One month liberated since my leap out of corporate life.
- E.M.POWERS
- Sep 16, 2023
- 11 min read
For four weeks now, lots of you Club Friends keep asking me what early retirement is like. I reply with how giddy I feel, and that retirement (so far) is everything it was ever cracked up to be and how I wish it for everyone.
The general response I get tends to be a level set that I'm still in the honeymoon phase of it all and to give it time, that "I'll be bored soon."
We'll see.
I am chipping away at my retirement goals already. I walk, bike, hike, and play more now in the daylight. Restoring my fitness feels good. Aware of how much more difficult it would probably be if I had waited for my sixties to get at it.
I drink far less coffee now. And prepare more meals at home. I recently went camping with dear old friends where I made a paella on the campfire and swam in ice-cold water at the end of a long hike, just like I loved doing as a kid.
Living life is invigorating. I feel young again in a lot of ways.
Retirement is better than sabbatical.
One always knew you'd have to give sabbatical up and go right back to a routinely heavy work schedule where you'd eventually become thirsty again for a rarely attainable work/life balance. I did sabbatical three times over in my old corporate life, stressed by the end of each break about whether I was recharged enough yet to endure another seven-year stretch of long workdays and only tiny bouts of ever really owning your own time. Retirement rather feels like indefinite freedom to do what you want any old time. The Soup Dragons sing about it best.
I have also been busy writing thank you notes still to all those who celebrated this milestone with me. Eternally grateful for that love shown. Thank you, peeps! Your gifts and the gifts of your words have meant the world to me.
I took a long bike ride with old friends organized by the Bike Club that I once kept membership in at the mothership. That twenty-five-ish mile freedom ride was on Labor Day. Apropos.
I also hone my gardening skills in the middle of the day, when I feel like being grounded, getting some fresh air and sun, smelling the mint and rosemary, or propagating a cutting from a friend's beautiful yard. Reading competes for my attention often too.
I reach out to as many old friends that I can to make plans to reconnect. Music too fills the air more now around the house and we're going to shows again, frequently with old friends, even the shows taking place on weeknights which don't need to be off limits anymore!
I have been exploring "Encore Fellowship" opportunities too, these past couple weeks, with two local non-profits where I'll soon be focused on teaching financial literacy to their underserved and vulnerable clients living in my local community, just as soon as I decide on which of the two worthy missions to dedicate my time to. This fellowship program, a benefit of retiring from my former mothership, asks you to choose just one fellowship path that they will sponsor you for in your first transition year into life after your corporate career. It will be a tough decision; both causes I'm contemplating are making a marked difference in the lives of deserving humans in need of help and TLC to enrich their lives for the better. So, perhaps in my second year, the next one's door could reopen then. We'll see.
I also now hang out with my kids after they get home from high school each day and watch what they're into and really get present to listen to them talk about their lives, friends, schoolwork, and interests. They are so cute. I'm still in awe of making them and how we did, keeping them alive and well somehow all these years. They say they are proud of me. I realize they watched me work hard for our family and eventually witness me meeting my long-standing goal of retiring before they finish high school. I hope this influences them one day to reach their own goals by working hard and showing determination. And I once assumed I only had Thomas the Tank Engine to thank for teaching them determination. LOL.
The oldest is nearly an adult now. We talk about wealth building and the growth of his Roth IRA over the last one and a half years. We're bonding anew, though he tells me he doesn't remember me ever playing Legos with him, just remembers me always working. Gulp. I ponder how much money we've spent on those Legos and how he'd maybe better remember me involved in his youth, if I can help move all that Lego value into his Roth IRA instead of leaving the bricks aging in storage bins. The strong residual value of played-with Lego sets gives me hope (even if never played with by moms). Connecting through his dreams of being independently wealthy one day is my superpower.
I taught the youngest to drive a car with a stick (operating a manual transmission with a third peddle called a clutch, for those readers who may be unfamiliar)! He drives me around town to shop for groceries and we get creative together. I prepare more meals for my family on the regular now which I enjoy. I would not claim I cover all the meals daily, but more regularly than ever before. And my baby just told me that I make "delicious food." Connecting through this son's insatiable appetite is my other superpower.
