Mr. Money Mustache Addresses Fears of Retiring Early | MHFI 310

Hey, what's going on?

Welcome to the Mile High 5 podcast.

I'm Doug Cunnington and Mr. Money Mustaches with me again.

How are you?

I'm same as our last show, Supreme, and thanks for asking.

Very good.

Today we're doing a little bit of a different format, shorter episode.

We're going to try to make it actionable, which is a great departure.

Usually I try to just tell useless stories, but today we're going to hit a couple

topics.

And I was inspired by listening to a few podcasts and just conversations I've had in person

with some folks, and we're going to talk about kind of one more year syndrome and what

if people are scared to retire, even though they're in a position to probably be able to

retire.

We're going to talk a little bit about like being bored, and there's one thing that

I've heard people say, I'm not Carl's a good friend of ours, so I'll pin it on him,

because I think he did say something to this effect where people coming up to retirement,

they express a thought about, hey, I think I might be bored, and I'm afraid of being

bored.

And some people say, if you're bored, then you're a boring person.

And I think that's overly harsh, and it's antagonistic, and it's not a good starting

point for a conversation.

So it depends on who it is you're talking to if you're like, hey, I want to talk to

this fucker, then maybe you say that, but like, we're not that, and we're going to come

out of it from a different direction.

Maybe a better way to say that is boredom is a choice.

Yeah, you have the option on what you spend your time on, and I think again, hobbies

are an important thing, but there's a couple pieces will unpacked.

So number one, people are sometimes scared to retire, and it manifests in one more year

syndrome, which is an endless cycle of, you know what, next year, and then they're like,

it'd be good to have a little bit more money.

Maybe the markets are going to be down, maybe some other possibility, and Pete, you've

done some one-on-one coaching with folks, and I think you probably see this a little bit

of fear to actually retire.

What insight do you have to help people move past that?

You have to learn to trust the numbers.

A lot of people understand the numbers in principle, but they don't feel it in their

gut.

That might be just the case that you're never going to feel it in your gut, but in other

words, waiting longer is not going to help.

So you have to just take the numbers and then just make the leap at some point, and then

very quickly people realize, oh yeah, I should have done this a long time ago, because the

numbers do work out, they're not magic, they're not dependent on faith, and then you're

focused on living the rest of your life, and sure enough, your savings will continue

to grow, and you're fine.

Are there any cases that people were right?

They should have waited.

I mean, I'm sure it's happened if somebody retires earlier than more aggressively than

the 4% rule, for example, that's one way, and then you happen to have bad luck from

a stock market decline, and you insist on continuing to spend as much as if the stocks

hadn't declined, your investments.

Then you'll see that your balance is decreasing, and it'll still take, the funny part is,

it'll still take like a minimum of 15 years, more like 20 years until you actually run out

of money, but most people just see that declining balance, and they start to worry much

early, much earlier, and the ironic part of that is that even in the worst case, like terrible

declines in the stock market, 10 years of high spending, there's still way better off

than the average person in their demographic who basically has no savings, so it's quite

funny how overly cautious we can get, and just creating worry where only there should

be nothing but a feeling of ridiculous safety and abundance.

This hit in our household, Elizabeth and I debated often, because I thought we were in

a spot where we should both be able to stop working, and she wanted to work a little

bit longer, and her job wasn't bad enough for her to quit, which is a weird little curse

to not have a job that's horrible enough for a way like, you know what, I'm out of

year.

It's like licorice handcuffs.

You're like, I don't mind licorice, but it's not, it's not good, but I'll just keep it

anyway.

Yeah.

Yep, and I think we, I realized at some point, like it wasn't about the math, and it was

about something else, and in the long run, she's thrilled.

I will have an upcoming episode where I interview her, she's coming up on two-year anniversary

of being retired.

She fucking loves it.

It's more amazing than she thought, or that I thought I was nervous that she may want

to go back to work and feel like a lack of productivity.

