Are Your Friends or Families Supportive of Your Early Retirement Goal?

Publish date: Wed, 21 Feb 2018, 08:56 PM

Early retirement is often a key word that is casually used in a conversation that interchangeably means the same as being financially independent.

For sure, the community knows we are not talking about a real time retirement that sits away your idle time staring at blank space.

Early retirement, until today, remains a relatively vague concept that most people on the street finds it unfamiliar.

When I started writing my first few posts on this blog about 8 years ago, it was a relatively new concept to the scene. For sure, there were some early warriors who were even earlier than me on this path and are now enjoying the fruits of their hard work.

But the community was not that crowded.

As years go by, you can see the community started to grow, including younger folks at the age of 18-19 who are convinced that this is the right goal for them.

One example is Sleepydevil, our own representative of the youngest folk in the small community.

That is generally a good sign, maybe not for the economy, but for the community.

Friends

Throughout these years, I've met with many new friends and received countless emails from peers of different ages of different groups asking about directions and priorities they should take.

I have been very careful in sharing and writing because I do not want to hardsell the idea of passive income, including laying on the beaches, sipping pina colada, countless traveling and all those stuff.

I've always believed that a person who's ready to take on the idea and concept of financial independence is a person that is ready on mission.

The next few years path is going to be rocky and bumpy, and all I needed to do is to confirm that was the case with my experience, so far.

I've had my fair share of skepticism as well.

There were friends, colleagues who looked at me with relentless disbelief, dissent because that wasn't what was written in the white paper. The traditional path taught us to do well in school, excel at work and grow the retirement nestegg until the age of 65, then you are entitled to the proper official retirement for the rest of your numeric life.

And I embrace that.

I get it that it's not a concept that is a walk in the park and people can come to the conclusion that this whole thing may be a scam after all.

The community isn't here to praise and dictate our own choir. This just means that there's so much for the community to grow even larger and with the ubiquitous of the social media and internet in the modern days, it is much easier to get contact with.

Family

I don't have to look far beyond to garner the support of my dream.

Let's start with parents.

My Dad is probably the only one in the family that embraces the concept of financially independent and early retirement.

We read the same book such as Rich Dad Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant and we discuss about the state of economy so I guess our mission and vision are aligned.

My Mum, on the other hand, is the more traditional type. She thinks a person should work for the same company for as long as they can and be loyal to one single employer.

You can see that I have plenty of work to do to convince her otherwise. I'm not expecting her to agree but I do hope to get her support someday.

My wife is not new to the concept and that is largely down to my nuisance every night talking to her about it.

I garnered support from my wife, which is important, but I do sense her insecurity about the numbers required to sustain our living lifestyle. We're still constantly working out on the numbers and it's always a moving goal-post, partly because as our kids grow up we have plans to shuffle our expenses around.

Luckily, we have a few role model in the community that could be a role example of just that. A good friend, Sim is one of those cases.

As for my kids, it's going to be a hard one convincing them simply because they are young and I'm trying hard not to give them the false impression of slacking. It's a very thin line that could go very wrong if I'm modeling it incorrectly. I'd focus on the importance and virtue of savings but I also want to show them that they need to work hard to get to what they are.

I'm keen to hear about how friends and families of you readers react when you talk to them about being financially independent and the likelihood of an early retirement.

Let me know!

Thanks for reading.

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