My FIRE Plan

Posted On August 19, 2020

Since discovering the FIRE movement a few years ago, I have been much more focused on the ‘Financial Independence’ part of the acronym and barely paid attention to the ‘Retire Early’ part. I am lucky to have a job that I love. I had a rather meandering series of jobs in my 20s that finally led me to my current job. I was an electrical engineering major in college and had a few internships in microprocessor design during the dot-com boom. I graduated just after the dot-com crash, with no engineering jobs to be found. The only job I could get in that aftermath was at a credit card company. (I feel for people who graduated this year amidst the pandemic- I thought I had it bad!) 

The utter lack of fulfillment working for a credit card company led me to a quarter-life crisis. After a lot of soul-searching and career self-help books, I settled on wanting to work in health care and specifically in the oncology space. I started at a boutique healthcare consulting firm to get a crash course in the industry and had a dream job in mind. Unfortunately, it pretty much required an MBA, so I grudgingly went to business school with a concentration in healthcare management. I was thrilled when I got an internship at my dream company! Unfortunately, it was a very disappointing experience, not at all like what I had hoped it would be. So I was left with a ton of MBA debt and no idea what I was doing with my life. That was the summer of 2008 and it was the low point of my adult life since I was also dealing with health issues at the same time. 

I started talking to everyone I could find through my MBA network and discovered a whole new part of the healthcare industry that I hadn’t known about and that led me to my current job. I thought I would just stay for a few years and then go to a health tech startup, but I have been so happy, I ended up staying at this job. More than 11 years later, this has been my real dream job – after I had given up hope such a thing could even exist! I’ve come to realize the big downside to having my dream job: the fear of change. There has been a lot of change over the past few years and while I am still very happy, it has been a reminder of how fragile a dream job can be. There is so much that is out of my control. As I explored other jobs over the years, I came to realize there is no other job that would be as good a fit for me as this one. It is pretty much a perfect match for what brings me joy and meaning, along with flexibility and autonomy. It was in some ways a scary realization because I was left with no plan of what I would do if I became unhappy. 

Thanks to this crazy stock market, I have now reached what for me feels like a true FIRE milestone: my investments exceed 33 times my annual spending, which means I could retire – according to the extensive analysis done by Early Retirement Now, who has a pretty legit finance background and comes recommended by someone I trust. It feels rather tenuous and too good to be true to see this stock market amidst the backdrop of the challenges in the real economy, not to mention the continued uncertainties with the pandemic, election, etc. So like many folks, I am braced for a crash. But reaching this milestone has helped me decide that my current job will be my last 9-5 job. To make it official, I deleted most of my LinkedIn profile. What a liberating feeling that I will never have to update my resume or go through an interview process! I am not in a rush to leave my job given how much I enjoy it, but I have started to think about what I would do if things change. 

It has been helpful to read blogs of other people who retired early because I think there are a lot of things to consider. 

Identity: it seems like many people struggle with their sense of identity after they retire. Even though I love my job, I don’t think it is a core part of my identity and I am not too worried about this. I have a ton of hobbies and interests and think I could easily have a full life without a 9-5 job. This pandemic has helped me get creative and discover a whole new list of things to explore. 

Purpose: even though I have plenty of ways to fill my time, I was initially worried I would lack a sense of purpose if I were to leave my job. A lot of blogs advise retiring “to” something rather than retiring “from” a job.  I’ve been thinking about this for a while and figured out what I think my post-FIRE purpose will be: teaching meditation. I mostly want to focus on making meditation and mindfulness more accessible to people who may not otherwise have exposure to it, so I don’t necessarily plan on making income. I was enrolled in a yearlong meditation teacher training program starting this fall but due to the pandemic, I postponed it. Ideally, I would like to have some overlap between teaching meditation and my current job. I think meditation has HUGE applicability in the health care setting so, in a most ideal scenario, I would teach meditation in my current organization even if I leave my full-time role. 

Social Connection: this is one of my bigger concerns about early retirement. As a single person who lives alone, there are not a lot of bloggers who have retired early in a similar position. If you know of any, please connect me!  The one single woman FIRE blogger I follow has been pretty open about some of the challenges (I appreciate her honesty). My coworkers truly feel like family and I think that is the hardest part to give up. On the flip side, the benefit of not having a traditional 9-5 job means I could spend a lot more time visiting friends and family in other parts of the country and world. 

I am very blessed to be in no rush on my timeline. My favorite FIRE blogger, Tanja, talks about the concept of chapter overlap to ease the transition. Given that I had to push back my meditation teacher training, this is all at least a few years away unless something unexpected happens.  I’d like to confirm I like teaching meditation enough to give up all the things I love about my current job. If I can teach at my current company, that could push out the timeline. 

In the meantime there are a few things I’m doing to get prepared: 

What do you think? Am I missing any considerations? I’m fairly risk-averse and it will take some courage for me to leave the world of traditional employment but it feels good to have a plan!