She hasn't felt that, she's, you know, as busy as ever, and has a lot of downtime, she

has slow mornings, like all the things that are making her happy.

She gets a piece of that every day, sure, there's, there's down days, but like overall,

it's been, it exceeded everyone's expectations.

It's to help with the library, I recall, as well, which is like a lot of book people's

dream is to hang out with library people and be useful.

It's totally, yeah, great use of time, so she gets to volunteer, she does social things

and yeah, it's fantastic.

I believe comes close to the puzzle championship.

Yeah, yeah, at least a year.

Yeah.

She's a big puzzler, she's, she's a, that award-winning, but she's, she's placed.

Yeah.

And some of these puzzle competitions.

A puzzle contender.

Yeah.

Pretty fun.

Okay.

So, another issue, and this comes into the, the boredom and maybe retiring to something

and hobbies, but sometimes people are a little scared to retire, but it's about what they're

going to do with their time, so they continually do research and they're trying to find examples

of people that are maybe happy with retirement, but some people they are looking for examples

that disprove happiness and retirement, so people that went back to work, it didn't work

out for some reason.

What insight do you have on people that are scared about the use of their time, slash boredom?

Well, first of all, I wanted to mention that we made fun of a podcast clip a few shows

ago where Morgan Housel and whoever the host was were saying, like, I don't know anybody

who hasn't gone back to work after trying early retirement and like, what?

Right.

We were the opposite.

Yeah.

We don't know anybody.

Well, actually, I do know some have gone back to work, but very few.

Like, if I know 100 early retirees, then like 95 of them are still happily retired.

Yep.

But yeah, I don't have a much insight beyond that other than the fact that what you've

explained with your wife is that many, most people have the opposite realization, like,

wow, there's so much to do.

And I just didn't have time for it before and my life has easily expanded to fill this

time.

And I'm just having more fun, infinite weekend.

Right.

Does that answer your question?

A little bit.

Yeah.

And I think we could dig in a little bit more and I'll just ask you, right?

So you're going to be moving to a new neighborhood, check out the, the stay on check at the end

here.

But you're going to be moving.

You will need to make new friends or it sounded like maybe you already have new friends

there.

Yeah.

It's already been happening, but I'll be expanding.

Yeah.

I'll have to expand my Denver area, friend circle.

How do you, how do you make friends as a, I think if I said middle, we're older than middle

age now, but we'll say in the middle age, 102, at least, exactly middle age.

Yeah.

So how do you make friends as a, as a middle-aged dude?

I think it's the same as always.

It's just you make eye contact and speak to people.

Make some jokes.

Right.

So in my neighborhood, I've always liked to become friends with all my neighbors, anyone

who lives in the sort of, in eyesight of the house.

So if I see them outside, I'll just say, hi, I must, you must be my new neighbor or

whatever or make some kind of comment on whatever's happening at the moment.

And then you introduce yourself and then quickly you're sharing stories and background with

this friend.

And then I typically like to leave it with an offer like, hey, well, I'm a carpenter.

And if you ever need any tools or advice on how stuff I just love to help out neighbors

and, and I'll hear my number down for you and you give them your number or you can try

to get both.

The best thing you can do is exchange numbers for real, like, and quickly write it down

because if they give you your name, at least in my case, I'm going to forget it.

Write down the name, say, say, farewell, then run inside, stick it on your fridge and

you're like, orange house next door, Cindy and Dan and like so and so.

And then eventually you build that up and then it quickly leads to more.

I mean, in my new neighborhood, I've been working out at the gym already there because

I've been spending a lot of time in that neighborhood.

And then other guys like, Pete, do you, you might not remember me, but we were on a trip

together a long ago and one of the Ecuador Shitake series.

Oh, wow.

And it turns out there's this really nice guy and his wife who live about five doors down

for maybe 10 doors, 10 houses away from where my new house is.

So it's super cool.

And then I was like, yeah, this is like about a month ago, this happened and like I'm

considering buying a house in the neighborhood.

