Thanks for all the recent support about keeping Financial Samurai going! Your encouragement is greatly appreciated. One feedback I got was that readers would like to hear more from a woman’s perspective on reaching financial independence. I thought who better to share her thoughts than my wife, Sydney. Sydney is the CFO of Financial Samurai and also the co-CEO of our son. My goal is for her to regularly post once a month and join me for some coffee talk on our podcast.

Money was never my parents’ forte. It was a constant source of stress in their lives – like a sore wound that wouldn’t heal. Thus, it came as no surprise that money was a root cause of their divorce.

Growing up in a somewhat broken, working-class family gave me the gift of grit and perseverance. Despite the difficult times, I’m thankful that I managed to have plenty of happy childhood memories.

If you ever heard your parents fight about money when you were a child, you know how unsettling and scary it can feel. As a result, I used to worry a lot about money when I was young.

Every time my dad lost his job, I’d worry if my parents would be able to pay their bills. But, the positive side effect was that the older I got, the more I wanted to become a financially independent woman as soon as possible.

Every so often, the stock market will take a dive when you least expect it. When we sense danger, the natural tendency is to run the other way, preferably in a herd for survival. As a result, sell-offs often intensify as computer algorithms now join us humans in rushing out of positions.

As I’ve gotten older, despite much larger absolute dollar swings, I’ve become more sanguine in times of stock market volatility.

Here are some things you can do to reduce your fear and not sell or buy at inopportune times. 

Although making a high income is nice, having a high net worth is more important. High incomes come and go. They are also taxed aggressively. In contrast, a properly managed net worth could last forever.

One of the best incentives to get rich today is the record-high estate tax limit of $11.4 million per person. In other words, Americans can all pass down up to $11.4 million to our heirs tax-free.

We can create a generation of adult kids who end up having zero motivation or self-pride to make something of themselves! Whoo-hoo!

$11.4 million is an incredible amount to pass on tax-free given the estate tax exemption amount was only $1 million in 2003.

The holy grail of personal finance is to amass a large enough net worth which spits out enough income to fully fund your desired lifestyle. If you can’t generate enough passive income to do so, sorry, but you are not yet financially independent.

On your journey to the promised land, it’s a good idea to gauge how you compare to others. After all, everything is relative when it comes to money. If we all have a $5 million net worth, being a multi-millionaire wouldn’t improve the quality of our lives at all.

Surprisingly, I didn’t receive much pushback from my post, The Amount Of Money Needed To Retire Early And Live In Abject Poverty.

Almost everyone got the gist, which was to help you question whether the pursuit of early retirement is counterproductive if you have to live like a pauper. Instead, perhaps finding a job you actually enjoy doing would be a better use of your time.

Yes, a couple of readers jabbed at me using the words “coastal elite” as a pejorative term to say how out of touch I am that 200% of FPL is a near poverty wage. But come on, this isn’t politics. It wasn’t I who set the rules. If you find the FPL levels insulting, call your power-hungry Congressman or woman!

The government says that if you earn up to 400% of FPL, then you are considered poor enough to get healthcare subsidies versus paying extra to subsidize others. In general, it’s better to give than to receive. If we all become takers then our country is screwed.

I also acknowledge in the post that earning 300% to 400% of FPL seems totally fine in non-coastal cities.

In this post, I want to highlight some disconnects perhaps some of you who are thinking of living off 200% of FPL or less aren’t recognizing. Let me set the stage with one reader’s budget.

As more people look to retire early (<60), more people are looking for shortcuts in order to get to early retirement quicker.

It’s understandable that in this day and age of instant gratification, young folks nowadays aren’t willing to grind it out for decades like previous generations.

Instead of building a large enough passive income portfolio to cover a comfortable lifestyle, I’ve noticed more people are willing to retire early to live in or near poverty!

I can empathize.

When I was 25, the 9/11 terrorist attack happened. This terrible event ignited my quarter-life crisis. I seriously thought about retiring with ~$400,000 due to some lucky investments and moving to Hawaii to become a fruit farmer on my grandparents’ under-maintained farm.

In exchange for clearing brush, watering trees, and doing general upkeep on the house, I could live for free and make some extra income selling mangos, papayas, and pomelos down the street. The farm was only about eight acres in Waianae, a rougher part of town.

Then I slapped myself silly and told myself to buck up. Throwing away a perfectly good career in finance so young was incredibly stupid. So I gutted it out for another 10 years until my investments could generate about $80,000 a year and cover my desired living expenses in San Francisco.

In my post about the things I’d do differently if I had a retirement do over, one commenter mentioned something that caught my eye. Although I’ve briefly entertained this notion before, I never believed it to be true.

Here’s what he said:

This isn’t to put down Sam in any way, but it is way too late for him to take a foreign position for a few years.

He is almost certainly unhirable in his old industry. In any competitive, dynamic white collar business you have a two, maybe three-year window to go back in. After that, technology, strategy, and contacts have all mixed on.

He has nothing to offer that a younger version of him at a firm (or from a competitor) wouldn’t provide. 

The moral of this post is do not leave a six-figure job expecting it to be available again at any point in the future.

Ouch! The reader’s comment caught me by surprise because I have never thought of myself as unhirable during my entire early retirement duration. I always felt that I could go back to work in finance for a similar salary if I wanted to.

I believe there’s an irrational fear that once you retire early, you’ll never be able to find full-time work again that pays well. However, no person who retirees early just twiddles their thumbs all day. Instead, they end up doing things they love and honing their skills.

Despite my confidence in being able to find work again in the financial services industry, let’s look at some reasons why I and other early retirees might be shut out for good as the commenter believes.