179. 3-Day Weekends Now or Fully Retire Later?

Often times when I talk to people about the work I do, they'll ask me, well, doesn't it seem a little lazy to want to work only four days now? And wouldn't it be more efficient or more effective to get to your retirement as quickly as possible? Why don't we just work all the way through, get to age 65 or even, let's say, 55 for an early retirement, according to a lot of the United States of America standards? Why don't we just do that? So, yeah, you can do that.

But one of the things I've learned is that for a lot of us, it's more fun to enjoy the journey along the way. And this whole definition of retirement really got shaped for me by a person I'd interviewed years ago when I was working on my master's degree in psychology, and I had this career counseling course. I had to do a paper on retirement. And so Edwin Lugo, awesome gentleman, was working for a money management firm at the time. And I asked him, I said, well, tell me something, he was in his early 30s.

What does retirement mean to you and when do you plan to be retired? And those are the only two questions I asked. And he said, well, my definition of retirement is doing what I want to do with my time. He said so. Wade, I am vocationally retired.

I do what I want with my time. I help people manage their finances, create their goals and plan for those. I like that process, and that's what I enjoy doing. So vocationally. I'm retired now, Wade.

Financially, I'm not retired. I could not afford to stop working right now, but I have no desire to do that. And so in fact, Wade, I've watched many of my clients that hit their sixty s and they're ready to halfretire they retire. And then in a short period of time, a few weeks, a few months at most, a year or so, many of them are bored because they were very active. They live these active lives.

Now. Some of them will go on and they'll volunteer and do other meaningful things. And that's great. There's no judgment here. Wade.

It's just that I'm seeing people that they missed out on this time in their life. And so what I would suggest to you is, when do you want to have the most amount of energy to enjoy your free time? If you wait until your 60s, kind of like the traditional American path has been for years. United States, you're not going to get there at a stage when you have your most energy. I recently turned 50 and I'm grateful for the energy I have.

I'm grateful for the free time I have, but I don't have the energy that I had when I was in my twenty s and thirty s. And so I'm going to suggest you that you can enjoy along the way having time to enjoy the process. You don't have to be financially retired, technically ever, though it's great to be able to afford to say, yes, I could be retired if I wanted to, but I want to do these other things. And I know countless friends that have closed their businesses and they are many of my dad's peers. My dad's in his late seventy s and is still active in his business.

He gets to do the part of his business that he enjoys and he has other people around him helping him and so he gets to do that. And I've watched many of his friends who are retired and then got bored and then wanted to start something else. And so I'm going to just suggest to you that you can take a simple approach of saying, you know what, I'm going to enjoy this journey along the way, and while I have the energy and while I can do certain things, while I can travel more, I'm going to do that. Or to use the concept that Tim Ferriss advocates in his book The Four Hour Work Week, of saying you can have these mini retirements where you take a month or two months. A lot of people would call it a sabbatical, but he says, hey, what are those things that are on your bucket list?

Again? Don't wait until later in life. Do them earlier in life while you have the energy, while you have the ability to do it. And then still, as you go on into your later years, enjoy that process. So this really comes down to what do you want to do with your time and how much energy you want to have?

If you want to have a lot of energy to enjoy your free time, it's going to be better for you to create more free time earlier in your life. And then you might find out what I've seen, which is that later on in life you usually earn money even more easily than you did when you were younger. And many people I know, when they get older have way more money than they know what to do with, but they can't regain the time. So I hope you find this helpful. If you have any questions about things such as this, please let me know.

I don't know everything, but I'm in this, I'm in this work. I've done it for years and I have a perspective a lot of people don't have. As always, I look forward to helping you impact more people and make more money and less time doing what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends and your life. Thanks for listening. Bye.