9 things no one tells you when you retire young

Young people can retire early with a few years of very hard work. But retiring early has consequences that most young people are unaware.

You’ll get a lot of criticism when you retire early after working hard for several years and being smart with your money.

People assume that I am lazy, a trust fund baby, or other things that are completely wrong.

Stuff no one tells you about when you retire early

1. Spending Decreases

As a young retiree, you’ll spend a lot less than you thought.

When you work a regular 9 to 5 full-time job, you have more expenses to worry about. You have to purchase work clothes, car maintenance expenses, and pay more income taxes because your income is higher.

No Bueno.

In contrast, when you retire early. Most of these expenses are greatly reduced or eliminated.

You can start reducing your expenses now, despite high inflation.

As a retired young person, you have no one to impress. No other co-workers telling you how great their vacation was or how much they spent on their expensive weekends. As a result, all peer pressure is removed from your life.

Sure. You can still look good for yourself or your partner. But you’ll find yourself being content with much less.

After paying all our debts, we stopped working for about six months. We found out that we were spending at least $1000 to $1500 less on our monthly expenses. Turns out, life is simpler when you become financially independent.

Related: How We Paid Our Mortgage In 5 Years.

This is because we had more time to manage our budget. We also sold one of our cars because we weren’t using it at all.

Retiring early also gave us more time freedom to improve our cooking skills. By cooking most of our meals at home, we reduced our food budget from $950 ( It’s just the two of us in our home) to less than half that amount.

Everyone fears not having enough money in retirement, whether you retire young or not. I saw this myself firsthand. Although most people I worked with at the gym were financially successful, they feared running out of money at some point.

Related: Money Lessons I Learned From Training Rich People.

But the truth about early retirement is that you’ll be spending much less month to month, and you will have more time to improve your budgets, reducing your monthly expenses even further.

2. Your Sense Of purpose changes

Work gives people meaning. And since we spend most of our lives working full-time jobs, it ends up defining who we are.

After doing physical therapy for so many years, I felt a little bit lost when I stopped working for six months. If people asked me what I did, I would just tell them I was still doing some training or working on some personal projects.

The solution to this problem is to have a plan B before retiring early. Maybe you want to dedicate more time to a hobby or volunteer for a cause. This keeps you busy and makes you feel productive at the same time.

In addition, you can find something you enjoy that helps other people as well, and that is the ultimate goal. Most millionaires find ways to give back.

Seeing other people succeed because you helped them can bring you great joy.

Although I didn’t have a plan before quitting my day job, I knew I liked helping other folks.

So although I didn’t work for anyone for those six months, I created a new workout system that allows anyone to train from anywhere in the world.

This new system became part of my core identity and has now become one of my new purposes in life. My second purpose is to help others achieve their own financial independence.

3. Time is more valuable

When someone else pays you for your time, it’s like they own your time. But when you start working for yourself. All of a sudden, you own your time.

This was a new concept for me. After I stopped working for other people at a young age, I was now responsible for telling myself what to do every day. Having worked for others all my life, it was a shock not to be told what to do and how to do it.

It was tough initially, so I did nothing for a while.

Related: 18 Best Part-Time Jobs That Are Fun To Do.

After a few months, I decided to start a health and fitness business with the workout system I had created, and it has been doing great ever since. But that means that my time is more limited now. So I have to say no to a lot of new projects.

Time becomes an asset that you want to protect at all costs. You can always make more money, but can never gain more time.

When I worked for someone else, I didn’t care how long I worked as long as I got paid. But now that I own my time, I try to make the most of it. I try to learn about entrepreneurship, business ideas, and marketing.

Working for yourself it’s the best feeling, sometimes we just go to the movies on a Tuesday after lunch, the whole place is mostly empty. It is an amazing feeling. When you own your time, you want to do something that brings you happiness, which is possible when you retire early.

4. Laziness is not an option

When people hear the word early retirement, they think of less work. A time of relaxation where you can finally sit down and watch TV for days on end. Sometimes this is true.

But not for me.

After retiring early, I did take some time off to think. That is how I came up with the concept of the “Powerwall workouts”. A system where you can work out from anywhere. For beginners, all the way to advanced athletes.

But that means that now, I work at a lot more. Probably twice as much; some weeks I could easily do 80 to 90 hours of work.

The difference is that I am doing work that I enjoy and that brings meaning to my life. I get to help people out with their health.

