What Life Really Looks Like In Early Retirement

The Truth About What We Do All Day

When we first announced our plans to  give up our high-octane careers, get rid of most of our possessions and travel the world, we quickly encountered a lot of assumptions and misconceptions about life in early retirement. Some people thought we’d end up sitting around watching Netflix all day. Some thought we’d have all the time in the world to do whatever we wanted. And others thought we’d eventually become bored without jobs to provide structure and direction to our lives.

After encountering so many misconceptions, we wanted to share what life in retirement really looks like for us. In fact, we recently discussed what our typical day looks like in an interview with Nomad Numbers, which is a great resource for people who are interested in financial independence and traveling full time. 

Our goals in retirement

Long before handing in our notice at the office, we put a lot of work into figuring out what should be our main focus during our first couple years in early retirement. We knew that after years of working in high-pressure careers, we couldn’t just step away from our jobs without a plan. 

After a lot of brainstorming, we decided on the three meaningful activities that would be our focus in early retirement. First, we knew that we loved travel and wanted to live as locals in different countries. And since we retired we’ve been doing just that, living in countries for a month or two at a time. 

We also love getting outdoors with our dogs and wanted to create lots of opportunities for hiking and even multi-day treks. Finally, we wanted to share our experiences through a creative project, specifically our YouTube channel. This would help us capture an important time in our lives and give us an opportunity to connect with other like-minded people interested in financial independence and travel.

Of course, our days are filled with other activities as well, but these three are really driving the agenda and giving a sense of direction and purpose to our days. 

So those are pretty lofty goals…what’s the reality? How do these fit into our everyday life in retirement? And how different is our life now versus what it was like when we were working?

Morning

Let’s start with our morning routine. Most people would think that retirement is the perfect time of life for sleeping in everyday. However, we’re still morning people who like to get the day started early. We usually get up between 5:30 to 6:00am, do a little meditation and get right into our exercise program. Then breakfast and time for reading and ideally a nice long walk with our dogs. 

In many ways this is very similar to the routine we had while we working with one major difference: no time pressure. Back then, the alarm would go off at 4:45 am and it would be a race to get everything done — walk dogs, go to the gym, breakfast, get ready for work — all before showing up at the office by 8:30am. 

There was no room for error or leisurely breakfasts in our routine. We were under constant pressure — mostly self imposed — to fit everything in within tight time allocations.

Daytime

As we get into the day, here’s where things in early retirement look a lot different from when we were working. During our working life, our days were a blur of meetings and responding to email and more meetings and hopefully having a quiet 10 minutes to eat our lunch at our desk. It was go go go but we still always felt behind. 

Today in early retirement, life is totally different. As we have mentioned, we’ve prioritised three main activities: working on our creative project, enjoying the outdoors, living as locals in new countries. 

We allocate a few days a week to spend time on our creative project, which is our Youtube channel and blog. For us, this is a time for learning new skills and challenging ourselves. It turned out to be more work than we anticipated but it’s also more rewarding than we expected. We’ve really enjoyed connecting with people in the financial independence and travel communities.

Of course, we don’t spend all our time on creative projects. We make time to be in nature — our second big activity — by getting to a local park everyday with our dogs. At least once a week, we like to do a big excursion to the nearest mountain or lake or national park. And sometimes we even base ourselves in a mountain town so that we can spend a few days hiking, like when we stayed in the town of Kas on the Turquoise Coast of Turkey or more recently when we stayed in the Pindus mountains here in Greece.

Our final main activity is living as a local in the countries we visit. Of course, each week we like to explore some new part of the city, and make sure to get to the major sights and attractions. But living as a local is also built into our everyday experience: shopping at the local market, taking in the street life, trying new restaurants, or meeting people who want to say hello to our dogs.

Evening 

Moving on to our evening routine, we now get to enjoy something called “leisure” which we never really had while we were working. This is a time for us to try new recipes or go out for dinner, which can be very affordable thanks to living in low cost countries. We also use our evenings to catch up with family or do some yoga. 

This is quite different from when we were working and had an evening routine that was just as compressed as our morning schedule. Much like the mornings, it was a race to get everything done: have dinner, walk the dogs, pack our lunches, get to bed on time so that we wake up early and do it all over again. If we were lucky, we’d have a few minutes of personal time to veg out watching Netflix.  

So for those who thought we’d be bored in early retirement or that we wouldn’t have enough to do without a job, the truth is that we’re finding this to be an exciting and enriching time in our lives. And we could still use more hours in the day to do everything we want to do. 

Of course, one of the exciting aspects of our early retirement is that our life might look very different three months, six months or a year from now. And the reason is because we are constantly experimenting to discover the right lifestyle for us in retirement. Do we want to live in a big city or a small town? Do we want to be by mountains or an ocean or both? 

Over the course of our retirement, we’re trying it all to see what works best for us. And every time we’re in a new setting, we adjust our lifestyle and routines to suit our new circumstances. 

If you’re interested in financial independence and early retirement, click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel.