Why You Need To Work Forever and Never Retire

I’d like to let you in on something that I’ve grappled with in living my life outside the maze.  Early on, friends and loved ones noticed me not working a traditional job. They asked me how long I intended to take a break? Have I had any offers? Many suggested that I should tighten the belt spending wise because I do not have a job. There was also some concern that my lady is still working. I must therefore be free loading off of her. She may feel unable to leave her job if she chose.  I am working toward being more transparent. I think I have avoided some of these discussions to this point because they are tricky. The truth is that neither of us need to work to live our lifestyle and a traditional job does not provide anything for me right now. I am considering spending more money rather than less. I am doing this because we have budgeted and planned for doing some adventures.  Is this crazy?

#1 The American Myth About Hard Work

  I think there is a deep puritanical root in the foundation of American culture that work has inherent value and is itself moral.  This American value is one that I have lived by for my entire life and until now it has served me well.  For most of my career, I have been the guy that worked hard, worked fast, and pushed everyone else by example to raise the bar.  I still believe in performing well. I also believe that a traditional job has the very concrete value of providing for yourself and family so that you are not a drain on your community.  However, what if you have provided enough for your family to live off of income from that pile?  Would continuing on the same path just be greedy or wasteful of my time? It is, after all, money that I don’t need or may never spend. The work to get more money takes time that I can’t get back. Is there a risk of building too much wealth at the expense of my limited time?  Should I change the way that I make decisions about what to work on and what to work toward?

#2 A Global View of Work

As I write this post, I am sitting on this balcony in Frigiliana Spain:

Here, there is a siesta every afternoon and there is by law a maximum 40 hour work week average per year for each full time worker. The average person works a little over 2 weeks less (5.3% less) than in the USA (1687 versus 1780 Hours per year). As I look at this view from a 3 bedroom luxury house rented for about $100 a night, drink an amazing bottle of Rioja wine at a cost of $4, and eat bread, olives, and serrano ham at a total cost of around $2 I ask “are we just doing it wrong in the USA? After all, even Spain actually works more than Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. In fact, the USA has more average work hours than the majority of the European Union:

The USA is also the only developed country in the world without a single legally required paid vacation day or holiday (1).

#3 The Falsity of Retirement

The common falsity of early retirement is some vague image of sitting on a beach sipping umbrella drinks on vacation forever. This is like a chronically thirsty person envisioning how great it would be to sit and drink water forever. It kind of makes no sense and raises the question of whether we are all simply just delirious and dehydrated from overwork.

The notion of retiring early is sugar that helps to swallow the pill of needing to save, practice great self discipline and behavioral change, and trade near term gratification for financial security long term.  Along the way there, you learn, grow, and change. By the time you get there, you find out that retiring early is not at all what you thought it was and moreover that this is ok. It actually just means that after a honeymoon period and acclimating to your new reality of not having to work, you now get to apply yourself in work that you choose to do, non-traditional jobs, other endeavors of your choosing, or even some traditional job undertaken for new reasons. However, the key is that you continue to apply yourself. 

As anyone who is FI will attest to, attempting to just relax and not apply yourself, does not really work out and proves to be unhealthy and unsustainable.  Hell traditional retirees would tell you the same things. While there are certainly health benefits to retirement such as less stress and ability to exercise more (2), the data also shows that those traditional retirees that do not engage in a community or apply themselves in a meaningful endeavor post retirement are more prone to early death or depression (3) (4). Hence one has to be careful about using the term retired.

Perhaps the use of the term retirement all together is too flawed to be useful:

definition of retire. intransitive verb. 1 : to withdraw from action or danger : retreat. 2 : to withdraw especially for privacy retired to her room.

Merriam Webster

Retreating or withdrawing from action do not sound like what I was picturing for an early retirement at all.

#4 My New Work Philosophy

I am going to stand by what has become something of a motto for me. Once I achieved financial independence I decided that instead of working for others to achieve financial independence, I will now work for myself to achieve happiness.  In other words, instead of making someone else’s agenda happen in exchange for money, now I can work for my own agenda and perhaps even spend some money if need be to make worthwhile things happen. I will, however, continue to work.

My agenda at present happens to be writing to hopefully be part of a community for others and myself, doing a music project, learning Muay Thai, doing some adventures that I’ve always wanted to do ( like this trip to Spain), helping friends on a few of their projects, being more active as a father, and doing some investing endeavors.

This obviously is not a traditional job, but does it have more or less inherent value?  What determines this? 

For me, the claiming of financial independence had to be a conscious step in order to think differently and change my decision making away from being reliant on an employer to maintain a lifestyle and toward designing my own lifestyle and working for myself. In this new lifestyle, I may get involved in business at some point over the coming years. However, any earning is simply a possible optional byproduct of how I apply myself.

Final Thoughts on Working Forever

Our views about the value of work may be shaped by the place and culture where we live. Data and experience suggest that retirees benefit from reduced stress and better physical fitness. However a retirement of withdrawal, retreat, or inaction has also proven to be unhealthy among traditional retirees. Working by choice for something that you find meaningful post financial independence rather than working out of necessity as a cog in the machine is part of the freedom and joy of financial independence.

If you enjoyed this article, consider learning how I saved over $100,000 without giving anything up or subscribing to get articles via email once a week at the footer of this page. What do you think about the virtues of work? Do you have a different global perspective on work? Join the discussion in the comments below