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I retired at 58 years young. I feel there’s always been tension in the retirement world around when to actually pull the trigger. The common argument goes like this: your late fifties mark the peak earning decade of your career, so retiring early is basically sabotaging your future self. It’s a valid point, and the numbers usually back it up.
But here’s what I think: while the maths matters—and for some people makes early retirement impossible or genuinely foolish—for others, including me, it was absolutely the right call. Life has a habit of getting in the way of optimization, whether you realize it in the moment or only through hindsight.
Take my own circumstances. I was pretty frazzled and burnt out from running my own business for nearly thirty years. The thought of keeping going was not appealing in the slightest, and the thought of working for someone else was totally unpalatable after having full agency over my working life for such a long period. An opportunity to sell presented itself and I took the plunge into retirement. In the moment, it was the right choice for me.
But then there’s hindsight.
I’ve only been retired nine months, but my wife’s degenerative disc disease has taken a real turn for the worse. I help her get shoes and socks on now. Sometimes getting out of a chair is impossible without help. We can still travel, still go walking, still work in our garden together—still jump on a plane before cramped seats become too much hassle and not worth the back pain. But in five or ten years? That might become difficult or impossible in ways we can’t yet imagine.
And then there’s my youngest daughter, in her mid twenties, she had thyroid cancer that we thought was beaten. It came back a few months ago, and has now invaded the local bone tissue in her neck. Targeted radiotherapy and radioactive iodine treatment are in the very near future. I’m glad I’m 100% available for that.
Don’t get me wrong—the financial opportunity cost is real. Those peak earning years everyone talks about happen to be real. But what’s also real is being able to drop everything for a medical appointment, to spend a Tuesday afternoon in the garden because my wife’s back is feeling good, to be mentally present instead of perpetually distracted by work. Money I can budget around. Time I can’t get back.
Foresight would have been wonderful, but hindsight has shown me something a nicely presented spreadsheet never could: I made the right choice in the moment. Maybe take this tale as a reminder that we often work to “secure the future,” but we sometimes forget that the future eventually arrives—and it rarely looks like the pristine, trouble-free version we imagined. Life happens, keep that in mind during your retirement planning.
Thanks Mark. Sorry to hear of your wife and daughter’s health situation.
I retired at age 66 in 2010. I had planned to retire in 2008 but we had the great recession and I decided to go a couple more years to recover my losses.
I regret not retiring sooner. More money does not move the retirement needle, but time to enjoy things with your loved ones does. My wife had issues that compromised her mobility which made travel and other leisure activities much more difficult in our later years. Had I retired a few years earlier we could have enjoyed more things together.
Your experience encapsulates my whole article. We always talk about the time value of money. The time value of time itself is a concept worth considering.
As Bernstein said “When you won the game. cash in your chips”. When you reach your goal cut back your work and enjoy the fruits of your labor. An extra X amount of dollars will not bring you better health or happiness
Like usual an excellent post Mark. There are many treatments for degenerative dic disease. I home you find both an excellent Physical Therapist and physician to guide your wife’s treatment. The right combination of interventions should lead to a complete resolution of her symptoms.
She’s going to a PT when she gets home. Interestingly, she’s been in Spain visiting her dad for the last 10 days and says the heat and daily swimming have really reduced the pain and stiffness.
My spouse has a chronic disease and has had a similar experience. When I reduced my working hours we traveled to warmer, lower climates with fewer barometric pressure changes. G was surprised to get relief. We then decided to winter where it is warmer. We flipped the script a few years ago, made the Southwest our domicile address and head north for 3 months to avoid peak summer heat. Her disease has been much more bearable with less pain.
We have talked about the possibility of, at some stage, buying a small place in a warm climate to escape the cold Irish winters. Unlike you guys in the US, it involves buying in another country… we shall see.
My wife has allergies almost everywhere, some places more than others of course. Where is she allergy free? Cornwall. Scotland is good too. Unfortunately there’s no path to actually living there. We don’t mind some cold, which is a good thing because we’re in Ireland right now, and as you know…
Are there places where you’ve looked at buying? We’re always thinking about this.
We like the Torrevieja region of Spain, particularly an area called La Zenia. We’ve even looked at a few properties in the area over the last couple of years, but never pulled the trigger. We’re lucky having dual UK and Irish citizenship; our Irish passports allow us to live permanently in the EU without any hassle. But then, we already own two properties in Ireland. Buying a third one, even a small bolthole in Spain, seems excessive… first world problems lol.
Never been there but have been not far away in Alicante. My siblings in law who live in Madrid like it. Nice to have that EU-UK thing going for you.
I’m a firm believer in the old saying: there’s no such thing as bad weather, just a bad choice of clothing for the conditions. Enjoy your visit to Ireland and remember, pick your clothing wisely! 😂
Fully agree. The UK has a great culture of charity shops and we use them a lot, both buying and donating. But we don’t skimp on footwear and outerwear.
What a great, heartfelt post. Best wishes for your wonderful family, Mark.
My story is not the same as yours, but there are similarities. I had left the beer business at age 49. A few years later I was flunking out of financial services, and found myself severely under-employed. At the same time my parents’ health was failing. That under-employment allowed me to be there for them when they needed me most.
My mom had a serious fall at home, and it was necessary to get my folks to a safe one floor home. I had been spending most of my time with the next door neighbor girl, leaving the bottom unit of my duplex available for mom and dad.
Over the next few years, I lost mom and dad, and had begun to build my income tax practice. Financially, I had much lost time to make up for. Age 70 was my finish line, and that was okay with me. Owning an income tax practice gave me an eight month vacation and plenty of time to explore sunshiny spots in the Caribbean.
I have no regrets, I can’t put a price on those last few years with my folks.
Of course I lost that neighbor girl, but I gained a wonderful wife and a very happy life.
Thank you very much, Dan. I’m hopeful everything will work out for the best. In the meantime, Suzie is too slow to kick my shins when I say something dumb. Always a silver lining when you look properly!
I have 451 days until I make the last of our daughter’s college payments. I may work until the end of 2027, but that’s about it.
The calculators say we’d add at least another million to our investments if we worked until 67, but we’d lose all that time, and that’s irreplaceable.
451 days…nothing like being precise lol. I totally agree with your sentiment.
It’s a balance, and it’s scary leaving the treadmill. Defining if you have enough is the key. I listened to my body and mind when I decided to walk away.
Listen to your body and mind. Then hope that your money—and more importantly, your health holds up, it’s possibly the greatest treasure we have.
Health issues can drive retirement. My younger spouse has two chronic diseases, but i was able to structure my involvement in my business to allow a “phased”, partial retirement. This also enabled us to help aging and unwell parents. Everyone got the health support they needed. Delaying full retirement also helped our cash flow, paid for care related travel too and improved our retirement savings. But the cost was Delaying my true retirement to age 75. Just in time for stage 4 cancer treatment.
The future is unknowable. I guess we can only make the choices that seem correct at the time.
Mark, we were just talking about this yesterday. We can’t imagine working with all that has gone on and is going on with Spouse’s family this past year. We weren’t able to retire as early as you did, but it was the right time for us. We see that in hindsight now also. Chris.
Chris. You’ve certainly had a very tough start to your retirement. Hopefully light starts shining at the end of a long tunnel.