Early Retirement, Early Mid-Life Crisis?
Just a quick “re-blog” of an interesting article I stumbled upon on theatlantic.com:
The Real Roots of Midlife Crisis
It’s quite long so here is the tl;dr summary in bullet point form:
- There is a large body of research to show that the mid-life crisis is a “real thing” that most of us will experience in some degree
- It follows a general life satisfaction U-shaped curve, which bottoms out (i.e. least satisfied) around the ages of 45-50
- This U-curve is consistent across research done across many countries, cultures, and even with other primates
- The feelings of the mid-life dip can often be the feeling of dissatisfaction despite success in life, combined with feeling ungrateful about the whole damn thing
- These feelings generally alleviate as you age into your fifties, perhaps because you realise time is getting limited
Personally, I don’t want to go through a mid-life crises, but it strikes me that there is a potential for early retirement to cause an early mid-life crisis, perhaps because you suffer from a feeling of loss of purpose when you finish your job, amongst other factors.
On the other hand, it could well completely short circuit this whole psychological effect, especially if you really get into the whole FIRE scene with gusto.
Overall, I think the second of these two scenarios is far more likely to play for most early retirees, and one of the reasons for that is further on in the article, where there is an excellent section on wisdom:
“…I started wondering whether the life satisfaction we were seeing in older people was related to their becoming wiser with age, in spite of physical disability.”
“All across the world, we have an implicit notion of what a wise person is.” The traits of the wise tend to include compassion and empathy, good social reasoning and decision making, equanimity, tolerance of divergent values, comfort with uncertainty and ambiguity. And the whole package is more than the sum of the parts, because these traits work together to improve life not only for the wise but also for their communities. Wisdom is pro-social. (Has any society ever wanted less of it?) Humans, Jeste says, live for an unusually long time after their fertile years; perhaps wisdom provides benefits to our children or our social groups that make older people worth keeping around, from an evolutionary perspective.
I get the feeling that most seeking to FIRE are also those that will try to seek as much wisdom as possible at a young age, and therefore will either completely bypass any potential mid-life satisfaction dip or at the least fast forward onto the wisdom-enlightened upward slope of the curve.
I would also hazard a guess that being free to spend your time as you wish, and not having to worry about earning a wage to pay the bills helps enormously with these sort of matters 🙂
I’m 36 and i think I’ve already had my mid life crisis. In fact that’s what spurred me to seek FI. The thought of being chained to a desk all day could have spurred me to go out and buy a sports car or harley. Instead my reaction to it was to seek the quickest way out, which turned out to be FI.
Ha ha, well that is kind of what I was thinking about myself which is what intrigued me about the article. Good to know we are both well ahead of the curve 😉
In our 30’s we found work became overly demanding – taking more and more of our time and hence adding stress. This caused us to have a mini mid life crisis. What was it all for? As Under the money tree says the earlier the better so you can do something about it.
Perhaps they should call it something different such as “early life crisis” so younger adults get to learn about changing course earlier in life 🙂
I like that idea Contender! In the article it basically says that “mid-life” and “mid-life crisis” were just made up by some guy in a book, so why not coin a new phrase like you say 🙂
45 here. I think I’m on my second mid-life crisis.
Crisis 1 aged 31 – Having scored what I thought at the time was an enormous amount of house-sale equity, I galavanted off with my snowboard. What I didn’t think through was a long term self sustaining financial plan. Likely I didn’t know such concepts existed, bar marrying a rich person. So it was short-ish lived.
Crisis 2 aged 40 – I realised I needed to get my act together otherwise I’ll be working until I’m 67+. Hello to the world of FI.
Quote TFS: “Personally, I don’t want to go through a mid-life crises, but it strikes me that there is a potential for early retirement to cause an early mid-life crisis, perhaps because you suffer from a feeling of loss of purpose when you finish your job, amongst other factors” – I think this would apply to people that are yet unable to define who they really are beyond their current work. I speak for myself here, but I feel a sense of failure and loss *because* I am 45 and still “working for the man” and unable to persue (just yet) my real purpose and passions. My career aspiration is to leave asap. That’s success right there.
Well now you are just showing off Starla, on your second one already? 🙂
Agreed wholeheartedly on your last point, and I wish the best of luck in saying FU to The Man as soon as possible. What are your plans and real passions for when that happens, if you don’t mind me asking?
I vote this could be a good topic for your future bloggings “What will you do at FI?” I’d certainly like to hear your take on it TFS. I suspect many of us here are veering towards INTJ and are “Planners”. However, in a startling turn of events, I don’t have A Plan, which is what makes it so exciting. In fact I have Option Anxiety, because there’s a world on offer. I’m in The Ermine camp, and don’t intend to do paid work again, unless I needed to fund a big trip etc. Off the top of my head – spend extended time with friends and family all over the world, spend months walking John O’Groats to Lands End, cycle across a country, get involved with action groups I’m passionate about (Free the Seaworld Orca’s for starters), be able to say “Yes” to exciting opportunities, the more leftfield the better, I have no idea where I’ll live either but most importantly get involved in something charitable and give something back to retain real life meaning. Sorry if I sound like a naff 1970’s Miss World contestant, but that’s the truth of it 😀 (I really hope I don’t end up watching day-time TV)
Great Idea Starla!
