Early retirement sounds great and it is great for the most part. But there are negatives of early retirement life that also needs to be discussed. I retired early in 2012, at the age of 34. Then I unretired a year later because early retirement felt unnatural.

Since leaving my day job in 2012, I’ve redefined what early retirement means to me. As a result, I now call myself a “fake retiree.”

Over the past 10+ years, I ended up actively doing a lot of things that provided meaning and purpose. And such things ended up making me money, hence my fake retirement.

The Desire To Really Retire Again

Today, however, I want to truly re-retire by 2023 because I’m so damn tired after the pandemic! I’ve been a stay-at-home father of two young children, 2.5 and 5.5. Fatherhood during a pandemic has been at least 50% harder than even the hardest years I had in banking.

Taxes are going up, reducing the return on our effort. With the economy also slowing, grinding harder if you don’t need to grind harder is a suboptimal choice. Finally, spending two years writing and six months marketing my new bestselling personal finance book has taken a lot out of me.

You won’t really know what early retirement life feels like until you actually walk away from a steady paycheck. It’s easy to pontificate what you should and shouldn’t do in retirement. Further, you can assume a high safe withdrawal rate when you are gainfully employed.

However, I promise you your expectations about retirement and the reality once you are in retirement will be different. Don’t be fooled by early retirees who only crow how amazing early retirement life is. Be wary instead. The Instagram life is not reality.

For all the positives of living an early retirement lifestyle, there are plenty of negatives as well. I know why we revert back to our baseline state of happiness, no matter how much freedom and money you have.

In February 2012, I decided to negotiate a severance to break free from corporate life. By mid-June 2012, I had received a severance check and the last of my three months of WARN Act pay. Ten years of fake retirement later, I want to share with you some of my biggest takeaways.

Overall, it’s been an incredible journey. However, I’m also melancholy I’ll never get back these past 10 years. The greater your appreciation of time, the less you will want to waste it.

For those of you thinking about permanently leaving your day job to go on a great adventure, this post is for you.

To feel rich consistently is even better than actually being rich. In fact, learning how to feel rich might be the biggest wealth hack of them all. Once you got that rich feeling, you don’t need to work as hard to achieve a net worth you think is required to be wealthy.

I define rich as earning a top one percent income of $500,000+ or having a top one percent net worth of over $11 million. You may disagree, but if you make more or have more than 99% of the population, you are rich.

However, you can be rich and still be miserable because your spouse left you. You can be rich and still feel terrible because your children despise you for neglecting them growing up.

Making $1 million a year is great, but due to tremendous job stress you hate your life. You may have a $20 million net worth and never feel rich because you sacrificed your health to amass a fortune. Then when you’re on your deathbed with millions, you wonder why you didn’t spend more time enjoying life instead.

Obviously, if you can consistently feel rich and actually be rich, then you’ve got the best of both worlds. But sometimes, we can’t have everything we want.

The following is a guest post from a long-time Financial Samurai reader named Joona. He shares his secret to retiring at age 41 with a $4 million net worth, a wife, and two kids ages three and six.

I really love hearing about early retirement case studies and how my writing has helped people reach their financial goals. After all, I’ve been writing about my own case study of achieving financial independence since 2009. It’s been a fun journey full of twists and turns.

Previously, I had written about how retiring early with $5 million is extremely difficult for families in expensive coastal cities. Therefore, reading this case study on retiring early with $1 million less is particularly insightful. Take it away Joona!

Your financial independence number is the amount of money you think you need in order to be free. Unfortunately, if nothing changes in your life after reaching your financial independence number, then the number simply is not real. You need to accumulate more capital.

In this low interest rate environment, some people continue to believe once they achieve a liquid net worth equal to 25 times their annual expenses, they’re financially independent. Yet, once they get there, they continue to work at a job they dislike for years.

Why? Fear. They fear not having enough money to safely retire early or do something else. They fear a bear market will wipe away 20%+ of their net worth. As a result, they continue to work in order to accumulate even more money.

So much about money is mental. Since leaving my day job in 2012, I have seen countless examples of the one more year syndrome play out. If you actually want to change your life, please put the 4% rule to rest.

How big of an investment portfolio should I have to be financially free or start feeling free? This is one of the most common questions people starting on their financial independence journey ask.

Sometimes telling people they should accumulate at least 25X their annual expenses or 10-20X their annual gross income may seem too daunting. As a result, they may get discouraged and not even start.

Therefore, to boost motivation and momentum, I’ve come up with the minimum investment portfolio amount for financial freedom seekers to shoot for. That amount is $300,000. Once you have accumulated $300,000, you will start to feel financially free or that rich feeling.

