3 Reasons not to quit your job even if you reach your F.I.R.E goals

At last! You have been rubbing those two nickels together for decades! Now you have finally amassed your sacred F.I.R.E net worth number of $1.4 million dollars. This amount will allow you projected investment returns of a modest 6% per year, thereby allowing you to live by the 4% rule, which gives you an emancipating $56,000 per year to live on while still earning 2% appreciation on your net worth year over year! Well, technically 2% inflation cancels out the appreciation but you don’t care about technicalities. This is the moment! Time to come up with the most spectacular way to quit your day job and ride off into the sunset to live life on your own terms doing absolutely nothing!

Ok, wait. While all that sounds great, I personally have not yet quit my job. Neither has my wife. In fact, our lifestyle has not changed at all since quietly passing our fuzzy FIRE number sometime before 2019. I’ve often asked myself why not? I still don’t know the right answer to this, but I’ve considered many things. I’ll go over the top three possible reasons here.

I like exceeding my investable net worth number by a ridiculously safe margin

Just as a sidenote, my goal was not 1.4 million dollars. This was just an example. Regardless of the number, once we passed it, I didn’t feel any financially safer. I know that sounds irrational because the sense of safety is subjective, whereas math isn’t. But I guess to me, that subjective feeling of security does matter. I acknowledged this and came to the conclusion – it’s not enough. Of course, this being subjective, if my job was unbearable I’m sure I would have quit a long time ago. A lot can happen. We go from one financial crisis to another. Some people I know lost almost everything in 2008. I’m still in the process of figuring out exactly what my true “walk away” number is. I think I am pretty safe, number-wise, but I still lack the confidence for the change. If i got laid off or fired, now that would be a different story.

I have a relatively high paying job in a lucrative field (software)

I have to appreciate where I am in my life, in my career. There are lots of people out there who can only daydream about the kind of perks and benefits that tech workers take for granted on a daily basis. Six figure salaries. Work from home pretty much whenever you want (even before the pandemic). Free food daily, run errands whenever, go on a nature walk in the middle of the day, never pay for coffee unless you want to. *cough* Surf the web half the day *cough* These are all mundane realities for most tech employees. Even if I am just a minion, maybe even a measly contractor, not even a full time permanent employee. I still get paid pretty well for the amount of hours I put in. I don’t want to give this up so easily. If I left now, I think it would be hard to find another job if I change my mind after a few years, or need to get a job for financial reasons. Leaving right now would feel like a waste. Like wasting something good that I got through both hard work and good fortune. Something I wish other people in my life also shared but don’t for whatever reason. I realize this is also driven by my personal feelings and not concrete decision making criteria, but so is my use of sentence fragments but here it is.

I need a driving purpose, but haven’t found it yet

Don’t get me wrong, there are all kinds of things I’d like to do with my free time. I would think a large chunk of it would be well invested into my kids. They would love that. My wife would love that. I also have a never-ending list of projects just waiting to receive some attention. Despite all that, I still feel like working this day job is still a productive and lucrative way to spend my time. I still try to put in what i can to the rest – my family, fixing things, hobbies, etc. I think this could change if I found something else besides my day job that I feel has good potential to be successful. Is it blogging? I don’t know. Clearly not yet. It’s as if I’m looking for a new job that isn’t a job. We are creatures of purpose, if nothing else.

In a more practical sense, I dont’ have a source of replenishing my income

A lot of other FIRE bloggers or Youtubers make money with creating content. So in a sense, they aren’t retired. They just traded one job for another. The 4% rule implies you sell off a certain amount of stocks every year to fund your living expenses. That’s certainly an option, but I’d rather have other sources of even small income. Right now, I just have some monthly rent from real estate that basically covers the mortgages. Maybe I will just join the march of the FIRE bloggers and financial Youtubers some day and make an income through that. Doesn’t seem likely in the forseeable future, however.

Oops, I’ve exceeded the number of reasons. I’ll stop here for now. If you are reading this and in a similar situation, I’d love to hear your reasons. Maybe if enough people tell me I’m being paranoid and I should just retire, its something I needed to hear. Either way, thanks for reading!

Common sense disclaimer: This post is just a journal. It is not intended to be read by anyone other than for the purposes of entertainment. I am not in the financial services industry, so I am not qualified to give any advice related to investing. Assume I am just your neighbor standing on the curb with you holding a can of beer and shooting the shit.