Must Retirement Be a Hard Landing?

As a professional software developer I got to solve complex business problems using cutting-edge technology. I loved this part of the job. Unfortunately, it accounted for just a small fraction of it.

I spent the majority of my workday idling in mind-numbing meetings, performing administrative tasks of dubious value, and fielding endless streams of email, instant messages and drive-bys. This is not the least of the reasons I retired early.

Yet even for the small part of the job I enjoyed, there was this nagging resentment. I wanted desperately to master the tools of my trade, not just tinker with them. But I was too busy trying to squeeze productivity out of that tiny sliver of desk time.

I learned just enough of a tool or technology to solve a problem before moving on to the next. I had only the time to produce, not to consume; to participate in, rather than to observe, the world around me.

Role Reversal

When I retired, I transitioned instantly and completely from producer to consumer; participant to observer. Now I had all the time in the world to indulge my curiosity. I devoured articles, books and YouTube videos on subjects I didn’t have time to explore while I was on the company dime.

Many aspects of traditional retirement might be characterized by this reversal of roles. If you’ve already retired, this may ring familiar.

Body

If you’ve read my previous posts, you know that rock climbing and thru-hiking are part of my DNA. These were the priorities when I retired. I’ve crammed every spring, summer and fall since leaving work with the planning and execution of these pursuits.

Climbing and hiking were (and still are) essential to my success transitioning to (and navigating through) retirement. But I need intellectual stimulation, too. That is the place I go in the off season.

Mind

I took up computational cryptography as a winter hobby (nerd alert!). I audited a college course on the subject, and taught myself the mathematics underpinning it. I wrote thousands of lines of computer code implementing its arcane algorithms.

I could linger as long as I liked on a topic that confused me, so that I might understand it fully before jumping to the next. The freedom to think without fear of interruption was borderline euphoric.

Yet for all the intellectual satisfaction I took from this exercise, there was this nagging feeling. This time it was emptiness. I had not solved any problem, or produced anything of value. Rather than a means to an end, my trip down the rabbit hole had been an exercise in pure self-indulgence; an end in itself.

Spirit

For a while I convinced myself that my unique ability to balance body and mind would suit me well for life after work. But now I wonder if the selfish pursuit of my passions, balanced though they may be, can satisfy me indefinitely.

I keep thinking there is some Zen wisdom that might allow me to say yes. But it hasn’t revealed itself to me yet. The scarce resource I longed for while I was working—time—has become overabundant.

It turns out my psychic nourishment comes not just from taking, but also giving. Consumption or production alone is not sufficient. But trading one for the other is the fate traditional retirement prescribes for most of us.

A Softer Landing?

Retirement from a traditional career like mine is a step function. You go from a hundred to zero in an instant. In the most obvious sense, this characterizes the head-snapping transition from accumulating wealth to spending it down.

Yet in subtle, but no less important, ways, you feel the whiplash. Must it be this way? Must retirement be a sudden stop?

Sabbatical?

Chris wrote a great piece recently profiling his Abundo colleague, Riki, who takes an unorthodox approach to retirement. Instead of working non-stop to achieve financial independence at some far-off, single point in the future, Riki and his wife break their careers into chunks, each separated by a sabbatical of up to a year in length.

Unlike in the academic sense of the term, these sabbaticals are more like recurring mini retirements. Riki punctuates his work life with a series of short pauses, not the triple-exclamation-point ending that awaits most traditional retirees.

I admire Riki for such out-of-the-box thinking. Unfortunately, periodic sabbaticals are anathema to the corporate ethos; totally incompatible as they are with its mantras of productivity, profit and shareholder value.

Related: Should You Consider a Sabbatical?

Alternative Career?

I am endlessly struck by the number of climbers I meet whose passion for the sport exceeds even mine. Many of them are nomads. Some are much younger than I. They dart from one exotic place to the next, living to climb on a shoestring budget.

