The Why

Why would I want to quit this job in a year when at that point I’ll only be 5 years from a pension worth at least a million bucks?

Maybe I’ve watched too many movies where the cop throws his badge into some large body of water and walks into the sunset at the end. I think I’m ready for that, or at least as much as I can be.

I’ve heard people say that you shouldn’t retire from something, you should retire to something. I’m doing both. I’m retiring to trying to figure out what I want to do next. I feel in my gut that I’m overdue for a change in my life, and I’ve been hanging onto the job mostly out of fear and the golden handcuffs. I want to find out what I can do in the world away from a crazy but secure government job. I want to see if I can figure out a more reasonable balance between work and life, and mostly I want to spend more time with my family. I want more free time to explore, build relationships with like minded people, and get on a normal sleep schedule. That’s most of what I’m retiring (mini-retiring?) to.

I’m retiring from going into work at 7 at night and getting off at 4 am (half the time it’s more like 5 or 6am). I’m retiring from working every third weekend. I’m retiring from always being tired when I’m with my family, and abandoning my wife to do all the parenting while I try to sleep during the day and go to work before our son’s bedtime. I’m retiring from being bored at work, at feeling underutilized, from making up projects just to mess with spreadsheets and visualizations. I’m retiring from being a manager of cops almost twice my age who behave like children. I’m retiring from yet another position that would be somebody else’s dream assignment, and to me it’s just a job. I’m retiring from having to flip schedules and get up at 9am every other month, only to result in me being irrationally angry due to sleep deprivation. I’m retiring from people trying to kill me.

I’m excited to take months off to decompress, then start to figure out who I actually am if I’m not a cop. I’m excited to figure out what kind of work excites me. Is there something out there that involves spreadsheets, data, challenging problems, but I can do 20-30 hours a week? It doesn’t need to pay much. Heck, if I can get 20 bucks an hour my expenses will be covered and I can just let my investments coast. Or maybe I’ll end up not doing anything that makes money; the math says that should be ok.

I know it won’t be all sunshine and rainbows. That’s easy to say, but I’m betting there will be more than a few days where I will feel adrift, purposeless, and depressed once I get bored. Setting out on the path of self-discovery won’t be a walk in the park. I can see me going down a few options only to find they’re not a match and having to start all over again. That will be part of the process. But I’m betting on myself. I’m smart, motivated, and disciplined(and gosh darn it, people like me!!). I can comprehend some advanced statistics, and I can get stuff done. There’s a big chunk of me that loves digging into a spreadsheet and extracting truth from it. I bet a year after I quit I’ll be a little lost, but I also bet within a few years after that I’ll have figured out a whole new purpose that I can direct my energy towards. And hey, worse case I just go back to the job. Maybe my next purpose will be stay at home dad. Maybe it will be data scientist. Maybe both, or something entirely different. But I know I’ve lived my current purpose for too long.

I think about the Warren Buffet question. I heard Carl from Mile High FI mention he had been to a Berkshire Hathaway shareholding meeting when some young guy had asked Mr. Buffet what books he should be reading to be successful or whatever. Buffet replied that he wasn’t going to answer that; instead stating he would give up his entire net worth to be that young guy’s age again, and that the dude should just enjoy his life. Carl then extrapolated this reasoning; pondering if he’d give up his entire net worth, even to go back just 15 years. Carl, who’s around 47, said he absolutely would.

I find myself in a similar situation. I currently have a net worth of about 900K. If I stay 6 more years, I will be able to get a pension worth about a million. It’s been hard to give up the idea of staying for the pension, that million dollar carrot is so tempting. But after hearing about Carl’s example above, I looked at it another way. Would I give up my entire net worth to go back in time 6 years? I was surprised how quickly the answer came to me; it was as if I could feel the tectonic plates shifting in my head when the thought came. I would give up my current net worth in a heartbeat to be able to live those 6 prior years again. No doubt. This was my big realization, as my current net worth is close to the value of the pension I’ll earn if I stay another 6 years, and if I extend my reasoning further, I’m betting if I stuck around to earn that pension, in the future I’d have the same thought; that I’d give up that golden albatross just to have these next 6 years back. 

So I’m going to do what I should have six years ago. Make some huge changes so my schedule lines up with my family, and that whatever work I do going forward is work I want to do, not what I think other people want me to do.