Let me explain by sharing some key investment portfolio levels based on our personal accounts. Once you accumulate about $300,000 in invested capital, your potential returns might be consistently greater than your annual contributions.

Given our primary residence is likely one of our largest assets, buying responsibly is prudent. At the same time, living a better lifestyle by owning a nicer home as we get wealthier is also something many people desire.

Therefore, let’s try and figure out what our appropriate primary residence value should be as a percentage of net worth. I’ve got a certain percentage in mind that will help maximize lifestyle. The percentage will also provide enough investment exposure and minimize financial worry for being too house rich.

One great thing about a bull market is that the unnecessary big-ticket stuff we buy declines as a percentage of our net worth over time. If we can survive the initial liquidity crunch after purchasing a house, things tend to turn out well. You could actually make more from your house than your salary too.

For example, let’s say you have a $100,000 net worth that is all in your company’s stock. You inexplicably purchase a $50,000 BMW even though you only make $80,000 a year. That’s unwise because you just spent 50% of your net worth and 62% of your gross income on a car. Driving a beater or taking public transportation would have been more appropriate.

However, let’s say your company hits it big and your company stock grows to $5,000,000 in 10 years. If you still own your car, its original purchase price only ends up being less than 1% of your net worth. Meanwhile, you were able to enjoy a fun vehicle for 10 years. Therefore, purchasing a $50,000 BMW 10 years ago turned out to be a good gamble.

I want to do the same type of thought exercise with a house. How much should we really “gamble” to live a better lifestyle today?

Using net worth as a variable to determine how much home one should buy or continue to own is a useful exercise.

Curious to know the ideal net worth for retirement? I was talking to a tennis friend of mine who said his sister checked out once she cleared 10 million dollars. She was 37 when she decided to quit her job and go on an Eat, Pray, Love journey to Southeast Asia. She had made a bulk of her fortune as an early investor in an internet consumer company.

My friend and I then got to talking about other people we knew who checked out in their 30s and 40s. They too, had cleared over 10 million dollars in net worth or investable assets. They had all been early employees at successful startups. Or they had risen up the ranks at a big tech company while holding a lot of shares.

Even a 30-year-old softball buddy of mine who worked at Uber said he’s shooting to have a $10 million net worth before he retires.

As a personal finance blogger, I subsequently got to thinking: Is 10 million dollars the ideal net worth amount for retirement? Is 10 million actually the new one million due to inflation? It seems to me that a net worth of $10 million or greater is ideal before leaving work behind.

$10 Million Is A Top One Percent Net Worth

10 million dollars is a lot of millions. If you have a 10 million dollar net worth or higher, you have a top one percent net worth in America. Therefore, if you can’t retire off 10 million dollars comfortably, you’ve got some serious problems!

The sad part about wondering whether 10 million dollars is enough to retire comfortably is that plenty of people who make a lot of money still go broke. Just look at so many ex-NFL players who end up with very little soon after their careers are over. The reason why they end up broke is due to a lack of financial education.

Good financial education will compound on itself. It will pay dividends for years to come. One of the main reasons why I’ve consistently been publishing on Financial Samurai since 2009 is to help people reach financial freedom sooner. We’ve only got one life to live and schools aren’t willing to impart any personal finance wisdom.

For fun, because this is what personal finance enthusiasts do, let’s discuss whether 10 million dollars is the ideal net worth for retirement. Of course, we can always retire with less. Most have. But where’s the fun in that?

I’m bullish on real estate for the next several years. With multiple efficacious vaccines, high inflation, continued low and negative real mortgage rates, plenty of stimulus, work from home here to stay, and the desire to own income-producing assets, real estate has a bright future. Here is the latest Fundrise overview.

Fundrise is a leading real estate crowdfunding platform for unaccredited and accredited investors alike. Founded in 2012, Fundrise pioneered the eREIT asset, a private diversified real estate investment trust that enables everyday people to invest in private real estate once reserved for ultra-high net worth individuals or institutions.

As of 2022, Fundrise manages over $2.1 billion in equity and has over 210,000 investors on its platform. This is an acceleration of assets under management and investors in 2021. Back in 1Q2021, Fundrise managed $1 billion and had 150,000 investors.

For those of you looking to diversify into real estate passively or increase your real estate exposure, here’s an interview I did with Ben Miller, Founder and CEO of Fundrise. I also had a one-hour video conference call with Ben in 2022 to provide us the latest Fundrise overview.

Not only do I appreciate the innovation that has come out of Fundrise since the company began, I also appreciate their investment analysis and annual market outlook. Their focus on market fundamentals is something I really appreciate. Their investment philosophy is also aligned with my own.