We've also watched three of the four Netflix episodes describing life in our planet Earth's "Blue Zones." While I'm not obsessed with living to one hundred, and quite frankly I didn't build us a nest egg projected to last quite that long, I do want all the years we do live to be optimal, purposeful, healthy, and well-funded. I've found the show inspiring. I now eagerly want to travel to Greece, Okinawa, Costa Rica, and Italy to make new friends and learn to boost longevity.
My boss, who left the door open to me in case I were to "get bored in retirement," also gave me a "bucket list" journal as a retirement gift to help keep me focused on my newfound freedom and such upcoming adventures to Blue Zones. It's a cute little journal she picked out for me, but so far, I only have trips in the book to get over to Phoenix and Riverside to see existing friends in their fun zones.
So, unlike sabbatical or vacation, with retirement, there's no rush to pack everything recharging and good into a finite handful of weeks or mere days of temporary freedom. Though, I've been so busy enjoying every moment of this packed and stacked first month liberated that I don't know how I ever had time to work so much. I'm always grateful for the hard work that enabled me to reach where I'm at today.
I am also getting reacquainted with other domestic skills. My husband had to refresh me on how to use the washer, dryer, and dishwasher. Don't laugh at me please. I didn't remember what buttons to push or when the low-cost times of day were to efficiently operate these machines, and other apparently important instructions like how much soap to use and how not to forget to move a wet load of laundry to the dryer before it starts to smell bad. I get it all again at this point, and I am once again sharing the load with him, pun intended.
I didn't forget how to use all appliances; last week I dusted off my sewing machine and taught a friend how to sew a cute little Japanese Knot Bag, and just ahead I have eight women coming to my house to learn how to make a paella. Another friend and I will kayak for half a day soon and I'm grateful my shoulders are both ready for it! My body is probably the strongest its been in two decades.
I've also sorted through two shoe boxes worth (so far) of all the countless photos I ever brought into the one-hour photo counter in the days before digital cameras. In the days when I'd always opt for the 36-frame rolls of film and the free double prints and then box up everything, even the bad shots that didn't turn out, all the film negatives, and CDs, never having had the time to sift through any of it to retain just the keepers into organized photo albums, all my adult life. Until now.
I have purged about 2.5 lbs. of this memory jogging material so far already, keeping only the pictures that matter to me still to look back on fondly from now on. It's freeing. Though emotional and endless. Some of the historic snaps cause me pause to reach out to loved ones and reminisce. It's lovely. I probably have a couple more months' worth to go.
I also cleaned out a lot of other clutter weighing me down in my files, drawers, and banker boxes that I don't need to keep hanging around. My master's thesis research, for example. Gone. I'm wiping all evidence of being guilty of printing microfiche out on what amounted to a forest of lost trees during my younger years in that rewarding program. I kept just the final version itself and the single piece of paper the resulting degree got printed on. I threw out all the awards I collected at work but kept the college degrees. I ponder why. It intrigues me why humans place so much value on these attestations that we are the fleeting masters of the universe.
I'm shredding the excess images and documents from my life that have personal information on them. We can always talk about the fields of Information Security and Privacy if you want to at The Money Matters Club, Club Friends. These important behaviors and financial-life hygiene steps are critical to securing your identity and protecting your wealth. Wealth protection is a session topic I have in the works for you too (more on that below).
Being free of the safely purged boxes of stuff, reams of unnecessary paper, old Personal Information, cluttered spaces, and the all-consuming day job that once claimed all my energy is nothing short of liberating.
I'm lighter. I move more. I do not expect to get bored of this new way of living anytime soon.
We have a new budget at home. It reflects the way we will live until we are 59.5 years old (7.5 years to go) and can start penalty-free distributions from our ample retirement savings if we want to or need to then. Looking at the new budget is exciting. We can see where we have room to afford to explore new corners of the Earth in the coming years. We can see where we might want to allocate some dollars to new ventures, such as those that generate dividends, return value, or create new passive income each month. Passive income is the ultimate liberator. The payout I received from my severance needs to be invested soon toward that end. And it will be.
