So three years already that I have left my salaried job forever. After all this time, I still have trouble qualifying this situation. I don't like to use the term retirement, even early, because I am far from being a rentier who would spend idle days in front of the TV, playing golf or on various excursions. It is not financial independence either. It is more than that. Financial independence is just a prerequisite and I obtained it well before leaving salaried employment for good.
I realize that it is paradoxically easier to describe this period by the absence of paid work than by a term that would group together all the elements of this new life. However, this experience is anything but the absence of something. On the contrary, it is plenitude itself. Why then have so much trouble defining it? Perhaps because our vocabulary is too rich in terms of work and excessively poor in terms of the rest.
Socially, I present myself as a self-employed worker, to look good. However, people don't know that I only devote about ten hours a week to my side business. This life sometimes reminds me of my student life, during which I had a lot of free time, except that today, I have to provide for my family. This is also one of the important aspects of this new life. I have more time for those I love. This also means a few additional constraints, but these obviously have nothing to do with those encountered in the professional world.
Before, I was stressed at work, then I was running around in my free time, in order to make the most of the little free time I had. Today, my schedule is organized around my family and my passions. That's enough to fill it up. I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I sometimes catch myself running out of time. Of course, I laugh about it immediately and wonder how I ever managed in the past, when I was working.
Financially, I live mainly from my rental apartments and my small side business. Over the last three years, I have only had to withdraw my dividends a few times and I have never touched my capital. However, I had planned to take a little of both each year. This still surprises me today, because I do not deprive myself of anything, quite the contrary. I even exceed the lifestyle I led as an employee.
Although I have a lot of respect for the followers of the FIRE movement, I have always been skeptical of the extreme frugalism that is sometimes advocated there. During my capital accumulation phase, when I was an employee, I saved about 20% of my net salary. This may seem like a lot to the average person, but this number is paltry compared to the 50 to 75% targeted by frugalists. My savings rate was, however, more than enough to quickly achieve financial independence. Above all, it allowed me to live as I wanted, without calculating too much.
This is important because today I have reached a point where knowing how to spend is more important than knowing how to save. If you have spent your life tightening your belt, it becomes difficult to do otherwise once you have reached your goal, especially since the financial security offered by a salaried job has disappeared.
Looking back, I think I could have anticipated my approach by about five years. Although I was already financially independent, I continued to work part-time, gradually reducing my activity rate, until it was zero.
I needed this period to reassure myself. If I had known it was this easy, I would have taken the plunge sooner. That being said, I guess this step was necessary for me to feel ready.
May this post serve as an encouragement to all those who are still suffering from the dictatorship of wage labor. The end of the tunnel may not be as far away as you imagine. In the meantime, stop calculating excessively and enjoy life.
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It all depends on age. You can't spend your life, quite young (50 years old), on fun activities otherwise you cut yourself off from society by only mixing with people like you.
And in these activities, you find your glass ceiling pretty quickly. In any case, you're not going to become a musician or a professional golfer. As for playing sports all day, you're going to break. There's a big difference between being bad at work, extremely stressed, not enjoying anything, and doing nothing.
It takes some challenges and, above all, maintaining professional relationships where you feel useful, in relation to others, in the pace of work.
As for hot sandy beaches, if you have had a hectic life, you quickly end up getting bored there.
This is one of the reasons why I kept a small sideline. In my previous jobs, where I held executive positions in very large companies, I had a lot of social interactions, but they were of poor quality. They tended to drain me. Today, I prioritize quality and I feel much more useful precisely because I am there to help people, not to squeeze them like lemons.
As for hobbies, the goal is obviously not to become a professional, but to progress for oneself. I have practiced these hobbies all my life and I always manage to find a way to progress again and again. There is no glass ceiling.
It is not a question of doing nothing, quite the contrary. My activities are much more diversified today than when I was an employee.
I speak from experience... because I had the same journey, leaving the washing machine at 55, taking a very small job, playing a lot of music and sport, studying a lot and renovating apartments to rent them out with the savings I had built up.
Each one brings in little but combined, it's not bad, especially if we repair everything with almost no help from craftsmen.
I no longer have this social obligation to display, to seek things "at my level" which cost a lot and do not make me happier.
It takes a lot of courage, nerve and, at some point, an electric shock to decide on this big resignation.
Unlike you, I have refocused on myself, because since I was little, between studies, businesses, hard work, children, homework, I had completely forgotten myself.
Now I am the king.
Well done François. As they say, to be good with others, you must first be good with yourself. By taking the time to cultivate your inner garden, you bring much more to society than if you just spit out over and over again things that society has instilled in you.
My electroshock was increasingly violent tachycardias. And then one day I said to myself: you have achieved everything, you have succeeded in everything, you have saved wisely, obtained what you wanted, you have pleased your parents, your wife, your children, your bosses, the system. And you in all that?