There are good times to retire early and then there are bad times to retire early. I’d like to highlight the worst times to retire early to prevent you from living a suboptimal life.

As someone who retired in 2012 and mentally un-retired by 2014, I feel it’s my duty to share all the landmines I’ve come across before you step into the minefield. Retirement isn’t all lollipops and roses.

To review some of my key findings, please read these posts before or after this post:

• The Negatives Of Early Retirement Nobody Likes Talking About

• If I Could Retire All Over Again These Are The Things I’d Do Differently

Not having to work is nice. However, if you retire at the wrong time, you will experience a lot of fear and doubt. These feelings will eat away at the pleasantry of early retirement. The uncertainty might get to the point where you wish you had never left a steady paycheck behind.

Ideally, you want to time retirement perfectly so that you get to do everything you want to do with your newfound free-time without having to worry about money.

Contrary to popular belief, the ideal retirement age isn’t as soon as possible. Retire too soon and you may feel empty for never living up to your true work potential. Retire too late and you might always be left wondering what could have been if you had changed course sooner.

For example, a 35-year-old couple making $400,000 might love their jobs. With two young kids under three, both parents might both want to work for 20 more years. This way, they can maximize their capital and support their kids through college.

Then you might have a 30-year old couple making a combined $200,000. They don’t have kids and don’t want kids. Instead of needing a 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom home, they are happy living in a 1-bedroom condo for much less. All they want to do is travel and lead a simple life. In their mind, the ideal retirement age is 40.

To minimize regret and maximize happiness, I believe the ideal retirement age range is between 41-45. For reference, I retired from banking in 2012 at age 34 and unretired by 36 because it was just too boring. I’m currently 45 years old and have accomplished everything I’ve wanted to accomplish, including publishing a Wall Street Journal bestselling book in 2022 entitled, Buy This, Not That.

Let’s go through the reasons why 41-45 is the ideal age range to retire.

For those of you without cushy pensions, I’m sorry folks. The 4 percent rule is outdated. The rule was popularized in the 1990s. It is now unwise to follow the 4 percent rule as a proper safe withdrawal rate in retirement, especially if you are part of the FIRE movement.

Instead, I highly recommend lowering your safe withdrawal rate for the first year or two after you retire, especially if you retire early. Retirement life will likely be much different than you expect. You may be filled with uncertainty and doubt. As a result, the proper safe withdrawal rate should be more conservative.

The idea of having a low safe withdrawal rate once you retire is to train you to live off less. The first couple years is a big adjustment period. By lowering your safe withdrawal rate, you will also be encouraged to do things you enjoy that may generate supplemental retirement income.

I “fake retired” in 2012 at age 34 with about $80,000 in passive income investments. However, after a year of traveling and wondering whether this was all to life, I went back to work growing Financial Samurai. Early retirement life was not for me. I needed purpose.

Today, I still don’t have a day job. But I am still writing on Financial Samurai. I’m paying $2,350/month for unsubsidized healthcare. Further, I have a couple young children to raise in San Francisco. In other words, I’m sharing with you firsthand experience of life after work, during retirement, and post retirement.

I’m not pontificating what retirement life is like as a gainfully employed employee. Instead, I’m living this reality every day as a practitioner.

Everybody wants to become a millionaire. Unfortunately, not everybody’s chances of becoming a millionaire are the same, partially because the playing field is not even. This article looks at historical data on your chances of becoming a millionaire by race, age, and education.

Getting to at least one million dollars in net worth is a nice milestone to achieve. However, due to inflation, you need more than $3 million to live the traditional millionaire lifestyle today. Thankfully, I firmly believe the majority of people reading Financial Samurai and other personal finance sites will be able to achieve millionaire status.

If I were to guess the exact percentage of Financial Samurai readers who become millionaires in their lifetimes, I would say 60 percent. This doesn’t seem like a particularly high percentage. But once you’ve read the statistics below, you’ll come to agree that 60 percent is a home run figure.

For the remaining 40%, even if you don’t become millionaires, you’ll likely still build way more wealth if you keep on reading Financial Samurai and other finance sites than the average person who does not.

Since 2009 I’ve received dozens of e-mails from readers saying they’ve busted through the $1 million net worth figure thanks to aggressive saving and investing. Many have mentioned they wish they had discovered the personal finance world sooner. But better late than never I say!

So what about the rest of the 330+ million Americans who were fortunate enough to be born or gain citizenship to our great country? What are their chances of living the champagne dream and caviar lifestyle? Let’s have a look.