So yesterday when I found out I got the house, I went there and I'm biking around to see

what's around, like, the details even more and like how far is it to the light rail station

and stuff.

And then he's like, Pete, it's me again.

And then I stopped and he gave me a tour of his house and we learned all this stuff

about each other.

And like we're all set up.

And they have a rotating happy hour thing and they have this alley party that happens

quarterly where everybody and he said that everyone in the neighborhood is super social.

Cool.

A bunch of them have kids.

A bunch of them.

Everyone's kind of like these, your typical Colorado people, whether all like active and

self-actualized, fun, like what a great neighborhood.

What a great state.

That's kind of my type of person, just happy, cheerful, do stuff people.

Yeah.

So I'm already so excited about moving there and it's going to be like a friend Bonanza,

I think.

Very exciting.

And so this might be tough for you and I to give advice, but we'll try.

We'll see what this question goes.

There's a lot of introverted people as I navigate some of the conferences and other

stuff.

People do come out, but they're like, I'm introverted and it actually stresses them

out a little bit.

You seem like an outgoing guy.

You're walking around confident, you're like, hey, I'm Pete moving in.

I'm a carpenter, badass, got a very electric guitar when I'm walking around just for emphasis.

So it might be easier for you to make new friends.

So do you have any insight or have you observed other people and you might be introverted,

but you do what you need to do because you do enjoy it to be social.

Yeah.

It's a skill.

So according to the books and the personality types, I'm still introverted in the sense

that I love my alone time, I like things quiet, my recharge time is at home, you know,

like I'll go out to a party and then I'll come home to chill and the true extroverts

will go out to the party and then they'll go out to the nightclub and stay out to 3am

or whatever.

And we got to meet more people.

And a good example of extroverts in modern, you know, in mature society is the Donugins.

Alan and Katie Donugin, especially Alan, but they're just like, they're always up for

another thing, another thing, more people, they never get tired, much, much more people

endurance than yeah, I'm sort of in between introvert next to it, but this is actually

very practical for our listeners here is if you're a too shy and not good enough at meeting

people, you can learn the skill of just becoming better and you can like either watch people

or read a book on it or watch some videos and just learn about what it means to be friendly

because it's a skill like you're like making eye contact using an expressive voice instead

of like a super flat voice, making some gestures joking around and that's what other humans

are attracted to and they'll want to be your friends if you're more like that.

You know, if you're afraid to say hi as you're going to get to your mailbox, people are

going to be like, oh, there's that new guy is not very friendly.

It's up to you to make the eye contact, say hi, ask some questions, even build up a little

like roster of just pre-memorized questions, like things that you ask people about their lives,

like how long have you lived here or what brought you to this neighborhood?

You guys have kids or whatever, just to crack the ice, that gets people talking and then

very quickly it leads to friends because guess what, humans like having friends and everybody

wants to meet you and be your friend, it's just a matter of letting them know that they're

welcome to do that. I'll give three little tips here. Number one,

give someone a compliment. So if the gym, you know, you got to check in, there's some folks that

are there all the time you see them, but people were wearing seasonal things so it was like thanks

giving so they had like turkey stuff, Christmas, they had like sweaters with lights and other things

and people were going through not talking to them. I'm like, oh, that's a great sweater or whatever

and then they tell me all about it and they remember me and it makes small talk like that all the time.

Small things. I'm not having a long conversation. I'm just like, that's cool and they remember you

over time. Yeah, very true. Yeah, the compliment. I haven't even learned that skill. So

a little bit short by the way, Dan. Is that a new shirt? Thanks, man. No, it's a classic.

It's actually a thrift store found find ice. It's from like a farmer supply store. Yeah, it's like

a western shirt. It has like the snap buttons. Yeah, that's cool. Easy on, easy off.