It took 3/4 years. And then one day, I decided to think about myself because we only have one life.
But it requires a lot of courage because it is easier to continue in the routine than to make decisions and stick to them. Because then everything explodes.
Except real relationships.
Unfortunately, sometimes you have to go as far as having physical problems to realize that something needs to change.
Hi Jerome,
> I needed this period to reassure myself. If I had known it was this easy, I would have taken the plunge sooner. That being said, I guess this step was necessary for me to feel ready.
Like to say… are you talking about me? 😀
Thank you very much for your sharing, which nourishes my own journey.
When you write "If I had known it was this easy", are you talking about pulling the plug, or about living in independent mode with non-smoothed income?
Have a nice weekend!
Hi Marc,
The two go together, but it was the very last step, pulling the plug, that is to say leaving employment, that seemed the hardest to me.
Even if you have made all the projections and possible scenarios in your head, it is never easy to intentionally deprive yourself of what has been the main source of income for a good part of your life. And then, apart from the financial aspect, there is also the social side mentioned by François in the previous comments. What helped me a lot to reassure myself on these two points is the gradual decline in my activity rate and the establishment of my small independent secondary activity.
I am following the same path of gradual reduction.
What degression did you do over what period, roughly? 100 => 80 => 60 => stop? Over like 5 years?
If I ignore the previous years that brought me back from a 60-hour week to a normal 100% (40 hours), it actually lasted five years. I went down from 100 to 50% the first four years, in several stages, then a final step to 20% the fifth year.
The best is 20 hours. And you can last a very long time, in my opinion, beyond 70 years.
Yes, I quite agree. My initial goal was to get back to my student course schedule where I was navigating around 15-20 hours per week. Today, with my side activity, I even try to keep it a little lower, around ten hours. But 20 hours was already very good indeed :-).
Congratulations on achieving all your goals, you are proof that it is possible!
For my part, long-term parental leave (15 months) without pay is over.
Also finished Germany, Switzerland and all the beautiful countries of Europe. The in-laws on the other hand, I don't miss them! Scheisse!
Finally we took a transatlantic flight back west, it made the most sense for the whole family, for the moment.
I went back to work a month ago and honestly, I'm fine with it for now. The sea is still beautiful and flat. Even though it's a huge company listed on the stock exchange (whose shares are constantly rising: so much the better, I invest 3% of my salary there), I like it there. Fortunately, I don't have a management position, I would never want the position for the boss of my division, she seems so stressed! Luckily, she is 300km from my home, so there is less risk of transmitting negative vibrations. But you have to stay alert in this crazy world where everything goes too fast.
With my current salary (I invest about 30% of my gross salary), I have nothing to complain about, but I also want to prove to myself that I am good at what I do. I am acquiring a lot of knowledge every day that will perhaps give me, I hope, the opportunity to start my own company. And I want to work for people elsewhere in the world who allow me to travel occasionally. I love my children, but I wouldn't say no to a little business trip once a year. My wife does it too, so we agree on that.
You'll tell us how the warm sand feels under your feet on your next trip! Or any beach on Lake Geneva haha! Last May we were in Grau-du-Roi in France, with a little cabin right on the beach, it was tooooop!
"Luckily, it's 300km from my house, so there's less risk of transmitting negative vibrations. But you have to stay alert in this crazy world where everything goes too fast." lol, yes that's exactly it 🙂
“You’ll tell us how the warm sand feels under your feet on your next trip!” yes, in two weeks already 🙂
It's always a pleasure to read you Philippe
In the end, it was my boss who gave in first. She's off work for a month. What a cruel world.
Lol 🙂
My marriage didn't survive it. But the children were already grown. And it didn't cause me any financial difficulties because my ex, a self-employed person, earns a good living.
A second life for me where finally, thanks to my savings and investments, I found myself… with much more money for me than when I was married.
Moreover, by having much more time to ourselves, we leave behind this world of frenetic spending where purchases are outlets for existential malaise.
Leaving the world of professional slavery also means accepting collateral damage. But what price is one's health and life expectancy worth?
"Furthermore, by having much more time to ourselves, we leave behind this world of frenetic spending where purchases are outlets for existential malaise."
That's exactly it... I'm always amazed to see some people throwing themselves like animals on totally useless and superficial goods, as if their life depended on it.
When you think about it, spending is a palliative to hard work. The malaise finds its outlet in spending, credits, the living environment to be respected for the image we want to give to others, and that's it.
You thus forge slaves of work. It takes a lot of lucidity and courage to get out of this cycle because from a very young age, between school, exams, competitions, selections, the race for performance and results, promotions, you are channeled to remain a spearhead all your life.
You were never taught anything else.
That's exactly it. It's pure conditioning!