how and why i retired at 38

a waldenesque account nearly twelve years in the making (without couponing)

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone with my wife, in the woods, a quarter mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built to a certain extent by myself, in the proximity of a nameless pond, in Readyville, Tennessee, and earned my living by the labor of my hands counting pills for revoltingly irresponsible and unappreciative individuals. I have lived there 5 years and 11 months. At present I aspire to be a sojourner in civilized life again.

It has been said that retirement is merely a decision to stop trading time for money. Since I no longer need more of the latter to sustain my standard of living, and since I do not enjoy and never have enjoyed the primary method at my disposal to acquire the latter, I have decided that the former is of more value to me going forward in life. I will say little about my 11.5 years of experience as a retail pharmacist, other than to confirm what I already knew from the beginning to a much lesser extent: people are stupid, ignorant, obese, hateful, difficult, obnoxious, bigoted, misinformed, irresponsible, and intellectually lazy. Instead of dwelling on that horrible industry any longer, it is my hope that the following financial information might be of some use to members of a younger generation who are planning their own future independence. Be forewarned however that early retirement might also be a financial bubble in its own right. I discovered and strived on this principle beginning in 2005, but it seems to have exploded in popularity around the time of the market rebound of 2013-2014. The philosophy of financial independence only provides practical outcomes for the potential retiree as long as there are others who will keep obliviously running on their self-imposed treadmills. Productivity must be high (Americans work themselves too death), and the cost of goods must be low (Americans exploit slave labor overseas). This would not have been possible fifty years ago, and it may very well end up impossible fifty years from now. If you believe that our parents and grandparents had an easier financial adventure to navigate than the one we currently have, you seriously need to take a step back and compare what each generation would consider a decent standard of living.

Throughout my life, there have been a variety of circumstances that have aided me in my goal to retire before the age of forty as well as a few unforeseen (and perhaps, unforeseeable) obstacles that have set me back. I will now share several instances of both, including how much each has saved or cost me (including opportunity costs of subsequent investments). I would be wise to begin with the favorable circumstances that were primed before my life even began. I was born a healthy white male in the United States during the 20th Century. Essentially, I won at life on easy mode. Few other countries and time periods would allow a set of financial rules in which a person could become so financially solvent by doing so little, and I can think of no other country in which so many people have self-imposed financial treadmills that will keep raking income for me long after I decide to step off of my own. Granted that being a white male in this country does not provide the full array of unfair advantages that it once did, I can still say with little doubt that there were countless unknown instances in which my identity made my pursuit of early financial independence much more attainable.

I was also born intelligent. It is nothing to brag about. I say it merely because it is relevant, and because it is true. I did nothing to deserve or acquire this quality. In fact, I could have very easily squandered what advantages my genetic makeup provided me. Despite having an IQ that places me in the top two percent of the population, I scarcely managed to graduate in the top fifteen percent of my high school. I satisfied only the bare minimums for a full scholarship to MTSU. I freely admit that I completely mailed it in on my education from seventh through twelfth grade. I rarely took a book home. I did not try. Video games, music, and the opposite sex were far more important to me than keeping a 4.0. I was, however, responsible enough to know what I had to do to when the time arrived. I knew when I had to cease goofing off and become a more responsible individual. The complete independence of college made me try once more. With high school behind me, my analytical mind was awoken. I started seeing many aspects of life in a different way. Most importantly, I remember the need to craft a long-term plan. In short, my current state of financial independence would be impossible if I lacked the mental capacity to obtain it.

