Allison and I got laid off from our jobs in January of 2015. At the time, we had no idea it would be the last time we would ever work “real jobs” again.

We were in our early 40s and “retiring early” wasn’t even on our radar, especially in the SF Bay Area (the highest cost of living area in the country). We had never heard of the concept of FIRE (Financial Independence / Retiring Early).

Fortunately, the timing was good. One year earlier we had significantly reduced our housing expenses by moving from San Francisco to Oakland. We didn’t realize it at the time, but moving just 10 miles (using geographic arbitrage) allowed us to reduce our time to financial independence by nine years!

It also helped that over the years, we had just intuitively been doing a lot of the right things financially to reach FIRE.

 

FIRE Epiphanies

Fast forward six years, and we’re happier than ever, despite the crappy 2020 that we’ve all experienced.

If you’re on your own path to FIRE, you probably wonder what life will be like when you finally get there. While your mileage may vary, we can tell you what it’s been like for us.

Before we got laid off from our last jobs, we had been working pretty steadily at various companies for the previous 17 years (with a few layoffs and hiccups here and there). So, we had no idea what to expect when we unexpectedly found ourselves in the FIRE lifestyle.

In fact, you can say it has been a series of epiphanies. An epiphany is “an experience of a sudden and striking realization.”

It’s kind of like when Keanu Reeves does his patented phrase “Whoa!” because he’s simultaneously surprised and awed.

Here are 10 such epiphanies we’ve experienced over our FIRE years…

 

Our Selves

The first set of epiphanies involves what we’ve learned about ourselves after reaching FIRE. You’d think after hitting your 40s that you wouldn’t change much more in your life. Surprisingly, FIRE does change you (mostly for the better).

 

1. Our Health is Better Than Ever

Now that we have the time, we can really focus on improving this part of our lives. Usually, you’re in peak physical condition in your 20s; however for us, we’re probably in the best shape of our lives! Here are just some of the things we do to maintain and improve our health...

Physical health: We walk everyday for at least an hour, usually covering 2+ miles. We strength train three days a week, I swim three days, and we do yoga and stretching. Allison also cooks healthy and delicious meals every day.

Mental health: We get regular massages (pre-COVID), enjoy relaxation in our building’s hot tub, practice meditation, sleep for at least seven hours each night, and get sunshine and fresh air daily.

Relationship health: We make sure to carve out time for cuddling, intimacy, and quality “us”  time.

That translates to some decent health measures. My average blood pressure is 111/73, resting heart rate is 72, and BMI is 22.1 (right in the middle of normal range).

 

2. We Developed New Identities

When you’re working, you have a built-in identity, which is what you do for a living. Before FIRE, Allison was a Senior Technical Project Manager and I was an Online Marketing Professional.

It can be scary to “lose” that identity, especially when you’re still relatively young. But fortunately we’ve been able to create new identities. Now we’re FIRE bloggers, world travelers, and something we’ve always dreamed of being, published authors.

And the cool thing is that we may develop additional identities as time goes on. We’re not locked into our existing roles. Maybe we’ll become mentors, teachers, leaders, nomads, or pioneers. The sky’s the limit.

 

3. Our “To-Do” List Became a “To-Desire” List

Allison and I used to have fairly stressful jobs. She was in charge of big projects like setting up Stubhub as a ticket marketplace for Major League Baseball. I led marketing teams with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars per year.

These jobs required lots of important tasks and to-do lists. Since I was used to having this kind of structure, I created a to-do list after we FIRE’d. The big difference is that the items on the list are things we want to do instead of things we have to do.

So, our list contains things like what we want to blog about, restaurants we want to try, trails we want to hike, events we want to attend, road trips we want to take, international trips we want to book, and more.

One of our big goals we call 60x60, which is visiting 60 countries by age 60. We’re halfway there at age 50!

 

Everyday Life

What about the day to day of everyday life? Here are some unexpected ways that life has changed after FIRE…

 

4. Time Slows Down

I noticed an interesting phenomenon in my early 20s when I moved from Columbus, Ohio to New York City. I only lived in Manhattan for a total of 15 months, but it felt like I had been there a lot longer. Why was that?

Mr. Money Mustache has a great post about this phenomenon: How To Slow Down Time and Live Longer. It has to do with how much new and interesting stimuli you’re exposed to on a regular basis.

When I lived in Columbus, everything was safe and comfortable. The problem was I didn’t have a lot of new challenges or novel experiences to keep me excited and motivated.  Each day morphed into the next with only the occasional note-worthy occurrence to break things up.

After moving to NYC, suddenly everything was new and exciting. I would walk around the city every day taking different routes so I could explore new neighborhoods. My whole world opened up to new foods, interesting people, and a variety of cultures.

The FIRE lifestyle is similar in that it’s always a surprise. Each day is unique. We have some routines to maintain structure, but we are constantly trying new things. And since we don’t have to worry about the demands of a regular job, we can enjoy these moments of spontaneity whenever they arise. 

 

5. We Savor Life More

Not having to rush off to work also gives you the opportunity to slow down and savor your life experiences. This means spending a little more time enjoying that sunset, that delicious meal, that conversation with your friend, or that stroll in nature.

Yale University has a wonderful free course called The Science of Well Being, which provides a variety of techniques to increase your happiness, backed by data and scientific studies.