On a recent trip to Utah I met a Canadian nurse named Rebecca. Rebecca was en route from British Columbia to Tucson, Arizona, where she would start a three-month stint in a hospital emergency department later in the fall.

On her journey south, Rebecca would sample some of the wonderful climbing and mountain-biking venues dotting the western U.S., enjoying them in the fair-weather months before starting her winter contract.

I asked Rebecca about her occupation, and the flexible lifestyle its travel-nursing option affords her. I was struck by the flexibility of this career model; the balance of work and leisure it provides. It seemed to me an intriguing antidote to the traditional, sudden-stop retirement that had been my experience.

Kids? No Problem!

I ended this year’s climbing season on the tiny Greek island of Kalymnos. There I met Dan and Meike (pronounced MEE-kah); a 40-something couple from New Zealand with two toddlers, ages two and four, in tow. All flew from Auckland to Amsterdam last spring. On arrival on the European continent, they bought a used campervan and drove south.

Reaching Athens by early October, they boarded a ferry—campervan and all—for Kalymnos. There they would stay indefinitely; to camp, snorkel, enjoy spectacular sunsets and, of course, climb.

When they’ve had their fill of Greece (present tense, since they are still on the island as I write), Dan, Meike and kids will ferry back to Athens and drive north to Amsterdam, stopping here and there to smell the flowers along the way. They’ll resell the van and board a plane for New Zealand, capping off their six-month hiatus.

How on earth do they pull it off?

Dan is an independent builder in New Zealand, producing one or two custom homes a year. (Meike, who raises the kids, arguably has the more difficult job.) Dan doesn’t earn a ton of money. Confining their travels to low-cost countries like Greece, and the various countries of eastern Europe they passed through en route from Amsterdam, Dan and Meike leverage a form of geoarbitrage for travel.

Boxes and Comfort Zones

Experiences like Riki’s, Rebecca’s, and Dan’s and Meike’s prove that what may seem impossible at first blush actually isn’t.

If you have the imagination to think outside of the corporate box, and the guts to step outside your comfort zone, you could be living your life like one of them; or any of the hundreds of nomads I meet in my travels, many of whom employ some variation on this binge-working theme.

Trade Offs

Of course, alternatives such as these represent trade-offs, and trade-offs come at a cost. Unless your part-time or seasonal gig pays handsomely—most do not—it’ll be a lot harder to save for traditional retirement.

In addition to earning less, you will likely forgo the benefits of workplace savings plans, discounted healthcare premiums and/or FSAs offered to full-time workers in more traditional organizations.

In effect, choosing a path like Riki’s, Rebecca’s, or Dan’s and Meike’s, you are trading future time for present time. Future time is not guaranteed, so why not front load it? Illness, injury, premature death, or just plain old age may preclude future time. On the other hand, choosing present time may condemn you to work well into your elder years.

These are personal choices. Only you can make them.

Related: Early Retiree Healthcare: A Case Study

Course Correction

For me, retirement was indeed a step function. A small part of me wishes I’d had the guts to pursue a career path that afforded me more time to consume and observe when I was younger.

But the bigger part of me has no regrets. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have chosen a career that permitted retirement with enough youth, health and energy left to realize my adventure dreams.

Now, five years after an early retirement characterized by self-indulgence, I’ve started scribbling for this blog. If only in a small way, I am producing again.

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[I’m David Champion. I retired from a career in software development in March 2019, just shy of my 53rd birthday. To position myself for 40+ years of worry-free retirement, I consumed all manner of early-retirement resources. Notable among these was CanIRetireYet, whose newsletters I have received in my inbox every Monday morning for the last ten years. CanIRetireYet is one of exactly two personal finance newsletters I subscribe to. Why? Because of the practical, no-nonsense advice I find here. I attribute my financial success in no small part to what I have learned from Darrow and Chris. In sharing some of my own observations on the early-retirement journey, I aim to maintain the high standard of value readers of CanIRetireYet have come to expect.]

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