Before getting into the specifics of my retirement, I must upset some people by wading into the necessary political waters. I must first say that it was important for me to realize that neither the policies of liberals nor conservatives were in any fashion a major obstacle to acquiring wealth. Lazy, unemployed people on the liberal philosophy of social welfare are a very small part of why a person struggles in life. I readily admit that it is a terrible thing to witness on principle: individuals who are able to contribute to society but would rather live on the back of the taxpayers. Other than voting and speaking your convictions, however, there is little that one can actually do about it. However, it is not the Red State conservatives making $50,000 per year at the factories who are financing this arrangement, much less making the financial engines of the country ignite. What little amount such an honest and indispensable person pays into the Federal Government in the form of taxation (with little to no income taxation) could barely scratch the surface of a multitude of entitlements, an enormous defense department, large research grants, widespread infrastructure, public education, bloated healthcare services, et cetera that the country provides for its citizenry. Merely because an individual finds himself employed does not mean he should also expect to find himself financially contributing his fair share (if there is such a thing) to society. It might serve as a reality check to discover that it is the highly-educated, highly-compensated Blue State residents on the coasts (mostly the socially liberal, fiscally moderate types) that have been carrying this country financially for decades. In the same breath, it is precisely the irresponsible fiscally liberal spending by the Federal Government that has greatly worked to my personal financial advantage. At the time of writing this announcement, I have benefited from $20 Trillion in national debt that I will likely never have to pay back. I was essentially gifted my share of trillions of dollars in services at no cost. Rates of taxation are currently way too low to sustain the country’s bloated standard of living. The bill will doubtlessly be passed onto future generations. But not my future generations. I have no future generations. (Savings: $60,000). This is my fair share of the national debt.

As I previously stated, I did only what was necessary to earn a full ride to MTSU (Savings: $13,000). I was also granted a second scholarship during my sophomore year just by taking the time to complete a two-page form (Savings: $2,000). My parents also allowed me live at home while attending college (Savings: $20,000), bought me a car in high school that lasted throughout college (Savings: $20,000), bought me another car for graduating college, which I drove until it died fourteen years later (Savings: $30,000). My parents also provided me with enough money to get our initial home repairs started (Savings: $10,000) and assumed the debt of the majority of my pharmacy school education and living expenses out of a sense of parental obligation (Savings: $100,000). My parents are also financially responsible people who emerged from dirt-floor shotgun shacks in rural Tennessee before amassing a net worth of $500,000 that will one day be an inheritance for my sister and me (Savings: $250,000). I truly had not realized how much my parents helped me financially until I typed this paragraph. I also fully appreciate now why it has been said with much despondency that inheritance is the true way of earning money in America.

The story of how I ended up as a highly compensated pharmacist is not an exciting one, but it is a necessary detail of how I arrived at my current state. I think it is fair to say that I was semi-indoctrinated as a child with the notion that I was smart enough to go to college and become a physician one day. American parents in the late 20th century had an unhealthy obsession that doctors and lawyers were what all intelligent children should become. So that is the path I obliviously started pursuing, and two years into college, I was dreading where was I headed. Since I wanted out of medicine but didn’t want to waste all of my science credits, I had to choose between optometry, which required Calculus III, or pharmacy. Fortunately, the contemporaneous job market was working strongly to the advantage of my decision to avoid Calculus III. At the time I had switched my career plans, pharmacists were making $50,000 yearly and were projected to be making $75,000 by the time that I would be graduating in six more years. Due to additional unforeseen shortages, that figure ended up exploding to over $125,000 (growing to $150,000 by the time of my retirement). Upon graduating, we all had dozens of job offers due to those shortages. A six-figure job fell right into my lap. I even negotiated a rate $3.50/hr higher than their opening offer (Savings: $125,000). That pharmacy window is now closed due the eminent bubble burst from an abundance of graduates marching out of the abundance of recently opened schools.

This brings me to an important point: I did not pick the career that I wanted to pursue. Reflecting back, I would much rather have tried astronomy, cartography, paleontology, cryptography, or meteorology. I picked what the market demanded. I will leave it to the philosophers to debate if this is truly what one should do in practice, but it benefited me greatly in financial matters. Over the past 11.5 years, I merely had to show up, look semi-presentable, count pills, answer questions that could have easily been Googled, listen to left wing complaints that big pharmaceutical companies are robbing the consumers yet never hear anyone consider other avenues to resolve their health problems, and listen to right wing complaints about how Obama is trying to kill them by raising the copay of their $500 morbid-obesity-fighting Crestor prescriptions from $20 to $30. Ironic rants coming from intellectually and physically lazy individuals belonging to the party of so-called personal responsibility were as common as any other aspect of the job. But I digress.

