And I'm Out

I wasn't sleeping, and for the usual reason. I was so stressed from work most nights, thinking about deadlines I wasn't able to meet and the series of conversations I'd need to have explaining when we could deliver, that I couldn't turn my brain off enough to relax & doze off. Sometimes I'd be up just to one or two in the morning, sometimes I'd be up through the night. 

After that, being productive at work the next day was more or less impossible. I'd end up even further behind by the end of the day, even more stressed out about how everything was going to be done in time. Lather, rinse, repeat.

COVID certainly wasn't helping. Mrs. Done by Forty and I were juggling full time work and Toddler AF, trying to make sure the kid was engaged and learning (or at least not running face first into furniture) all while sticking to our rule of no screen time. Throughout the day, we'd take turns stepping away from the laptop to relieve the other, swapping our employee and parent hats, and using nights and weekends to catch up on work. And we have a new baby on the way in April, which just added to the anxiety.

On some nights, the stress got so bad that I'd start to have bad thoughts. "Why not just shoot yourself?" I'd think. 

I know this is a terrible, preposterous thought, and I knew it at the time, too. Usually it would take a few minutes, maybe a half an hour of self-talk, to realize that suicide was a terrible solution to the problem of work stress. For one, I don't even need to work. We have a lot of money and are pretty close to our financial goals. I could just quit. Or find another job. Or go to part time. Or just one of us could work while the other watched the kids.

But what about financial independence? And our plans for the future? And health insurance, and on and on and on. What about the people who know you've been working towards this 40-year-old retirement plan? What is everyone going to think when they find out you threw in the towel like some loser?

Why not just keep going for a bit? Gut it out. 

Turns out that the things that make me good at sticking to plans and achieving my goals also make it hard for me to change those plans, even when they're no longer good for me. I worry about failure, and more about perceived failure.

But I wasn't struggling with these thoughts alone. Mrs. Done by Forty and I were able to talk about this, because pretty much everything is on the table when we talk. She'd been thinking I should quit for a while. And all through 2020 I've been seeing a therapist once every week or two, sometimes both my own therapist as well as one Mrs. Done by Forty see together in the same week. 

Once these thoughts got more persistent and intense around December, the busy time for procurement, and it became harder to shake these bad thoughts (especially since there is a literal gun store I walk by when I pick up chlorine for the pool) my therapist finally said it was time to stop working. Mrs. Done by Forty and I both agreed. 

So about ten days ago, I put in my two week notice. My boss was understanding and agreed it was the right call. I'm amazed at how everyone seems to agree that my health and family should come first. I don't know what I was expecting, but not that. Maybe because I'm still not very good at understanding that health and family should come first.

Still, this wasn't the way I thought I'd leave work. I'm dealing with a lot of weird emotions now. Shame, mostly. Shame that I decided to just drop out of the race so close to the finish line. I would have gotten a bonus in March, and four weeks paid parental leave in May. My therapist and Mrs. Done by Forty tell me differently; but in bed at night, I don't feel relief. I feel failure.

Besides missing out on money and some paid time off, the way I feel about how I'm leaving work seems tainted. Am I even retired? Since Mrs. Done by Forty is still working (for a few more months, at least) am I a stay at home dad? Will I pass the tests of the Internet Retirement Police? (No, probably not.)

My emotions are still a bit of a mess. I guess that's okay for now. Leaving work was never going to solve all my problems, even if it reduces the stress I feel from a job.

And money's a poor salve for these sort of problems, too. I know money isn't supposed to deal with what's going on between my ears. Still, since I'm feeling guilt about how my decision to leave work early is impacting our financial independence, I guess we should look at where we really stand at the moment.

Here's where the Mad Fientist had us sitting at the end of December, assuming a 3.5% withdrawal rate, and our 2020 spending:

Click for bigness

So, we were at least on pace to hit FI with a 3.5% withdrawal rate if we stuck around until June as planned. To give some details:

• Our spending for 2020 was $40,244 
• This includes only three months of daycare, from Jan-Mar
• We had some higher medical bills & giving because 2020, but things might stay in this range in FI

We are not exactly where we need to be for a 3.5% withdrawal rate with our 2020 spending. But what if we took out daycare: an expense we could hypothetically eliminate with me staying home? Here's where we would stand at a 3.5% withdrawal rate, but taking out the $3,500 or so we spent on daycare.

Click for bigness.

Well that makes me feel better. I suppose if we just assume we won't need daycare then maybe we're FI.

The rub is that we're going to have to pay for some things, like preschool, which cost less than daycare but, still, something. 

What if we wiggled a bit on the withdrawal rate, but kept the partial year daycare expenses in the budget? I know the 4% rule isn't necessarily all that safe, but what if we assumed a 3.75% SWR instead of 4% or 3.5%?

Click for bigness.

So at least on paper, maybe things aren't that bad regarding financial independence. We're close, maybe close enough. The plan was always to work a bit once the kids are in school. Maybe this is good enough?

There are still some unknowns. While we're on Mrs. Done by Forty's health insurance through June, that's when her contract ends. At that point, we'll have to pay for health insurance in the ACA exchanges, or possibly buy short term health insurance for the next six months.

The original plan was to save up an additional $12k in cash to cover the cost of health insurance for the latter half of the year, along with setting aside more cash & investments so we had more of a buffer early on in early retirement. But, yeah, none of that is happening now.

There's also the cost of having MC Baby, along with the possibility of there being some unexpected health issues after she's born. The plan was, in that worst case scenario, that I would keep working, keep our health insurance, and allow Mrs. Done by Forty to stop working. Now that plan's flipped on its head.

On some level, none of these details really matter. What Mrs. Done by Forty and I were doing, juggling work and parenting, wasn't sustainable. The thoughts I was having, with their frequency & intensity, meant something had to give. That something should be the job, right? We were at least close enough to our financial goals that sticking around for another six months might not have been needed anyway.

So why do I feel so bad?

I guess I thought this moment, leaving work, would be some sort of triumph. I'd do what I set out to do, in exactly the way I set out to do it. I thought writing about it would be this cool moment. A success. But life had other plans. I guess my working career ends with a bit of a whimper.

Still, better than a bang.