My learnings along the FIRE journey
So I FIREd retired early last year at the age of 45, worked in banking IT overseas for 16 years and moved back to Bangalore last year.
After 10 months I got back again into my full time job.
Some of the myths here I want to debunk.
- Once you take a break and relax, it is impossible to get back to fulltime work: This is a myth. A break and long time off does wonders in terms of healing those corporate scars and you can definitely get back energized with a fresh Outlook and this time you are joining out of choice rather than compulsion of money. You can target exactly the kind of job that makes you happy.
- Stress comes from long hours: This is again untrue. If you find the type of work you are fully engrossed in it and time just vanishes. This is exactly the kind of target state that everyone must aspire for. Not money, not title, not position. It is about how your time passes during your workday. If you are counting hours and watching the clock, even if you don't have work, it is of no use.Stress on the other hand comes from lack of control, the feeling when you know you can do something but you are not able to do it and someone else is forcing things on you and you don't have autonomy. So aim for autonomy.
- All that matters is money: I used to be a big beleiver that the end matters rather than the means to the end. I thought the only reason we go to work is for the month end paycheck and FIRE is that key to do away with the monthly paycheck and not having to work ever again.I realized this is partially true. For many people they really need all the money they are earning to make their ends meet. However, for manu especially in the FIRE community we have huge disposable income and very high savings rates, so we were over optimizing money to achieve FIRE quickly rather than trying to find the type of work we would enjoy and do it regardless of money. Yes we need money to pay the bills, but we kind of took it to the extreme.
So now that I reached my FIRE goalpost I realised, that having a job in itself was not a bad thing, it actually gave 100% of what I needed plus it gave me many unpleasant things like stress etc but that was mainly due to my own imposter syndrome and fear
Now I am approaching my job with a completely fresh perspective. My salary is 1/4th of my previous fulltime overseas job, although it pays my monthly bills and leaves some for discretionary spending.
If I had to redo the whole thing again with the wisdom I have now, I would have not stressed so much on FIRE although getting to FI was great, I would have chosen jobs where I get to learn and do good stuff and not be so fearful of losing my job and over optimizing financial goals.