Nothing could have been more important than my having stumbled into this single epiphany early in life: Happiness does not come from material possessions. Americans tend to buy things that they don’t need to impress people that they don’t like with money that they don’t have. I do not buy things just because I can. I have lived well below my means by saving 70-75% of every paycheck. I have made investments early in life and witnessed the miracle of compounded interest. As far as my investments choices are concerned, I went with small-cap indexed mutual funds with a low expense ratio (VSCIX). The single mistake of choosing an actively-managed fund over an indexed fund would have cost me $100,000 or more over the past 11.5 years alone. What benefit would I have received to beat the market by 1% if the person actively managing my finances was charging me 3%? For the love of all that is holy, avoid financial advisors, particularly those without legal fiduciary responsibilities to their clients! And those doomsday warnings from conservatives about how the market will soon and inevitably collapse? Nothing but sour grapes from those who missed the bullish bandwagons, opting instead for the illusory security of gold and bonds. In fact, I could have very easily reaped even bigger rewards by treading on the riskier grounds of buying individual company stocks, but Warren Buffet, I am not.

So upon graduating, I accepted the overnight position at CVS in Ohio from 2005-2010 for two reasons: it minimized interaction with the intolerable general public, and it paid 5-10% more than the dayshift (Savings: $60,000). I could scarcely let this point pass without mentioning that one-third of that additional income was entirely unearned or unwarranted. I say this because it was company policy that an overnight pharmacist be paid the bonus differential only from midnight to 8am (not from 8pm to 8am as they were doing in Ohio). I neglected to ever point out the mistake to my supervisor. I also received a $1/hr raise in 2013 for taking over as pharmacy manager for six months. The raise was intended to be temporary, but someone forgot to take it away once I reverted back to my regular staff position. I neglected to draw attention to this little tidbit as well (Savings: $10,000).

No purchase regularly has a larger financial impact than a primary dwelling, and I say with much pride that our first home was a very simple one. There is much debate among investing communities whether a house should be considered an investment or an expense, but I tend to agree with the latter camp. I cannot claim that I have a Waldenesque receipt of every expense that went into the process, but I bought what we needed. I did not buy what we could afford. Lenders will tirelessly provide calculations of how much house a person can afford; how much house a person actually needs does not make its way into the equation. These quotes are based on mortgages that financially enslave a person to the bank for 15-30 years. Typically, this means working until very late in life, especially if homeowners elect for refinancing at some point down the road. The purchase price for our house in 2005 was $120,000, but I also invested $40,000 in rehabilitation to bring the total cost to $160,000. Bear in mind that I made this sensible purchase during a troublesome era in which financial institutions were carelessly pawning off McMansions onto people scarcely earning minimum wages. Such individuals who would have acquired a house priced similarly to ours via the 30-year mortgage plan would have ended up paying in excess of $400,000 for that house, including $250,000 in interest alone. I paid ours off in less than three years, including about $10,000 in interest.

Our next house was even more sensible than the first. I exercised great patience and found a 28-acre tract currently worth $150,000 for only $85,000 (Savings: $65,000). I also contracted the house myself with the help of my father. Members of the family did what we could to keep costs down (design, permits, clearing, site prep, outdoor utilities, roofing, flooring, trim, cabinetry installation, painting, and cleanup). Subcontractors were hired for the balance. A well-insulated, energy efficient $200,000 house ended up costing only $120,000. It should be of note that the final cost was artificially low due in part to cheaper labor from the contemporaneous weak construction market of 2010-2011 (Savings: $80,000). The most important savings on the house came from the purchase of the Japanese roofing tiles. A domestic company acting as a middleman quoted me $30,000 as the cost to import the roofing material. For some inexplicable reason, they opted to include the Japanese business card of their supplier in the information packet that they sent. Taking just two minutes of my time, I emailed the contact myself and asked if I could purchase from them directly. The price she quoted me was $15,000 (Savings: $15,000). It never hurts to try.

We decided to build our home in the income-tax-free State of Tennessee. Conservatives here are too dense to appreciate that a shift from consumption-based taxes to income-based taxes would benefit the overwhelming majority of them immensely. I profit from their stupidity (Savings: $50,000). On a related note, knowing the tax code makes an enormous financial difference. Among other shady decisions in the legal gray area, I have turned hobbies into small businesses, taken vacations in the interests of running those businesses, and even claimed a single $7,000 reforestation credit for simply improving and planting on my property (Savings: $20,000). In the 1% chance that I get audited, I can reasonably defend every deduction I have ever made because the tax code is needlessly complicated and nuanced. In essence, it is designed to benefit only the rich and knowledgeable. “I don’t understand all of that tax stuff” is not a good reason for any taxpayer to remain ignorant about it. One can spend a single weekend learning the system like I did and easily save $20,000 over the course of a lifetime. I know most people have wasted far more time than that by binge watching something irrelevant on television. I will leave it for the reader to compare the potential savings versus the time spent. My advice is to relocate as much of your spending to the before-tax column as is legally permissible. I should also say that relying solely on those tax preparation programs to maximize your savings is not a wise move. They do not teach a person how to think critically. Such a quality is not innate; it must be learned and practiced.

