica prepared in the RV.  I have begun to not crave as much sugar as I have in the past as my energy level has increased with physical exercise and I have stopped pumping in so many sugary foods.  I have even given up one of my crutches, Dr. Pepper for the last two weeks.  So here's to hoping the Dr. stays away for good and that when I return back to employment I can maintain many of the positive health habits that has done my body good during retirement.  

Peace and Love