Maybe We Won’t Retire Just Yet?

Mrs. Done by Forty and I have always been planners. Early on in our relationship, we created a New Year's Day tradition of going to The Olive Garden and planning out the upcoming year over salad and breadsticks.

The restaurant has changed but the routine is the same: we both bring our notebooks, we ask for a booth, we eat too much, and just talk about everything that we think would be cool to do with this one big life we’re making together. By the end of the meal, we have a few pages of things we both will try to make happen: travel, work goals, money goals, family goals, all of it.

For most of the past decade or so, an early retirement has been part of those plans. While there are parts of my job I find fulfilling, after working for Fortune 500 corporations for over a decade I think I’m ready for something other than this sort of desk life, Monday through Friday. The pay is fantastic and working at home is a joy for me. There’s no micromanaging and, when this job is good, it’s really good: even a bit purposeful.

But when it’s bad, it’s real bad. The stress from work spills over into my home life. I find myself having trouble sleeping when I have too many projects, as I lie in bed worrying about how I can possibly get it all done in time. I’m not as connected with Mrs. Done by Forty or Baby AF when work is like that: only giving divided attention to everyone.

So, for the past nine years, the plan was to eventually leave this sort of traditional full time work. To actually retire, at least for a while. We talked about living abroad for the first year. Maybe getting a little 13 foot Scamp and towing it around the country for a while, before Baby AF went to school. Spending a month visiting family, and helping out with their kiddos or with family members who could use a hand.

Mrs. Done by Forty decided somewhere along the way in her PhD program that she didn’t want to pursue a tenure track position. Academia was pretty rough on her for the years she devoted to the program: she wasn’t sure she wanted to go back for a second helping. And we have a community of close friends here; she didn’t want to pick up and leave for a new state, just to have a chance at maybe getting tenure after another few grueling years.

So her plan was to avoid full time work as well, and maybe when the kids went to school we’d both decide to work part time for an organization we liked, or volunteer. Still, when we could, we thought we’d take a nice long break from work.

But something changed last year when Mrs. Done by Forty was invited to interview for a post-doc. At first, she was sure she wouldn’t take the position: she only interviewed to be polite. But then when she learned more about the job, she was excited about the possibility. We’d have to put Baby AF in daycare for the first time, but he was already over a year old and it seemed like it might be a good thing for him.

Turns out, the job was a good thing for Mrs. Done by Forty, too, as well as our relationship. She got some time away from being ‘on’ as a mom 24/7. She got some time to put her skills and knowledge to use in a professional setting where her contributions were valued. And as weird as it might sound, we got some time alone from each other, too. Since I work from home and she wrote her dissertation from home, and Baby AF usually doesn’t leave the house on his own, we were all together. All the time.

Of course, we like spending time together. But we probably got too much of a good thing, literally being around each other every hour of every day. It took Mrs. Done by Forty working outside the home for us to realize that.

But ever since she took the job, we’ve been kind of dancing around the issue of what this means for our initial plan for early retirement. The post-doc is technically a contract position, only open for two years. But there’s talk of offering a permanent role. If they offered that, would she take it? Would she want to continue working full time or part time? And for how long?

And we’re planning on growing the family, adding the yet-to-be-named MC Baby to the mix. Would she want to take more than the twelve weeks of maternity leave they offer? (Privilege check: twelve weeks paid is pretty amazing here in the States. Hashtag blessed.)

I’m looking at these things from a slightly different perspective. I am totally cool with my partner choosing whatever career path is best for her. But the kind of early retirement we’d been talking about had us all hanging out together (even if not 24/7). Would I want to try to be a stay at home dad, or keep the kids in daycare? Would I still want to leave traditional work if it meant I wouldn’t have my best friend around each day to play board games with and take day trips and eat meals with and maybe day drink with sometimes?

What about living abroad for a year? What about towing that Scamp and camping in state parks all around our nation before the kids went off to school?