Timing has played an indispensable role as well, but it has been far from perfect. I consolidated my federal student loans for my parents in 2005 at a ridiculously low interest rate (2.3%). Interest rates on student loans are currently north of 6% (Savings: $125,000). The financial crashes of 2008 and 2011 happened when I had little invested in the markets, but I kept investing and soaking up index funds at artificially deflated prices. Then came the inevitable rebound of 2013-2014, thanks largely to partisan politics and the Republican gift of corporate corruption that allowed no real regulations against Wall Street in the wake of the recent financial crisis. I was also fortunate that I was born heterosexual. Why? For the first eight years of my marriage (2007-2015), I would have paid 5% more in income taxes if I felt biologically compelled to share my life with someone who had matching genitals (Savings: $50,000). Somehow that would not have seemed fair. And while I am on the subject of marriage, allow me to proudly declare that I married a great woman who is neither shallow nor materialistic. Two months salary on a diamond ring? Not trying to impress anyone. She much preferred an antique birthstone that defies conventional customs and looks way more spectacular (Savings: $20,000). $15,000 Wedding? No inadequacies in need of compensation. Got married, honeymooned in Vegas, and loved it (Savings: $14,000). Will I ever buy a fancy $10,000 box to bury someone in the ground? I am not an idiot, nor do I want anyone in my family to be buried in an idiot box. Life is not a competition to acquire status symbols. Break out of this mentality of doing things that you think you are supposed to do! The primary reason a person cannot retire early is because that person spends far too much. The open secret to creating wealth is to spend less, be content with less, and worry less about financial matters that you cannot control. Adapting is easy; complaining wears you down. But if you remain determined to compete with your coworkers, go ahead and do so while I apoplectically rue the times when I had some.

I lead a simple life and maintain no expensive hobbies. A lot of men in this region look forward to the point in their lives where they can become overweight so that they look proper while fishing in a $20,000 boat. More power to them. Each person has a right to carry his existence how he chooses, but the worst I have ever done with my hobbies is to drop $2,000 on a bicycle that loses barely 5% of its value on an annual basis. But even this decision was much later in my career, and the hobby has the benefit of helping me keep healthy. Staying healthy also keeps doctor bills lower and/or nonexistent. There are no outrageously expensive professionals to allow me access to outrageously priced prescriptions to control my health. There is no need to purchase material things to compensate for the depression of not being healthy and feeling good about oneself. Even being able to keep the thermostat higher in the summer is a benefit. One can easily add more clothes in the winter, but one cannot easily remove insulating adipose in more temperate conditions.

Every purchase I make is on credit card, which earns 1-5% in amazon credit (Savings: $20,000). I then purchase the things that I need on amazon via my own 5% off click-thru links (Savings: $5,000). The savings were even greater before amazon started collecting sales tax. I may have neglected to report all of those purchases in years prior, just as all of the readers may have made similar mistakes. We dropped the worthless cable television subscription in 2013 (Savings: $5,000). We dropped our cell phone plans in 2006 (Savings: $15,000). We dropped the services of the home telephone company and purchased a $200 ooma in 2008 (Savings: $6,000). We maintain smaller wardrobes. We rarely purchase alcohol. We never buy tobacco or other drugs. We make smaller charitable contributions in life and are smart enough not to belong to a religion that often suggests you consistently contribute to their maintenance. Tithing would have yielded a potential loss of $250,000, and I am enlightened enough to know that religion does more harm than good to humanity. Instead, we will be leaving everything to worthy charities when it is our time. While there is no real sacrifice or benevolence on our part, I doubt that it will make any difference to the people who will be receiving it. And then there are the smaller things in life: stretching oil changes to 7500 miles, avoiding a daily coffee habit, rarely paying $1-$2 for bottled water and sodas, leaning toward the dollar menus at fast food restaurants, reflecting before purchasing, making good use of the library, etc. It all adds up.

