Everyone should enjoy a midlife retirement. I am going to take my second midlife retirement in order to change my entire life, I’ll be 34. I’m working on my second midlife retirement, I hope you are already planning for one too. If one of us needs to get our priorities straight, I hope its not me. Retirement is a relative term. You don’t need to be old or wealthy (notice I didn’t say rich) to retire. I would have to agree that traditional retirement is entirely wasted on the elderly. No offense to the aging readers, but no one ever really complains about improving their life too soon.
Retirement is a time to enjoy the things you miss out on when work gets in the way of life. It’s a time to grow and reflect on what’s important and where your life is headed. So why wait until you are nearing the end of your path to do so? You do not need to wait until you are old with a big fat bank account to retire. You do however need to have some sort of cash flow either savings or a part time job. I opted for the “eat into my savings” route on my first retirement, and had a little extra cash flow as well to help. I also minimized my expenses as much as possible. I slept on a 30 year old cot or an air mattress for 10 months during my first go ’round. I also drove 140 mph on the Autobahn, went to Oktoberfest in Munich, visited France, home brewed beer, rafted class 5 rapids, spent weeks at camp hunting and fly fishing until my arms fell off. This time I’m going hiking. How will you change your life today?
This time around I won’t have the luxury of having that extra income. It’s hard to have an income when you live in a tent in the woods and carry all of your belongings on your back. Your fulltime job is hiking, with a part time job of eating. I need to save enough money to support myself and now a new puppy. The cutest puppy ever created to be more accurate. Fortunately for me I can easily reduce my monthly expenses to the bare minimum while on the trail. No rent, no mortgage, no car payment, no electric or cable bill and no dependents (aside from Quin the aforementioned puppy.) Besides food, transportation, college loans, a cell phone payment, possibly a dog trainer, and some gear replacement there isn’t much else that’s going to eat away at my savings.
You have got to come up with a plan for midlife retirement. Failing to plan is planning to fail. Please, stop using Gofundmy-vacation. It’s easy to spend someone else’s money and forget all the hard work it took to get and spend it unwisely. Come up with a financial game plan, then stop spending money you don’t need to spend. Cable bills, parties, booze, going out to eat, cell phones, new clothes are all things to say goodbye to. I’m not saying don’t enjoy life, in all honesty I spent $125 on dinner last night at Parts and Labor in Baltimore, it was amaze-balls, and absolutely worth it. But, this was the first time I had gone out to eat in longer than I can remember. I also worked a 12 hour shift the day before at my part time job, after working 50 hours at my real job all week. If you want something big, start hustling, now.
There is no right time for a midlife retirement. There are no right or wrong career moves. It’s never too soon to make your life more amazing. Sometimes you just have to set a date and know that’s how long you have to get your shit together.
What do you think? Do I have it figured out or am I missing something? Or am I looking down from 70,000 feet hoping my parachute opens? What are you willing to give up to be happy? Leave your comments below!