Second tip is if you're very introverted and you do have a little trouble with like making

this small talk, be a hub that organizes stuff. And this is a huge thing. I did this all the time

until I had I guess more of a conversational comfort sort of thing going on. But if you're like,

hey, I went out organize something at the fi collective or whatever your thing is, but like

organize your own thing, you can bring people together. So for example, I think when I first

joined the co-working space, I was like, I'm going to do a talk on SEO. Is that okay, Pete?

Pete, why don't you come? Car, why don't you come? And then that was sort of like social proof

that like people were going to show up. And then there were whatever like 20 people. And I kind

of cut my teeth and met a ton of people just from that one thing. And I was just presenting.

I mean, if you're introverted, you may not want to present, but I was comfortable just going through

my shit that I knew well. And it helped a lot of people. And that kind of like set off a bunch

of friendships that all started just from doing that one little thing. Yeah. That's true. Hosting

or giving are great, great ways to do stuff. Actually, I remember a similar story. I got invited

to a conference. It was sort of an invite only random, super random people from all fields.

Go to the conference. And then you're supposed to either like attend talks or give talks if

you're feeling bold. And in the talks, I'll get like created live. So it's not pre-scheduled.

There's no pre-made speakers. There's just a whiteboard. So I felt was feeling saucy. So I put

up like how to retire, put up some kind of thing about retiring at 30. And then it turned out

the people at this conference. So it was in California. And a lot of them were kind of famous

like authors or business magnates and stuff. I didn't even know them. But I just later kind of found

I'm like, oh, wow, like in retrospect. But it turned out to be a great idea. So I gave this talk.

I thought no one would be coming. But the whole room filled up. And then I'm like, cool. And I

just did my best at making up a talk. And then because of that, everybody knew me who otherwise

wouldn't have. And I'm still in touch with a bunch of the people I met just because of that one

action of putting a whiteboard marker on a whiteboard like it was 2015. So that kind of stuff is

just yeah, just give your knowledge. It's a great example. All right. And last one. I heard this

on a podcast. So I didn't fact check it or anything. But basically everyone wants conversations

to be shorter. So if you have an interaction, typically on average based on the survey on a

podcast that it did not verify, it was like, conversations should be 65% shorter. So you don't have

to talk for a long time. Ask a couple of questions. Get the fuck out of there. Keep it short.

Leave them wanting more. That's true. And it helps to learn about body language if you're not

sure because people are going to start fidgeting and looking away if you're talking too long. And

the people who talk forever and you can't get away from them, they don't notice this body language

things. Yeah. And then people, people start avoiding you. So yeah, keep it short. Be funny.

Get out. Like leave, leave on a laugh. Yeah. Like I think that's just stands into that in a

sign felt episode. Oh wow. Deep cut. Okay. It makes sense. As we wrap it up here. So I want to

talk about the boring thing. So boring people are bored. I think that's a little overly harsh.

If people have focused on their career for many years, maybe they didn't get to exercise the

skill of not being bored. You mentioned being bored might be a choice. Can you expand and give

some tips? Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm rarely bored. But when I, when I am, it's just because

chosen not to engage in basically the infinite list of interesting activities that I have already

laid out for myself, like I have a lot of projects on the go. And I love when I work on them.

So it's a matter of sometimes you just have to get the get up and start forcing yourself to do

something. And then soon you won't be bored anymore because you're you're actually doing something

in activity kind of leads to boredom. But of course, if you retire from a busy job and you have

zero, like your apartment is just empty, empty fridge, you've been a 60 hour week lawyer for

your whole life and you've never done anything besides a little hearing, then yes, if you just

stop doing that and then sit in that apartment, it's going to be hard to create a new life. So it

will it'll take some work. But I'm hoping that many of our listeners are not in that situation. And

they already have friends and hobbies, possibly children, at least pets. And so there's a lot of

stuff to do already that you can just start doing better. Yep. And one, one thing that I'll mention,

and we don't have to go too far into it. But a lot of people do have an idea that they want to

explore a new hobby. Maybe it's language learning. That's a great one. Keep your mind active.