I'm taking the time to make some informed decisions about where to invest it to maximize those outcomes. I'm learning about Angel Investing and self-directed IRAs too. The way our retirement accounts are invested they should be doubled by the time we're contemplating taking any qualified distributions anyway. If not by then, we'll wait out any market challenges until then. Watching the budget and the investments more carefully and more often now is still not something I do daily. But watching is something I gladly have more time for now.
So, I'm certainly not putting my feet up in retirement and binge-watching Sex and the City episodes (though many of my girlfriends find it odd I've never watched a single season of that iconic show). I'm instead working toward fulfilling my heart's desires, continuously learning, exploring new places, catching up with friends, reading more books, investing differently, being purposeful with our spending, being present with myself, my friends, my family and dog, getting my fitness back, simplifying my home, and working toward ensuring my continuous liberation from that rewarding but taxing day job that once got so much of my focus, so that now I can give back to people in need in ways that sing to my own heart's mission.
I'm also working on my first book. Well, it may be two books. Stay tuned.
I've not held a Money Matters Club session out here since we celebrated Senator Roth in July. So, over the past four weeks, I've also been giving deep thought to our lineup of other future topics for our Club as well. Your input is welcome, Club Friends! You matter to me.
The next few topic offerings I'm working on setting up for you right now are:
1) a podcast about the power of a Power of Attorney (POA) designation and a conversation about when having a POA has no recognized power what to do then;
2) a lunch-and-learn session about important and strategic wealth considerations during your annual health benefits enrollment election window that should typically open up during the fall season at most major U.S. employers (our session, though, won't be specific to any one employer, all U.S. workers from anywhere are welcome to this discussion); and
3) wealth protection strategies and considerations, especially in California where the changing insurance landscape upon us may pose impacts on par with those of inflation on most of us soon.
Keep an eye out for these topics and more on our Events tab. And a side bar: if you take one action from this blog, may it be to use this one paragraph as a reminder trigger to go review your YTDs (your year-to-date values on your last paycheck's paystub). This is an excellent time of year to assess if you should adjust any of your 2023 tax withholdings or to max any pre-tax or after-tax contributions before the tax year ends. You should have up to about six 2023 paychecks left to impact to your advantage. Don't delay!
So, that's the gist of my life at the one-month mark of leaping into retirement. Tell me, how have you been this past month, my Club Friends?
Send me a note with your thoughts (using the Contact tab above or the Comments field below). Note: Commenting on blogs here requires site membership which is an additional step beyond just subscribing to The Club. Site membership will offer a more enclaved way to participate in The Club soon, right now these blogs and your comments are still visible on the public web to non-Members, so again, that will be changing in quick order. I'm researching how and will be making that change soon. For now, if you want more privacy, don't use your full first and last name in your membership sign up, if you sign up via email you can use initials or an alias instead if you want to be more anonymous when you post comments out here for now (I'll still see your real email address in my backend data), or use the Contact form to reach me in the interim, which is just going to reach little old me directly).
In closing, retirement is ahhh-mazing so far. I look forward to our next meeting of The Money Matters Club, Club Friends, where we'll continue learning together about how you too can make this wish come true for YOU if and when you want to, and other important money matters you will want to navigate well along the way on your journey ahead to financial freedom! Because money matters,
Yours,
el
E.M.Powers ("el") is a regular person with no particular financial credentials or expertise who happens to be a money enthusiast and the founder of The Money Matters Club, a virtual watercooler for like-minded individuals with a thirst for building their own financial health. Since 2006, she's helped thousands of co-workers build their financial literacy and wealth by participating in The Money Matters Club, a community she built on her employer's internal network. Since 2023, she's been attempting to scale The Club's reach through its second home on the World Wide Web. Her opinions--as well as the opinions of all participants--are just that: opinions, which are subject to flawed logic, math, typos and correction. She keeps a growth mindset and is also always learning something new or bolstering her own understanding after discussions at The Club. All information shared is done so with the best intent to inspire and empower others to learn more about money considerations toward building their own financial muscles. Nothing shared is meant as individualized advice that anyone should act on without doing their own curious research and personal decision making. There are no dumb questions at The Money Matters Club. Your financial health and literacy are what this Club cares about. All investing involves risk. All results can and will vary.
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"angel investing" :)
Go El, go!