These are very lucky problems to have. The kind that revolve around the preposterously fortunate thing you’ve been working for not necessarily turning out exactly the way you thought.

Still, they are our problems, if we can even call them that. It’s just proving sometimes tricky for us to make all the pieces fit together perfectly once one of us finds out that we maybe want to do something different with our lives.

Welcome to marriage, right?

I’m genuinely happy for Mrs. Done by Forty in that she’s found something that is fulfilling for her, in her field, and right in our backyard, too. (The office is like two miles from our house.) I can see how much happier we are with this new set up, how Baby AF is thriving in his pricey daycare, and how my partner is thriving in her new career.

But that also means I need to start thinking more about changing my plans for a work optional life. I have some ideas, some very high level ones. Maybe writing about them will help figure out what path I ought to take.

Idea One: Stay at My Current Job

Upsides: Good money, good benefits, work-from-home, autonomy, can pad accounts quicker/to a ridiculous degree.

Downsides: Too much stress, lacking general feelings of purpose, been there so long it is a bit stagnant.


Idea Two: Leave work as planned, Lean into Creative Projects (podcast, make a board game, more blog posts or new blog, building a teardrop/campervan interior, etc.)

Upsides: Creativity, autonomy, flexibility, novelty.

Downsides: A little too focused on the ‘self', potential to spread too thin on too many projects, potential to be a bit lonely/isolated.


Idea Three: Leave work as planned, but work part time as a substitute teacher.

Upsides: Flexibility, earning a bit of side income, getting back into the classroom and using teaching credential a bit, potentially may like it and could have a second act as a teacher, feelings of contributing to the community/doing good/purpose, could still leave time for family &; projects listed above.

Downsides: Teaching was the most stressful thing I ever did, so there’s that. Very low pay, possibly no benefits, likely not being seen as a ‘real teacher’ by the rest of the faculty/staff, may not get many of the ‘feeling’ upsides above if so.


Listing all these things out, I wonder if it sounds like I’m complaining, or mourning the loss of a dream or something. I don’t want it to come across that way, at least. I’ve never been great at changing plans, and this one is proving difficult to get my mind wrapped around. Usually with financial independence, I feel a spark of enthusiasm. I like that there will be options and freedom and being able to do whatever sounds like it will be fulfilling next year.

But these changes, since they’re coming from Mrs. Done by Forty’s desire to work in a career she’s passionate about, mean that I’m coming to terms a bit more with the compromises that we'd have to make. It’s less about embracing a feeling of total freedom, and more about the hard choices involved building a life together with someone else, this person who's not you. The choices we make are independent, but linked, too. The things one of us decides to do impacts the other.

I am trying to learn to be more flexible. Plans change. They often have to, and sometimes these unexpected changes end up being better for us in the long run. That was the case with Mrs. Done by Forty working in the first place. At first we were worried but, after a few months, we looked up and we were happier, less stressed, and just in a better place in our relationship.

So why I am I so apprehensive?

I guess I’m bummed about missing out on some of the dreamy, insta-worthy sort of things we might have done immediately after hitting financial independence. Living abroad for a bit, doing some slow travel in a little van or something: the sort of things only possible when we didn't have jobs tying us down, and before Baby AF started kindergarten.

Would we have even done those things?

Should I really care if our early retirement seems particularly cool to other people?

And why am I worried about what people think when, if we have the chance to retire, Mrs. Done by Forty and I just decide to do other sorts of work?

I guess as we approach financial independence, the hazy dream of freedom and possibilities is coming more in to focus. It looks different close up than it did years ago, when it was still on the horizon. And now that it's nearly here, I guess both of us are trying to figure out what that means for us on a daily basis. I'll have to bend some, and Mrs. Done by Forty will, too. Even with all the possibilities, there's going to be some meeting in the middle, for sure.

Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

As always, thanks for reading.


*Photo is from i_yudai at Flickr Creative Commons.

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