Music is another one that expands your mind. Maybe it could be social. And if you haven't done

anything in specific areas, there's a strong chance you will be bad at it. And that's okay. It's

like part of the struggle. I think it could be key to make sure it's something that you do because

you enjoy it, even when you're not that good at it. So guitar is that for me when you're learning

music, it can be very slow. You're just doing the same measure again and again and again until you

kind of get it under your finger. And it could be difficult. Language learning very hard if you haven't

learned other languages. So just keep that in mind. It could be difficult. But you want to

probably find hobbies that you can do even when they are very difficult. And I'm sure when you

first started construction and carpentry, you were probably 10 years old or younger or something

like that. You weren't great then, but you have decades now. So you're pretty darn good at it.

But if you weren't something brand new, then it would probably be a little harder, especially if

it was disconnected, not an adjacent kind of hobby. Yeah. And like for me, a good example is playing

instruments, you know, like playing the bass. I was starting from scratch. And it is frustrating

because like I hear funky bass lines are all over in my head, but they just won't come out

in the fingers. Yeah. But I'm aware of that. Like it does suck, but you're forcing yourself and it

gets better and it's fun to feel every time you do get better. And also if you understand how

learning works like your body, your brain is trying to fight learning. It's like, no, save space,

save our energy for stuff that we're already good at. Yep. But like when you're forcing yourself

in that unpleasant state, that's actually what learning feels like. So you're doing the rewiring

even when it feels shitty. And if you learn that, then you'll actually savor the suck a little bit

more because you're like, this is what learning feels like. This is what learning feels like. Yep.

And then when you wake up the next day and you try that exact same thing again, you're like, wow,

I think I learned something during all that sucky cactus. Totally. Yeah. Very amazing. And

that is the deliberate practice where you're on the edge of comfort, where you're just outside of

what you can actually do, just like building muscle or whatever. It's like a little bit more than

what you can handle, but not too much more. Just a little bit. And it hurts in both cases.

And there's some forms of learning that just are pleasant as well. Like if you're playing,

when we're playing music together, then we're still learning presumably, but it's also fun.

It's actually for playing a song that we've somewhat got down with carpentry. I'm still learning

every time I do it, but it's also fun the whole time. It's probably because I've reached

like I'm over the hump long ago of the sucky period. So in more, it's just like continuing to enhance

as I do more and more stuff. So that's a reward for getting through the hard initial period though.

Very cool. All right. I think that's it for today for the quick hitting episode. I will

give a shout out to the Phi Collective. We haven't talked about that in a couple weeks, but that

is what the Mr. Money Mustache HQ co-working space is transitioned into. There's a virtual membership.

Is there anything that you want to mention about it? Just that it's awesome now. So the reason it

became awesome is that a bunch of the members, these like fun, excavated, extroverted people were

just waiting and I didn't realize everyone was willing to help out so much with me and Carl and

Mindy and what we're doing. So now we have this whole committee who is we have events like almost

every day. Our membership has doubled in just the last three months. So we have like 80-something

members now. So it's getting more fun all the time and it's got this whole like positive snowball

feeling to it. So it's exciting. And then also we added this new idea of the remote membership,

which is like a hundred dollars for the whole year. And you can still be part of the community

online and you can even visit in real life if you're in Longmont. I think that's kind of a neat

idea because there's people scattered all over the world and then the remote members can still

be on the discord server and chat with each other and make plans like, hey, maybe we should all go

to Colorado and June or something. So it's been a really fun revival of that place and I'm so

happy that happened. Very cool. Yeah, and I'll give a plug a good use case. So if you're going to

travel through Colorado in the past, you would have to try to get in touch with me and I'm not a

tour guide type. So I'm like, check with Carl. I don't know. Maybe someone can show you around

or something, but typically Carl's busy. He's also not a tour guide. But if you have the virtual

