An Update: 2 Years into Early Retirement

Two and a half years ago my husband Brian and I were living lives full of stress headaches, status meetings, and time sheets. We had made it through zoom-schooling our two boys through the pandemic while both working full time W-2 jobs, and we were exhausted.

Due to the economic recovery, we had hit our financial independence number; we had been working towards this for years, but until then, we hadn’t really considered what ‘early retiring’ would actually look like. We both ended up reaching a breaking point with our jobs and took the leap into the unknown a couple months later – here are some updates on how things have changed with our finances, identity, and family a little over two years later.

Financial: This was a lesson in quick pivoting! When we left our jobs, we had a whole passive income plan set up that was based almost entirely on our real estate income (long-term rentals, short-term rentals, and commercial) – well, of course that market tanked pretty much immediately. <sad trombone> Our short-term rentals turned cashflow negative due to oversaturation, lower demand, and higher insurance costs, and we had to lower rents on our long-term rentals for the first time ever. Our commercial real estate investments were hit even harder due to the interest rate increases, and many of those are still under water.

Luckily we had split our assets pretty evenly between real estate and the stock market, so we were able to pivot into generating the extra income we needed from dividends and stock options. It’s probably not an ideal long-term strategy, especially with what may be ahead for the markets, but it’s been working for now. We’ve also shifted into private lending and debt financing, which has been lucrative with the high interest rates. We’ve also started holding more cash in case we are moving into an economic situation where both the real estate market and stock market are stagnant for awhile.

Still one of my favorite scenes of all time!

Identity: Leaving your career is a really interesting self-reflection exercise. Here in the U.S. especially, our self-worth and identity are so wrapped up in what we ‘do’ rather than who we ‘are’, that it becomes a somewhat jarring transition to redefine who you are outside of those standard confines. Well, I myself found it difficult at least – my husband Brian happily left his computer engineer identity in the rearview mirror and has now taken on the new identity of “handyman”, building us a new screened-in porch, doing all of the maintenance work on our rentals, and occasionally even helping out the neighbors with their projects. He loves it and is feeling so much better physically than he was before.

I have been really fulfilled by building this business (Rising Femme Wealth) and helping women with their financial transformations, in addition to getting my Enrolled Agent tax certification (just one more exam to go!) and doing a little bit of consulting work on federal grant applications. I also still play my instruments, hike, volunteer, read, travel, etc. And as hard as the shift originally was to move out of my career with the Federal government, I am SO GLAD that I did with everything that has happened recently. That is just reason 1,000,001 why it is so important to start building up an “FU” fund.

Family: Not being tied to 9-5 jobs has allowed us spend large chunks of time traveling as a family – a month driving around Southern Africa, a month in Japan, 2 weeks in Chile and Patagonia, 2 weeks in New Zealand, and more. This would never have been possible with our limited vacation time while working traditional jobs.

On Boulders Beach with penguins in South Africa

Having a flexible schedule has also allowed us to provide more accommodations for our son with special needs – we’ve been able to send him to a special school that’s an hour round-trip commute, and we are able to shuttle him to his various appointments during the day. Having this free time has also allowed Brian to spend more time with his elderly mother, who moved to Austin last year to be near us.

Overall we are trying to work hard to prioritize the things that mean the most to us, and let go of things that don’t serve us anymore. We still have a lot of family responsibilities at this stage of our lives, but we are grateful that we have more bandwidth to take those on than we would have had otherwise.

If I had to list 3 big takeaways from our early retirement, they would be:

1) Be ready to quickly pivot financially if needed

2) Have something to retire “to” and not just “from”

3) Be prepared to be more accountable for your own happiness; we previously blamed a lot on our ‘jobs’, but once that excuse was gone, we had to take more personal responsibility for our mindset (still a work in progress!)

If you are ready to start envisioning your early retirement and putting together a wealth plan to get there, comment on this post to find out how we can help! If you don’t start now, then when?