Death or Early Retirement

I choose early retirement! All joking aside, my father died at the age of forty unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm. He never had the chance to contemplate such ephemeral dreams like what he would do in retirement. Or when he would take retirement in the first place. Five years past his early demise, I look at the future of my career with trepidation. I, of all people, should understand that life is fleeting. That a life spent overly inundated with work is not a life well lived. Of all the arguments beckoning me towards hanging up my stethoscope, my father’s example is certainly the main one. But sometimes I wonder if there is a mistake assuming that the decision is binary. Death or early retirement? Or something else completely?

The One More Year Phenomenon

Sometimes I give myself a pass on the one more year phenomenon. I tell myself that it is OK to work longer. Build the nest egg up a little more. What’s the harm? Its easy to make this statement as a fairly young (ok middle-aged) guy in adequate health.

But life is not infinite.

There are so many stories out there like my father’s. How many promised themselves that they were going to quit at some distant point just around the bend, and never made it to that point? Their hopes and dreams snuffed out before they truly got the chance to soak in all that life has to offer.

Death or early retirement? Are we asking the wrong question?

Maybe It’s Not That Simple

This fear of death as a driver towards early retirement is not exactly logic. So if you retire and then die six months later anyway, is it really that much better? Maybe your family would actually have benefited from the few extra bucks you could have stashed away in the mean time. If you are going to die early, how much time in retirement is really going to move the needle?

And what if you are wrong. Pull the trigger too early and maybe you die at an old age as a pauper. Get the market wrong and sequence of returns risk could throw you right back into that dreary 9 to 5 after losing significant ground.

The point is that the future is unknowable. Each path down the decision tree entails risk.

Am I ready To Stop Working?

I think the answer is yes. Part of my job, at least. But I think, in the end, fear of death can’t be the argument that wins the day. I have lived a good life. And if I knew I were going to die today, it would not be my time spent at work that would be my regret.

It would be leaving my family. I could quit right now and yet still not really spend that much more time with my loved ones. My wife has work. The kids have school. My parents are busy traveling the world. I have been lucky enough to create a work life balance that allows for much of what I need.

I am ready to consider leaving the nursing home work because it no longer brings me joy.

It is that simple. In the stress versus joy equation, stress is starting to win out.

Final Thoughts

I think we do ourselves a disservice if we boil the question down to death or early retirement. If I felt like there was a big emptiness in my life that work was getting in the way of, I would have left my job a long time ago.

If I were to sit on my death-bed tomorrow, my sadness would be at leaving my family. It wouldn’t enter my mind a lick whether I should have stopped work earlier.

My evolution towards early retirement mainly focuses not on what I’m missing but more on what I am enduring.

The time to let go of the stress has come.