membership, then you're plugged into the discord. You'd say, hey, I'm going to be in town. You could

drop by. A lot of people come by for Camp 5, which is in July. And there's dozens of people. And we

saw that last year. So if you're going to be making a trip through Colorado, this is a way to give

you contacts. And I would say I would be shocked if you were like, I'm coming by. I would like to

get coffee. I'd be shocked if there weren't three or four people at least that would go meet up

with you to go hang out and show you around Longman or whatever. Especially if you're coordinating

with other remote members because then everybody's having fun discovering new place. Yeah, very

cool. All right, thanks Pete. And we'll see you probably in a couple weeks. Sounds awesome to

me. And I'll probably have my new house by then. So more stories.

Thanks for listening to this show. That was the Mile High 5 podcast and I'm Doug Cunnington.

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I'd actually be surprised if it sounded like it. It's really just for entertainment and that's

at least what we're hoping for. But seriously, get advice from professionals. So we'll catch you all

next week. You have a new house on the way here new to you. So it's not a brand new home and you

have some projects. What kind of stuff are you thinking about? Well, the house that I'm purchasing

at the end of this month, February is a 2008 house. So it's kind of like it's kind of a high quality

suburb in style house at the time. And then it hasn't been really changed much since then.

So you can imagine it's got like some old carpets, some dated colors, a weird master's

treat that's like the size of a tennis court, but you know, with really ugly shelving and the

closets and other things like that. So I'm going to do cosmetic fix ups, but also a few floor plan

changes because I'm passionate about design and making stuff work well. Okay. Kitchen bigger by

having it eat up some wasted space that's just outside the kitchen and stuff like that. Gotcha.

And I don't know. It's a ton of stuff, but like you're super pumped and you're thinking about like

design and the specifics. Do you have like an idea what you're going to tackle first?

Yeah. The first thing for me is always the garage. So I'm moving to the house and then I insulate and

drywall the garage and put like beautiful lighting and built in shelves, built in benches. In this

case, I'm going to add some windows and a glass door because it has a nice big south facing wall

that's currently just all blank blackness. So and that's because that's the base of operations.

It's like a military you go in there and you make your forward base or you can have your tools

and you know materials and storage and everything. And then at that point, then I'm empowered to

start building around my way through the rest of the house with like all this high quality

workspace. Very cool. And then any big upgrades from your current house to the new one,

including a big project that you might do. So I don't know, is it going to be like a super epic

kitchen or like bathroom or something like that? Let a bidet is all around.

Well, my current house is already pretty nice because I've lived there like eight years and I've

redone everything at this point. So it's all on even new windows that are all way bigger than

before. And so it's going to be like the bringing the new house up to the standard of my current

house is already going to be a big thing. But the biggest thing is just the size. Like this new one

has double the interior square footage and also slightly bigger garage, which means I can bring back

a lot of the stuff that is currently not in my house. Like right now the garage has to double

duty between or triple duty between workshop and gym and then car storage if I want to bring the

car in for any kind of snow storm or something. Whereas now it's just going to be dedicated to

have room for gym, I have room for workshop in the garage, and still room for the car and

and that kind of stuff. So going to be really nice to spread out and express my creativity.

Less time spent losing stuff and tripping over objects because like one of the biggest downfalls

in my life is it's just like physical chaos. I have too many hobbies for the limited amount of

space in my smaller house. So it's going to come back and expand just a little bit.

Yeah, yeah. All intentional. And that makes, I mean, it's cool when everything has its spot.

And then when you need it, you know where to get it versus I have a little chaos down here.

I think I've described it before. It's like I kind of know where everything's at, but I let it

get a little too far most of the time. And then when I don't want to do some piece of work,

let's say taxes are coming up, then I'm like, I need to clean my desk. And then I'll spend like an

hour not doing what I'm supposed to do. And then get in the desk. That definitely happens to all of us.

But at least you're producing something and it's still still fun. Yeah, just still moving your

body around, moving objects around.