I think I have written about it briefly and strewn over various articles, but never compiled my thoughts on it into one post before.
I also don’t really have a plan as such, but I have got lot’s of things brewing in the back of my mind, I guess the best thing is that you can just try out these ideas at a whim, when the fancy takes you, rather than actually having to have a preformulated plan.
Sometimes planning is good, and totally necessary, but sometimes it takes the fun out of everything we do!
I have to agree with UTMT here. I think I’ve had phase 1!
My dissatisfaction towards what I’d achieved in life drove me to FIRE. I also relate very much to what Starla is saying. I feel a sense of frustration from not being ‘free’ to do the things I want to do in life. I’m aware now more than ever that my time is heavily spent at work. I don’t mind my job at all. I’d go as far to say I have a good job, but it isn’t my passion, nor is it fulfilling me as a human. Ultimately, my life outside of work is yet to define who I am and that spurs me on to work harder and succeed!
All the best
Huw
Sounds like a common theme with a lot of us Huw!
All the best to you as well 🙂
I dont think that most people that are striving for and reaching FIRE will have to deal with much of a mid-life crisis. Most that I know of speak about their grand plans for FIRE, whether thats learning a new thing every few months, travelling the world, volunteering a lot, spending a lot of time with family/friends … The possibilities once you reach FIRE are essentially limitless so there’s really no reason for the crisis to hit and if it does you can always just go and do something other than work.
Spot on JC (In my opinion!).
I am awaiting someone to comment who has retired early and become a manic depressive, but maybe they just don’t exist?!
I’ve definitely had a mini crisis too, and I’m not certain I’m 100% out of it yet. I really believe FI would play a huge role in short-circuiting these crises, because if you’re really motivated to work towards it, you probably have some other things you’re passionate about doing, and you’ve probably realised you don’t want to be stuck in your job forever.
I think it’s almost inevitable to have a quarter / mid life crisis if you’re working away in your job, head down, then stumble upon this new idea of Financial Independence – it’s quite a shock to the system! Now my main frustrations tend to come from not being able to find a way to make FI work as soon as I’d like 🙂
It is a pretty big disruptor in your life isn’t it? In a good way ultimately, but in the short term it can provide some turbulence while you get your shit together.
I share your frustrations, in a way I wish there was a fast forward button for that, like in the film “Click!” (terrible film, by the way. Don’t watch it)… but without actually wishing your life away!
I’d certainly like to think that FIRE would alleviate any mid life crisis from the equation. My thought is that at 50 if I want a sports car or need to travel the world, or missed out on something earlier in life that I will have moved on from most of these quick fixes, maybe I’ll get crazy and just take a month off in Nicaragua in a house in the mountains.
The house in Nicaragua sounds like a much better idea than the sports car that’s for sure, and would probably end up saving you money compared to living in the US as well, so I say go for it anyway if you ever get the chance 🙂
hmmm…. thought provoking post…. similar to my friend The Contender it was in my later 30’s that i dropped out of high-stress management to go part time (downshift) & seek a different path to the majority. i think the change in well-being this brought about probably stops any mid-life-crisis in it’s tracks. I did buy a single-gear bike this year though, which is a bit silly (unpractical) really: maybe that was my MLC lol.
45 is looking to be a great age: kids will be a great age then (11 & 9) , & all things being equal we’ll be mortgage free (In London) too.
Personally I’m already finding that even at 3 days a week work gets in the way of my hobbies a little, but i can see how those with few interests outside of their career could really struggle to find meaning in their lives as they look towards the longer term horizon.
I guess there are those that can see a potential MLC on the horizon and do something about it and those that do not (perhaps because they feel helplessly tied to something, e.g. job, to pay the bills). Glad to hear that you took your situation by the horns, and even went to the lengths of buying yourself a bike instead of a supercar 🙂
Hi TFS
Interesting post! According to the above, I should be right at the bottom of the life satisfaction U-shaped curve, wallowing in dissatisfaction!
But I’m far from dissatisfied with my life – at the age of 45, I now have a new purpose, that of saving and investing my way to FI/early retirement!
I have a plan, I have my health, I have great friends, I live frugally but save up to go away on holidays every year and I actually like my job (most of the time!).
I just don’t have the time to do everything that I want (so many books to read, so many new skills to learn, so many countries to visit!) but I’m working on that and I will get there!
Hey weenie. Glad everyone seems to have found it as interesting as I did 🙂
Glad to hear you are bucking the trend of the U curve, and enjoying life before FI while still looking forward to all the free time when you get there. Keep on trucking as they say!
I like your theory. I wish there were more readily available examples of very early retirees who could be studied, and for whom there’d be data. We have some good case studies, but all the information I see is just via a blog. That’s inherently a little biased: we show our best personas via that medium, typically.
Hi DBF,
I don’t know of any studies and you are certainly right, there surely must be a survivorship bias when you are only getting your info about ER from blogs? I can’t imagine anyone would save up solid for 10 years, retire early, decide it was rubbish and it made them depressed, then setting up a blog to tell everyone about it? Very good point!
Still, I think I’ll take my chances and go with my gut instinct that “the blogs” are speaking for the majority (like 90%+) of people that are interested in the subject in the first place.
I’m pretty sure I’m in a quarter-life crisis at the moment 😛
He he, best to get it out of the way early I say 😉