Also, others come across this blog, and I get to help them with their money mindset.

When you are young and have a lot of energy, you will find something to do to fill your time. Some other young people go into real estate or even back to working full-time jobs, but they get to choose where and how.

We did meet some criticism from friends and family after we retired early. But we understood where they were coming from.

Also, people close to you will have difficulty understanding someone with an entrepreneurial mindset.

So we just brushed it off, kept our heads down and kept our goals in line.

5. People look at you weird

If you start searching online for words like early retirement, you’ll find most articles are addressed to people in their fifties or sixties. Even then, that is considered early.

We retired in our mid-thirties. In a way, we are part of the F.I.R.E. movement, which is short for Financial Independence, Retire Early. I discovered this movement early in my twenties, and it changed my mindset toward money.

Because we retired so much earlier, people we spoke to would look puzzled after telling them we were retired. So I just stopped saying it altogether.

With a puzzled face, they would say something like:

• So what do you do with your time?
• So basically, you do nothing nowadays?
• Are you even contributing to social security?

When you retire early, you may have to come up with fake problems, so you can fit in with other people that are not financially free yet.

Or better yet, surround yourself with other people that have achieved financial freedom early in life.

6. You will constantly worry about money

When you retire young, there will almost never be enough money to make you feel happy and secure.

• If you have $100,000 saved. You’ll feel you’ll need at least a million.
• If you already have a million, you’ll feel like you actually need more like 5 million.
• If you have 5 million in the bank… etc.

No matter how much money you have, or how little for that matter. It will always feel like you’re not there just yet.

The truth is most millionaires never stop worrying about money.

If you live in the united states, you already live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It is truly a privilege. I grew up in Ecuador, where the average salary is $850 per month!

So if you follow our recommendations, like saving for an emergency fund, reducing your expenses, and having a frugal mentality, you will do just fine in retirement.

Bonus:How To Live On One Income.

7. relationships get better

When I was working a full-time job, I always felt like I didn’t have enough time for myself. I was stressed out all the time. And this feeling affected my relationship with my wife.

I always wanted to pay more attention to her and spend more time together. But we couldn’t, and we would only see each other at nights. Even then, we were too tired to called that quality time.

But after becoming financially, stable, everything changed.

• We started walking together in the morning.
• Exercised in the gym I built in the house, which led to looking better and having more confidence.
• Spent more time with our Dutch shepherd Nikita.
• Visited our parents and helped them more.

Turns out, most of the stress in life comes from not having enough time. Time to do what you want and time spent with those we love.

Retiring early fixed all of that.

8. health gets better

I’m a firm believer that humans are not meant to work 8 hours in a day. It is just too much.

And it’s never 8 hours of work. You find that you are actually working more than 10 hours, when you add your commute. This amount of sitting wreaks havoc on your body.

Your joints suffer, your blood sugar suffers, and your behind suffers.

People who have jobs that encourage more standing are not much better off.

Reaching your financial freedom to the point where you can retire early will help you become healthier.

With more time on your hands, you can choose to do some exercise. You won’t feel tired after a long work day because you plan your day.

No boss breathing behind your back or giving you yearly reviews, causing chronic stress.

All these health benefits come because you can afford to retire early.

9. become mission-driven

If you are someone with a type A personality, you’ll most likely find something useful to do with your time.

For me, it’s always been helping people.

I believe when you are young, you have this feeling of wanting to help others. The problem is as we get older and become preoccupied with life, this feeling fades into the background.

But it is always there. You just have to rediscover it.

Writing a blog like this, where we help others become financially successful, has been my way of giving back. I want to see every young person achieve their version of financial freedom.

When you retire early, you have more time to give back.

Retiring young is amazing. But is it for you?

Retiring young is not for everyone. For some, it will be a place of sorrow where they lose their purpose and become sedentary.

But for others, it will be a paradise of freedom and a new place to make dreams come true.

It helps to have a plan before you retire early. I was lucky to stumble on two things I enjoy doing. Health and writing.

Knowing what your strengths are will help you find your true purpose.

Also, you don’t need to retire young if you like your job. Many people are lucky to work on something they truly enjoy, so why leave something that is not stressing you out.

Either way, even if you don’t want to retire early. Financial freedom should be one of your goals.

When you are financially free, you can dictate how you want your life to be. And this type of freedom cannot be bought with all the money in the world.