One section talks about Savoring, offering suggestions to help you better relish your experiences. These techniques include: sharing the experience with another person, thinking about how lucky you are to enjoy such an amazing moment, keeping a souvenir or photo of that activity, and making sure you stay in the present moment the entire time.

 

6. We Value Experiences Over Stuff

When we were in our late 30s (back in the late 2000’s), we ended up accumulating quite a few assets. We owned approximately $3 million worth of property in San Francisco, which consisted of a 3-unit Victorian house and a brand new condominium. We lived in one unit and rented out the others. The property taxes alone came to $30,000 per year.

We also had all kinds of stuff filling up our garage, a crawl space under the house, and a storage unit at the condo. Plus we had a car (even though we didn’t drive much), a motorcycle, and two bicycles.

Eventually, we sold all the real estate, the motorcycle, and got rid of a lot of the extra stuff in storage. Now we just have our condo in Oakland, along with one car and one storage unit.

Having less stuff allows us to focus much more on our experiences (we even created a site to encourage this type of behavior called Experiencify). We spend our time, money, and effort thinking about the people we want to meet, the places we want to go, and the things we want to do!

Another way to think about it is valuing time over money. The Yale University course calls this Time Affluence, and their studies show that, although the majority of people said they would prefer to have more money, choosing more time was associated with greater happiness.

 

Money & Finances

You may be thinking that all these life changes seem pretty cool, but what about your money and finances. How do they change after FIRE?

Let’s take a look…

 

7. Our Portfolio Keeps Going Up

One unexpected, yet wonderful, surprise is that our portfolio has continued to grow even after we stopped earning full-time salaries. We earn almost as much in passive income as we did with two salaries.

In the chart below, I left the dollar amounts off, but you can see the trend line of our net worth over the past seven years. We were fortunate to FIRE in the middle of a 10-year bull market. You can then see the sharp decline from COVID-19, followed by the V-shaped rebound in the markets.

We realize that we’re very fortunate. Many Americans are suffering much more from the economic effects of the pandemic. For those working in service areas like restaurants and travel, their jobs have been devastated.

What it also shows is that if your portfolio is diversified (ours is now about 65% Stocks, 30% Bonds, and 5% Other) and your withdrawals are well below 4% (ours is under 2%), then this upward trajectory is not unexpected.

 

8. Shifting to the Drawdown Phase is Hard

That brings us to the fact that it’s been difficult to transition our mindset from the accumulation phase to the drawdown phase. Our natural inclination is to continue growing and protecting our nest egg.

After many years earning, saving, investing, and keeping our expenses low, it’s hard to let go and start spending that money. But one of the main reasons to work so hard to get to FIRE is to enjoy the fruits of your labor once you get there.

Of course, we realize this is a first world problem! And we don’t take it for granted.

We’ve assigned Allison the role of CSO (Chief Spending Officer) to help us decide how to spend our money in the coming years. I anticipate a lot of travel, eating out, enjoying new experiences, and creating a more robust charitable vehicle.

 

Our Connection to the World

In addition to all the ways our own lives have changed, so has our relationship with our community and the world at large.

 

9. We Know Our Neighbors

When we lived in San Francisco and were busy working all the time, we rarely met our neighbors or the people working in our neighborhoods. We were just too focused on our jobs, our to-do lists, and what we would do in those spare hours we had for leisure time.

Now we’re kind of like the old retirees you think about who have all the time in the world to chit-chat, meet for coffee, do game nights, etc. Although COVID has put a damper on it recently, over the years we have gotten to know dozens of the local business owners and workers in our area.

We’re on several committees in our condo building, including the Social Committee, so we interact with many of the other residents in our 135-unit building (many who are also retired). We are involved with our local neighborhood improvement district, and we’ve even worked with the Oakland A’s to advocate for bringing their new stadium to our neighborhood.

Bonus: Research from the Yale University course reveals that happy people spend more time with others and have a richer set of social connections than unhappy people. Studies even show that the simple act of talking to a stranger on the street can boost our mood more than we expect. 

 

10. We Want to Make a Difference in the World

One of the best parts about reaching FIRE is that your motivations are no longer driven by your job and making money. When we were working, we didn’t have time to think about how we might be able to make the world a better place.

Now, most of the projects we work on (e.g. blogging, writing, speaking) are designed to challenge us, bring us joy, and (hopefully) help other people.

One example is when we wrote our second book “Investing for Kids.” We hoped this book might do well with kids (and parents alike). We did a ton of research and put in a lot of effort to make it fun and interesting. However, the positive feedback has been beyond anything we could have expected!

Reading the reviews of parents learning along with their kids and having people send us photos of their kids reading the book have just blown us away.

As of this writing, we’ve received over 260 Amazon reviews (4.7 star average) in less than three months. Here are just a few of the review headlines we’ve received:

Great for adults too!

Awesome book for kids!

Every child needs this book

Easy and fun to read!

For us, this is what it’s all about -- making a difference in the world and in people’s lives.

Conclusion

Hopefully this gives you some idea about how your life may change when you achieve FIRE. Of course not everything is perfect, but nothing in life ever is. It will take a little time to adjust to your new life outside the constructs of a full-time job.

Your path may or may not look similar to ours. Perhaps you’ll be creating artwork, or starting a side business, or volunteering your time to build houses or foster animals. Like we said, the sky’s the limit.

Just make sure to continue challenging yourself, create projects that are fun and fulfilling, and set up some goals to shoot for. However your FIRE path turns out, enjoy the journey!