This is what the FIRE movement (Financial Independence and Retire Early) is all about. I would highly recommend the book "Your money or your life" by Vicki Robin. The best approach to switching to more meaningful work is to start by getting your financial life in order. I speak with personal experience: I realized earlier this year that I did not need to feel stuck in a dead-end job and this gave me the courage to quit.
The Fire movement is pretty harmful imho. I think it benefits the authors and podcasters much more than it helps actual people. It probably works for very specific personality types. And really shouldn't be sold to anyone and everyone.
I have friends in their 40s who retired early. And most of them are loosing their minds. It's sad and frustrating to watch. They have nothing much to focus on daily, and after a few years of it, you can see the cognitive decline compared to the rest of the peer group. Their people skills keep degenerating, from lack of constant challenges that the middle aged adult deals with at work or home. And that mounts over time, making lot of things harder and harder.
I get all the frustrations people (rightly) have with institutions, govt and corporate robot wonderland, but I have done more interesting and personally satisfying things being within those structures, than I have done anything outside them.
Financial independence is not just an emergency eject button when faced with difficult choices. It a big asset in the corporate world while competing with a cohort that is deep in debt (alimony/kids college/health expense/mortgages/golf club membership etc etc). Sooner or later everyone in any org knows who can be bought and who can't. Both kind of people have value to the org and impact on the org. People who misunderstand that, end up pushing the eject button prematurely.
Cognitive declines in their 40s because of not working professionally?
That's the first time I've ever read this, so I'm very skeptical.
But if it were me (and I'm working in that age range right now), I'd be jumping on personal projects I've always desired. Writing, in particular. And probably a little tech project stuff in areas that interest me.
May I offer that many of these wealthy people you know aren't intellectually-minded? That's certainly true of most financially successful leaders I've come to interact with.
This article and post is timely, because I "retired" last Friday (I'm 37). It doesn't ring true at all to me that retiring would necessarily be bad for your cognitive skills. Maybe it depends on the type of person, but I'm engrossed in personal cognitive pursuits, such as teaching myself machine learning, putting together an app of my own for the first time, indulging my writing hobby, and of course spending more time with my daughter. It is these very pursuits which led to me retiring; I want to throw myself completely into them instead of dabbling with them on the side. I don't see how someone would "lose their mind" from retiring, unless retiring aggravated other vices such as drinking or watching excessive television.
I've no doubt one's personality slowly changes when no longer chained to authorities saying what to do and when to do it, and when no longer exposed to corporate "culture". That's quite different than one's brain turning to goop. After only a week, my brain feels clearer than ever as the cobwebs of work stress slowly clear away (it still hasn't landed that I don't have to work ever again). Maybe his friends who are "losing their minds" are just seeing the world a bit more clearly? Or perhaps they were uniquely unsuited to retirement, lacking any intellectual pursuits?
I'll probably write an article on my experience in a year or two and let you know if my brain has turned to goop, assuming I can still read/write when that time comes!
Edit: as long as we’re throwing out competing anecdotes, the only person I know personally who retired so early is wildly successful. Far more than he was at work.
Well, that's the rub, right? Anyway, what he did was get super into his hobbies, one of which was "urban gymnastics" (or whatever it's called), and eventually ended up on the Indonesian version of American Ninja Warrior, in his 40s (!!), which I found pretty inspirational.
Not a lot of money in that, at least for most people, so I think it's fair to call it retirement.
Exactly. Another example of the same thing: how quickly did your parents go bonkers after the last of your siblings moved out?
Now make this happen like 30 years early. There's a lot to be said for having a job but not needing it. It gives you the chance to look up from just waiting for payday and view your position in your org in much greater detail, because you can afford to take a few chances.
While I agree with the point that parents can absolutely be happy/happier when their kids move out, them being adults you could talk to after you moved out probably has more to do with you maturing rather than them ;)
Or, more nuanced, everyone involved was able to develop and chill out!
As a parent I can see that a lot of conflict with children has to do with them being (or us seeing them as) something we have to steer and prod in the right direction. And a lot of resent (also reward) is created by having them in your space constantly messing things up or putting demands on your life. When your kids are taking care of themselves, and living as autonomous adults... the relationship changes.
As an adult, I moved back in with my parents for a few months in university, prior to moving out to Toronto. At first it was fine but within a few months the same old conflict with my father came back. Being in 'his' space made it hard to be friends.
My daily routine looks something like this nowadays: spend mornings studying logic programming. Afternoons, I fire up my GPU cluster on AWS and try out some NLP experiments. Some days, I'll work on Haskell if I feel like it. Or possibly training a CNN to control the trains on my model train layout. Its fun :-)
Sigh... I feel like, even five years ago you wouldn't have to explain this at HN, of all places. But now, it's partially HN, but also partially get-paid-lots-for-programming-news.
Indeed, I already have a PhD (machine learning - 1992) and I worked in software development for 28 years, mostly doing what others told me to work on. I now get to do whatever I want.
I've always admired the way Knuth has spent his "retirement" and this little quote summarizes my goals too: "my role is to be on the bottom of things"
The poster's activities ("studying logic programming", "NLP experiments", "work on Haskell") are the equivalent of painting or composing poetry: a creative activity done for enjoyment. A better analogy for you (not that studying perspective and color theory couldn't be enjoyable in itself even if you don't paint... though of course it's a very different sort of activity from painting) may be "If you paint all day for your own pleasure but never exhibit or sell a picture then what's the point?" (not sure whether you would say that)
I know many workaholics that have retired in their 40s and 50s, almost everyone worked either in the medical or technological field. One common thing was that almost everyone came out of retirement shortly after, and either started doing consulting or went back to some employer with better hours.
I think that if work is such a big part of your life and identity, then simply going cold-turkey can have adverse effects. Work is often not just work - there's a huge social aspect to it too. Your co-workers, clients / customers, people that you interact with a great deal.
Looks like in your last paragraph you came around to what I was going to say. I find that focusing on the FI half is pretty satisfying.
I'm not there yet, and I don't know what will happen when I get there, but I do know that I have a heck of a lot more savings than most of my peers, and it leads to me being a lot more relaxed at work when things start to get stressful (Or maybe I am just more relaxed by nature).
To me, it really comes down to the NN Taleb version of FIRE which is "Fuck You" money.
And even if it isn't about FU money, there are degrees of FI. There's a big difference between being able to move to a tropic island if you feel like it and not worrying about the next mortgage payment if you've had it with a current employer.
But even the latter creates a lot of degrees of freedom. Being able to honestly say and act as if you can walk out the door tomorrow if you feel like it does a lot for stress levels.
FIRE doesn't necessarily mean retirement, as you touch on later it can be a valuable position to be in even if you continue working. Independence is the single greatest luxury that money can buy so labeling the FIRE movement as harmful, especially based on a few anectodal data points, is very strange.
I believe the internet goes to big extremes. I only want to read a newsletter from the “be a bit more prudent and save some more and then retire at the normal time with a reasonable expectation that you won’t run out of money” movement.
Measured advice does not a cult following make :-)
Personally I agree with you. Financial prudence doesn't need to equate with freaking out at the thought of having a restaurant meal with friends. Nor does having certain organizational routines mean buying into some complete time management "system."
I do think some people feel they need the structure of systems that are at least in principle pretty absolutist though.
I also recommend ERE too. It is really a distillation of the FI philosophy. Very good to have in your mental toolbox.
The discussion about increasing the savings rate was really illuminating.Some might be put off by the "Extreme" part and the occasional tendency to go to great lengths to save costs, but that should taken as being tailored to oneself.
The forum is also a nice place for lot of interesting discussion with good people.