Perhaps the greatest savings arrives from fighting the indoctrinated societal pressures of having children. Let’s be honest: everyone loves their children but very few people are truly happier by having them. I need not argue my point. Studies show support for my position. I would go so far as to suggest that people simply have them out of ritual or expectation, only to wish later that they had waited until further down the road, had fewer children, or had never reproduced at all. Of course no one is going to wish his children away once they have become attached to them, but it is my position that most people would be happier without an enormous responsibility that they have never known. No one seems to appreciate the true opportunity cost of children: $250,000 each not including college. I will be just fine with our dog.

With all of these benefits, you might be wondering what circumstances did not work in my favor. To start, I will have to return oddly to the summer of 1992 when my father was religiously engaged in raising cattle for show competitions. In an attempt to engage me in his interests, I was given one of his prized heifers in exchange for grooming and showing her at county fairs. She sold several months later for $1,700, which was an abundance of wealth for an eighth grader to come into. I was very much into collecting comic books at that point and tried to convince my dad to co-invest with me in a copy of Actions Comics #1 in Good condition for $4,000. (For you non-collectors, Good condition is an evaluation to conclude that a book is sufficiently damaged enough to be worth only 10% of its Mint condition price). My father wasn’t going for my idea. Today, that book would be worth around $250,000. I should have tried harder. Deliberate understatement.

I also failed to gain admission into the pharmacy school at UT Memphis. At the time, it was the only program in the State; now there are six (part of that pharmacy school bubble that I mentioned earlier). So why did I fail to gain admission? First, I did not focus on the interview as much as I should have because I had already been granted acceptance to the school that I ideally preferred (but which was way more expensive due to being privately funded). I did not hit a home-run like I did with the first interview, but I am certain that I performed well enough to be offered a position. Second, I feel that I was passed over for being a white male. UT Memphis made it a point to advertise that they had the largest female and minority body of any pharmacy school in the country. I do not point this out to cry discrimination or to argue points against diversification. I do not even wish to dispute its fairness. I have already stated that my gender and race have served me in ways I cannot begin to appreciate, but after learning of the qualifications with which some of my classmates were accepted, I can safely say that this was one instance in which who I am did not serve me well (Cost: $40,000). I should have tried harder. Deliberate understatement.

While I am on the topic of education, allow me strongly emphasize that private schools are no better than public schools merely because they are privately funded. Most people do not realize that the cost difference is purely the amount of the bill that the taxpayers carry; it is not due to the quality of education. Private schools might seem like better atmospheres to certain types of people, but I strongly urge the reader to not be a fool. Attend public university.

If I were to define insurance, I would say that it is a form of quasi-voluntary socialism in which the healthy give to the unhealthy, the responsible give to the irresponsible, the careful give to the careless, and the lucky give to the unlucky. My employer has spent $70,000 on my medical policy over the past 11.5 years. I have personally spent $30,000 on my part of that policy. I have used no more than $5,000 (Cost: $25,000; or $95,000 if CVS had just given the money directly to me instead). It is simply not fair that I do what I can to stay healthy and save money, only to have the vast majority of my premiums given to people who do not take care of themselves physically and mentally. Yet I must recognize my inability to do anything constructive about it. I must maintain a policy to protect against disaster, especially with the ACA now mandating it. Without a medical insurance policy, I could easily be hit by a bus and get wiped out financially (and perhaps literally) in the blink of an eye. Or I could get cancer. Or I could lose an arm. I even purchased life insurance, as well as accidental death and dismemberment insurance, because my duty to protect the narcotic supply was not without its hazards (Cost: $10,000). I also carried homeowners insurance and full vehicle coverage for far too long (Cost: $10,000). This is a game we all play, and we tend to play it with a surplus of caution. But I must be mindful that in a parallel universe, I could have very easily lost everything. This brings me to the worst insurance policy that I bought, which I call Ted Cruz insurance. It appeared to me that his influence was going to drive the country to default on its loans and crash the financial markets in 2014. I moved my money into safer investments for a short period and missed out on a small portion of the surging market (Cost: $25,000). Cruz either blinked, or he is not as stupid as his political positions indicate. Lessons learned. Do not try to time the market.

