After school, the common path for many New Zealanders is to get full time work, get married, have kids.
All can be amazing in their own right, but each one carries extra responsibilities. As you age, your spare time becoming more and more limited.
When you are at school you have a huge amount of discretionary time. Once you graduate and get a full-time job your discretionary time is slashed, but you still tend to have a lot of time outside of work to do things you enjoy. Add a partner into the mix and your discretionary time can reduce slightly as you are now responsible to the relationship. Finally, kids will take up all of your discretionary time. Often as you age, your job takes up more hours than it did at the beginning too, as you gain more experience you tend to earn promotions which comes with more responsibilities and more hours.
Don’t get me wrong, marriage, kids and fulfilling work are all great, but the point is we no longer have much free time to do things that we love outside of marriage, kids and work. We tend to lose our passions as we age. Not many married people with young kids can continue to go fishing or hunting every weekend or catching up with friends every week. We don’t get much time to read or any leisure activity you can think of.
Our identity becomes work and family.
EARLY RETIREMENT IS THE MEANS, NOT THE SOLUTION
That is why early retirement can be a trap for many. We think of not having to work as some magic sauce that will solve any unhappiness we have with our full-time jobs. Sure, not having to work at a soul-destroying job may be great initially, but you will quickly adapt so that no work becomes your new normal, and you are no happier than when you had the crappy job.
Why? Because you are unfulfilled.
Pursuing early retirement should not be about the absence of work, or you will be extremely disappointed.
What is critical is what you choose to do with the newfound time.
That is the conundrum. As mentioned above, we tend to have less free time as we age, which makes it difficult to find time for things we love to do.
But at least financial independence affords you the opportunity to use your time in more enjoyable ways. The alternative is you don’t have the option at all, whilst remaining stuck in unfulfilling work.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking early retirement will solve all your problems. Make sure you have things outside of work that you love to do that will fill your days. Otherwise you may as well continue to be paid to be miserable, instead of unpaid and miserable.
If you need help with your personal retirement planning, then get in touch today.
The information contained on this site is the opinion of the individual author(s) based on their personal opinions, observation, research, and years of experience. The information offered by this website is general education only and is not meant to be taken as individualised financial advice, legal advice, tax advice, or any other kind of advice. You can read more of my disclaimer here