I sit here looking for an image to go with this blog post – I search for “early retirement woman”, “retirement woman”, “woman traveling”, “early retirement outdoor woman” — and I am either finding youthful women in their prime years or those in full retirement age.
How do I find the women in pictures who are in between these ages, like me?
I was flustered as I searched and searched. And then I filtered the picture software for “one person” and there I found it… apparently I am looking for a “mature adult” who fits between “adult” and “senior adult” in the list of choices. I snickered, if only they realized how not mature I am at my age — in my mind, I am still a teenager at heart.
The woman in the blog post image might be full retirement age with her gray locks, but to me, with her tattoos and confident stature reminds me of the fierce & independent GenXer who is sick of the full-time scope of work and ready to reclaim life for themselves. This also signifies me — I’ve put in the decades of full-time corporate, raised a family and I am now in this weird space where I am tired of running the grind (hello, to my peri/menopause IDGAF club members), but now I have the space to find me again. Both terrifying and exhilarating.
I’ve also set up the space where I could semi early retire soon. I put the “semi” in parenthesis in the title, because if I started investing and building wealth sooner than later — I am a late start investor — the same steps would have given me the option to fully retire early.
The Backstory
The back, back story is I was a chronic debt-cycler for a long time. I tried the steps to get out of debt, but I would rack up more, then get a personal loan to pay it all off and did that 3-4 times until I realized my dopamine kick was in the wrong place.
From my young adult years, I had about $15K-$20K student loan debt and then by late-2010s I racked up almost $100,000 of debt. It wasn’t until the pandemic, when the world shut down and I had a moment of “Oh geesh, I am closer to retirement age than not”, that I made it my serious mission to pay off debt. A few years go by, part of my debt was forgiven and the other three-quarters was paid-in-full. Frugal living was in full practice to make this happen.
After the debt was paid off, I increased my pretax investment contributions (aka, 401k or 403b account) that would allow me to contribute the max for the year. This was the first time in my life I accomplished that. I continued to invest significantly until I reached coastFI 3 years later.
“Coast FI is when someone already has enough invested in their retirement accounts that would grow to provide them with a comfortable traditional retirement. They wouldn’t need to add another dollar. If someone has achieved Coast FI, it means that they only need to cover their actual costs of living with active income.” – The Fioneers (the founders of Coast FI)
The Current Status
Now that my debt was paid off and CoastFI was achieved, my next goal is to continue building up my emergency fund or cash bucket one of my retirement bucket strategy.
The bucket strategy is to build 1-3 years of hard earned cash saved in a high yield savings account (HYSA) or a certificate of deposit (CD) account. My goal is to save up roughly $40,000 or 1-year of expenses to help buffer any lifestyle changes when I make the shift and/or to help ride the wave of a market downturn.
Remember I am only semi-retiring — meaning that I will be working part-time to cover living expenses that are not covered by the amount I will be withdrawing from my retirement account. When I figured out my semi early retirement budget, it showed me that I will need to work 20-25 hours at my state’s minimum wage to help me fully cover my expenses. To the garden center, I hope to work.
The Options – What I Need to Plan For
“But you are too young to retire early”, many have said to me. But there are two options available for early retirement: the 72t or the rule of 55. I am not the person explain these concepts, but I would recommend talking to a flat-fee financial advisor like Nectarine Financial (I have no affiliation, but trust the owner of this company) or you can learn a lot in Reddit FIRE chats.
I will mention that the 72t offers annual fixed amounts for several years with tight rules and the rule of 55 allows full access to a retirement account — both of these options without penalty. Fortunately, my employer offers the rule of 55 and is the option I will likely take.
In addition to my budget accounting for one of these options — where I will withdrawal a max of 4% from my retirement accounts total, the part-time work I have planned on securing, I also have social security factored in down the way. From age 55 to 62, I will work part-time — for myself or for the garden center. Then at 62, I will start taking social security and fully move into early retirement. To me, that is still early in my books. Especially, when I hear rumblings of the government wanting to raise the the retirement age to 70 (I don’t know how that will work out, considering ageism is rampant, but that is a talk for another day).
The Logistics & Mindset
It’s all good and dandy everything works out on paper, but the real-life logistics can be mind-boggling to figure out. I still at am a rough sketch of what semi early retirement will look like in my life. The questions that constantly ramble around my mind:
- Do I get a roommate so I can stay where I am at?
- Do I get a camper van to travel the U.S. with my cats?
- Can I make working for myself sustainable and travel as a FT nomad?
- What about taking up Trusted Housesitters to try out a a cool new location?
- Do I buy a place while I am currently working FT that I can eventually move into FT when I retire?
- What about the kid or family ties? Responsibilities to them?
- What will I do about healthcare?
- Am I going to end up broke and miserable?
What about, what about, what about! Honestly, I don’t have this figured out yet and the mental stuff is frustrating at times.
Mindset wise, I am trying to prepare for losing my work identity. Which is a big stress factor of mine. My life has been tied to my career for decades, where I have spent most of my waking hours being good at what I do and have made great friends there. I know when that goes away, my job will replace me and my work-friends will continue with their busy lives forward. How do I step off the podium gracefully?
I have been trying to embrace hobbies, volunteering, making new friends outside of work and participated in outdoor activities more in the past couple years — so I can say that I am retiring to something. But after a hard day’s work, I am tired and frankly, do not have the energy. The good outcome of at least trying, is that I know what semi early retirement activities I can pursue with joy in the near future.
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Slowly I feel I am getting close to figuring out my path into early semiretirement. Because I know if I don’t come up with something soon, my tired brain may find a way to self-sabotage itself out of this 9-to-5 grind. I would freak out, for sure. Then slowly my mind would ease into this new journey, because I know I have the financial plans worked out. The world becomes my oyster.