I paid off our mortgage way too early. This looked like a smart move in 2008 when the financial markets were crashing and burning around us, but that perspective was based on a short term view. The $120,000 loan offered at 5% annual interest now seems reasonable compared to the 10% annual interest that the market has earned since 2005. The smart move would have been to carry the loan and invest my extra finances in the market (Cost: $100,000). Lesson learned, but I could have just as easily been wrong. We also bought our first house at the height of the housing bubble. I watched enough house flipping shows on television to know something suspicious was upon us, but the timing of my graduation ensured that I could do nothing about it. We only received $125,000 back out of the house in which we had invested $160,000, but these losses were carried back over into gains by building during the weak construction market that I mentioned earlier. However, my hatred of humanity also drove me to acquire more land than was necessary for our second house. Twenty-eight acres of privacy in this area cost $85,000. We are almost ten minutes from civilization. Granted that this real estate purchase could be considered an investment, and quite an intelligent one as I mentioned earlier, but we do not plan on ever selling the property. Improper exterior construction planning on my part also led to more backfill, fencing, replanting, and yard maintenance (Cost: $10,000). I do not wish to delve further into that. There is also the matter of additional fuel costs from being so far removed from civilization, and I drove a very fuel-unfriendly car for fourteen years that I chose when I was only twenty-three and not thinking of such matters (Cost: $5,000). But as it was, we spent too much time in the high income-tax State of Ohio and paid greatly for the decision (Cost: $30,000). Relocating back to Tennessee was the smart move financially.

I should have accepted more of the overtime offered to me when I was much younger and the job was much easier. The earnings from each shift would have been worth double what each shift would be worth now if the money were properly invested. I should have accepted the $2/hr raise offer to make the move to dayshift six months earlier than when I did, at which point the offer had passed (Cost: $30,000). I also held too much emergency savings in municipal bonds from 2012-2016. Municipal bonds are terrific at avoiding federal taxes, but there were many better investments to be made in a surging market. Put simply, I was not sure how much longer I would be able to survive my job when it started becoming very difficult from 2011-2013. I felt that I had to keep a certain amount of liquidity, and I let those investments sit around for far too long. Such a decision is easy to second-guess but difficult on which to place a cost. Social security will likely be only 75% solvent when I elect to receive it, but the lost earning potential from the tax-free loan that I have paid into the system will end up being the far greater blow (Cost: $100,000). If only people were responsible enough to save on their own instead of the government doing it for them.

There were also the two big vacations that we took to Japan and Europe (Cost: $10,000). We waited until later in my career to visit these wonderful places, a decision which helped prevent greater opportunity costs, but I would have held no regrets either way. They were worth every dime. Eating out at casual dining restaurants is a killer for me. It is my weakness. I love food. We do not often dine at expensive places, but paying $25-$30 three or four times per week certainly adds up (Cost: $100,000). I also tip 22% on average because I find it distasteful and highly unethical to be frugal at the cost of others.

While I can never be entirely certain of future outcomes, conservative retirement models based on historical market performance suggest that a 38-year-old individual with an asset allocation of 80% in equities and 20% in bonds should be able to earn an average annual return of 6% after-inflation and safely execute an annual withdrawal of 3% from said portfolio with far less than a 1% chance of market volatility causing him to go broke before dying. In terms of real numbers, I will begin my first year of retirement with $1.001M, should on average earn $60,000 in interest, withdraw on average $30,000 in living costs (with subsequent increases for inflation), and end my first year of retirement on average with $1.031M. Simulations suggest that the average principle balance should be around $10M after sixty years if spending an inflation-adjusted $30,000 per year. If one analyzes the simulations from the perspective of maximizing spending, a withdrawal of $34,000/yr would still have failed to deplete the portfolio over any sixty-year span.

The seemingly large discrepancy between the 6% return and 3% withdrawal is not to ensure a growing principle, but rather it is an implemented failsafe that has been designed to offset the costly effects of potential downturns in the volatile market during the critical early phases of retirement (known as sequence risk), as well as the known hidden costs of inflation. In the overwhelming majority of scenarios, however, the principle amount remains untouched and does indeed grow exponentially. The ultraconservative model I have followed also makes a few catastrophic assumptions: no social security income, no supplemental income, no inheritances, no national healthcare plan, no disability payments, no spending adjustments for recessions, no spending reallocation for hyperinflating sectors, no observance of the known reduction in spending with age, no liquidation of our excess land, and no ability to downsize or tap into home equity. The only risky assumption I have provided the model is that the ACA subsidies (or some form of them), which I will cover shortly, remain intact until Medicare eligibility. In other words, the likelihood of me ever having to earn another dime for as long as I live is still substantially lower than the likelihood of an event catastrophic enough to reshape the global financial culture beyond the point of recognition.

