“I am learning a lot about myself. It’s exhilarating and horrible at exactly the same time.”
Tricia, aspiring career changer
I am a career coach, and one of my clients emailed me that sentiment to describe the mental gymnastics of trying to change careers after 10+ years in an area that no longer excited her.
She was excited at the prospect of change, but the change itself felt really hard. I advised her to do something every day to keep her bigger vision and especially the excitement of the change front of mind: for example, create and display prominently a vision board with pictures representing your new career and life; spend a few minutes visualizing your new, ideal day; write (and read again and again) a story detailing your new, improved life, written in vivid detail and in the present.
When you make any big life transition, like changing your work, or moving, or changes in the family, or embracing FIRE, it comes with ups and downs, and keeping the excitement front of mind helps you stay the path. We made all four of the life transitions mentioned above within the last year alone.
We created a new course for my career coaching business AND a new course for Costa Rica FIRE, upending our work. We moved our primary residence from NY to Florida. We became empty nesters when our youngest daughter entered college. We cut our work by more than half and only focus on passion projects, relying on our other income streams – we’re entering the drawdown phase after decades spent focused on accumulation.
Sometimes I think the Universe tests your resolve by throwing things at you to make you question big decisions. When I promised myself that I would set aside significant time to focus on the new courses, I was offered a big project that would have delayed the rollout of the courses. When we started planning the move to Florida, one of my oldest mentors called out of the blue wanting to put me up for an exciting job…in New York City. When we became empty-nesters, it turned out our youngest still had more breaks from college than we planned for – should we postpone some of our travel? Our youngest also happened to pick the most expensive college on her list – should we hold off on FIRE given the bigger expense?
As of now, we’re holding fast to our changes (though this analysis by CFA Daniel Amerman of how much money the US is printing really freaks me out!). Still, I try to practice what I preach, and as I advised my client, Tricia, to do, I too am weathering the stress of big life transitions by keeping the positives front of mind. I’m not a vision board person (though there are compelling reasons to make one), but I do meditate and visualize regularly, and I love to write lists of positive things.
On the heels of Valentine’s Day, here are some excerpts from my list – 30 things I love about our FIRE lifestyle:
A healthier life with a more laid-back schedule that matches our natural rhythms
- No need for alarm clocks
- Waking up when we’re rested
- Sleeping when we’re tired
- Sleeping in the afternoon – siestas!
- Running errands when stores, banks, the post office…are less busy
- Working when we want – the days we want, which hours in a day
- Checking off more states to run marathons in (Scott only, of course!)
- Exercising in the middle of the day if we prefer and not just before or after an already full day
- No more commutes
- More time to cook healthy meals and no more calorie-laden takeout lunches sitting in the office cubicle!
A more enjoyable life where we can do more of what we love
- Some calorie-laden lunches since we can eat out at odd times of day and discover more restaurants
- Movie marathons
- Movies at matinee prices – weekday mornings are more than half off!
- Free movies – sometimes with famous people in attendance!
- More time at the beach
- Taking nature walks during the week instead of the weekend, when parks are less crowded
- Visiting historical sites when these are less crowded
- Checking off destinations on our travel wish list – seeing the lavender in Provence, the red rocks in Sedona or a surprisingly amazing time in Cleveland (yes, Ohio)
- Travel when cheap flights come up – we scored $600 tickets to the Philippines!
- A full month in Costa Rica
A renewed sense of purpose where we don’t have to grind but can still challenge ourselves
- Bleisure travel – I did not make up that word!
- Having more time to scout out real estate and maybe pick a new geography to invest in
- Having more bandwidth to manage the real estate we do have – and realign our real estate portfolio to our current priorities
- Reading more – 43 books in 2019
- Getting creative about spending and discovering so many free things to do
- Getting creative about income and following new real estate opportunities
- Not having to rush our money decisions so we are clear on how not to invest
- Connecting with other entrepreneurs re-imagining a life outside the traditional 9-5
- Connecting with other personal finance bloggers who really inspire us
- Possibly inspiring others that they can achieve FIRE too
Writing out the positives keeps me positive
I just submitted our numbers to our accountant for tax time, and collecting all the documents, creating the summaries and troubleshooting what is missing or what looks wrong is very stressful!
Writing this post helps tremendously to balance that out. It may seem odd to pen a valentine to a thing like FIRE, instead of a person (I write to Scott too!), but if you’re in the throes of a big transition, try writing your own list of positives. It’s fun while you do it, and you can save it to re-read for later!
We are Scott and Caroline, 50-somethings who spent the first 20+ years of our adult lives in New York City, working traditional careers and raising 2 kids. We left full-time work in our mid-40’s for location-independent, part-time consulting projects and real estate investing, in order to create a more flexible and travel-centric lifestyle. 
Financial independence and early retirement is not something we originally focused on, but over time realized it was possible. Our free report, 
I’m retired early but every other day I’m still up with an alarm before 5AM to run with wife and friends. We are all way too busy to run later in the day plus there isn’t any traffic early when we run on the streets. And on the other days I still have meetings to go to for the nonprofits I chair as well as my paid consulting hobby jobs. There are sometimes planes to catch and sometimes early tennis and pickle ball matches. If the fish are biting we are up even earlier. Life is great but it isn’t slow paced and I only occasionally control my schedule. But we echo most of the rest of it, shop when you want. Work in my pajamas at home. More time hiking, fishing and playing sports, more time cooking together. It is pretty nice!
Your schedule may not be slow-paced but it sounds like you designed it that way, and that’s the most important thing — you set up your schedule to suit you. Having lived in NYC, which is very Type-A and overscheduled, we prioritized fewer scheduled appointments, including activities that would require us to set an alarm in the morning! I do know people who still love the structure even though they’re more retired than working, but for us, we needed to consciously slow it down. It takes a while to detox from that NY Minute!