Pre-retirement annual expenses for my wife and I were $38,000 and can be broken down in the following manner: Food $10,000 (Grocery $5,000 / Dining $5,000), Medical $4,000 (Insurance $3,000 / Costs $1,000), Transportation $5,000 (Vehicles $2,000 / Gasoline $2,000 / Insurance $1,000), House $5,000 (Utilities $1,000 / Internet $1,000 / Taxes $1,000 / Insurance $1,000 / Maintenance $1,000), Other $14,000 (Supplies $4,000 / Vacations $3,000 / Entertainment $3,000 / Miscellaneous $4,000). I have assumed the following cost adjustments to our expenses going forward: an increase of $1,000 to fight the inevitable fits of boredom with more complex entertainment, a decrease of $2,000 for having more time to prepare food at home, a decrease of $2,000 for lower fuel consumption, a decrease of $1,000 from dropping the homeowners insurance policy, a decrease of $1,000 to due to increased flexibility in scheduling vacations, and a decrease of $3,000 due to gaming a quasi-loophole in Affordable Care Act tax credit policy. Allow me to elaborate on that last point.

Citizens with incomes below the Federal Poverty Level are ineligible for these Federal credits because these individuals are supposed to be covered under State (not Federal) Medicaid programs. However, State Medicaid programs disqualify people who have a high net worth through means testing. An individual claiming an income just above the Federal Poverty Line, whether the income is real or not (e.g. Roth conversions), qualifies for ACA credits because the determination process for ACA credits does not take net worth into consideration. ACA credits for individuals just above the Federal Poverty Line pay for the monthly premiums in their entirety, or about $6,000 per year. Furthermore, there is no increase in income taxation for claiming an annual income of $16,000 because the income on which this credit qualification is based is calculated prior to deductions and exemptions that would convert a Gross Income of $16,000 into a Taxable Income of $0. In other words, an individual with an annual income of $0 has the same tax burden as an individual with an annual income of $16,000 (due to standard deductions and exemptions), but a high net worth individual with an income of $16,000 qualifies for a $6,000 tax credit while a high net worth individual with an income of $0 qualifies for nothing. Due in large part to the questionable structure of the process for determining ACA subsidies (and tax policies in general), our annual expenses post-retirement will decrease from $38,000 to $30,000 (adjusted annually for inflation). I have even budgeted conservatively and expect our living expenses to be closer to $27,000 for the first year. This gives us a higher standard of living than 99% of human beings who have ever existed. Let it be known that any similar couple who cannot live on $30,000 per year has serious emotional issues in need of resolution. I must also say that I do not feel the least bit guilty for taking free healthcare coverage. I have paid far more into the system than I will ever get out, and I actually take care of myself unlike the majority of Americans.

So what am I going to do with myself going forward? Instead of waking up and going to a job every day that I loathe, I will spend time doing things that will better serve myself and humanity as a whole: cycling, running, swimming, exercising, weightlifting, bowling, golfing, kayaking, collecting things, socializing, visiting my parents, spending more time with my own family, mentoring students, volunteering, deconverting religious adherents, learning Rubik’s cube algorithms, writing, painting, warning anyone who will listen about the danger of pain clinics, reading, studying, listening to music, watching movies and television, playing video games, housekeeping, organizing, cooking, picking up litter, looking at the stars, metal detecting, going to yard sales, improving my Spanish and Japanese, monitoring investments, building a treehouse and a cabin, traveling, retreating into nature, sleeping, and relaxing. I might even try my hand at opening a business, writing a novel, making a movie, or recording an album. I can finally do whatever I want, whenever I want, wherever I want. Life is an opportunity to navigate existence in the most meaningful way possible. In the end, I may not have chosen the safest and smartest path at each fork in the road, but I fully intend on being content with the decisions I have made. I will also come to appreciate fully that financial stability is not the sole measure of my worth.