439 | Adjusting to Life After FI (Before You Get There) | Chris Terrell

27:34Oh, that's a quote for the ages. I like that. Yeah, you do need different things. And I think, right, the priorities become different. And I'm even thinking, so this is a much more micro level, obviously, but even just the amount of time, like what you need to do. And when you first approach that, it's not a negative sense necessarily, but there are practical realities of life. And for most of us, that means buying things for the house, going shopping and all these other day-to-day necessities. And I think one of the other benefits of FI and just owning your time, maybe more so than even FI, is you can do those things on your own schedule.

28:15And I think just how critical that is. I was talking to someone recently, I think it was even my mom, who was saying like, oh, isn't Costco always crowded? I always hear these horror stories. I'm like, well, yeah, if you go Saturday at 2 p.m., there's going to be an hour-long line. Like Laura's response was, if you get there, yeah, they say they open at whatever. I forget exactly. They say they open at 10, but the secret is they're really open at 945. If you're there, there's going to be five people in the store, right? So that's a very different experience. So the compounding benefits of FI are by living on your own schedule, you actually reclaim many, many hours a week from those standard necessities of what people doing the same task, but by necessity and by definition of when they have the time to do it, that's when everybody else has the time to do it.

29:07And it's much less efficient. Right. One of the things that I had to quickly adjust to when I entered the world of FI was that days of the week no longer matter. And since they don't, and I've been going to Costco since they were price club. So it's been way back when, Oh my gosh, 35 years, probably at this point, I absolutely love everything that Costco does. They treat their employees well, and I love their concept. We could spend a half hour just on Costco. But where I'm going with this is that, like you said, Costco can be pretty miserable on a Saturday or Sunday because that's when everybody is there.

29:42And they are busy during the week, surprisingly busy during the week. But I do go on a Tuesday or a Wednesday at 10 o 'clock, and it really is much different. And it makes everything a lot more pleasant when you're at Costco. I enjoy being at Costco during the week. I was surprised to see how many people were there. So I researched a few numbers before our episode today, and I discovered that one out of six Americans are 65 or older, and they are at Costco on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 11 o 'clock. It looks like an AARP gathering at Costco on a Tuesday or Wednesday. They are there, but they've figured out the same things that the five people have figured out as well.

30:24They're Like this is the time to be there. Don't come on a Saturday or Sunday. The other thing that I'll lean into just a little bit about that AARP experience is one thing when you reach thigh is it's going to feel just a little bit lonely sometimes because if you reach it at an earlier age, especially if you reach it in, let's say, your late 30s, 40s, early 50s. I was 53 when I reached thigh, which is going to seem wonderful to some people, but going to seem dreadfully late to others, is that very few people actually get out of the working world by age 53. Only 5 % do. I went to the Financial Samurais website and discovered that only 1 % of people retire before age 50 and 5 % of people are retired by age 54.

31:14And that's one of the things that I really noticed is that I'm not seeing a lot of people my age during the week. They are out there and luckily a lot of them play pickleball. And it's funny because that's exactly where I was going to go with that, which is okay. At some point then, especially when you invest in your health, which I know is a, another aspect of something you wanted to talk about here, age becomes truly just a number, right? And, and I think to a large degree, it is just a number Anyway, but you're 56, you said, and that in a prior generation, I think somebody who's 56 would chalk themselves up to being past it over the hill.

31:56Oh, my knees, I couldn't possibly play. And you just have all these self-limiting beliefs. I have a picture of my grandparents when I was first born in 1966, and they are my age now. And I loved my grandparents to death, and they looked old in that picture. Because in 1966, 56 was older. You know, medicine isn't as it is today. You couldn't just go over to Orpho, Virginia, and get that knee problem taken care of like I've had done three times now on my right knee, that sort of thing. didn't exist to the same level. And my grandparents lived into their 80s and 90s respectively. But yeah, I look at that picture and I think I look nothing like that.

32:41And that's one of the beauties of FI that I really want to stress to people who are not necessarily at their best point health-wise and they are still in their working careers. Cut yourself a break. If you are focused on your family and you are focused on your career, there isn't 112 hours of unstructured time and something is going to give way. And for a lot of people, it's taking care of themselves. If you can find a way to get better shape, that's wonderful. But if you can't, give yourself a break because once you do reach that point, you're not going to retire on a Friday and hit the gym on a Monday and do that four days a week.

33:25Most people won't. Maybe a few people will, but most people won't. But at some point, you'll step back and realize, wow, I can really invest in my health now. And for me, that took a full year after retirement. I was somewhat overweight most of my career that I worked in IT, not dramatically so. Of 36 waist, I was always around like 196 196 pounds. Occasionally it would drift over 200 and I would dial it back in because I was too cheap to buy other pants. You know, wait a minute. If I'm eating all this food, I cannot continue to buy more clothes and stay on this vie lifestyle. No, I'm going to have to do this.

34:02But the reality is 196 was not a good weight for me. And when I retired, I looked back at all the things I wanted to do and I'd actually drifted up to 208 at that point. It's like, wow, I need to do something about this. And that weight slowly started to come off that first year. And when I decided to actually do something about it, I joined a Noom, which I highly recommend. They were great. They added some structure that I desperately needed. And I also teased out all of the bad habits that I had that I ultimately corrected. I went down from 198 back to my 170s and I've drifted back up into my low 180s now, which is a good, healthy spot for me.

34:41Where I'm going is you will have the time for this. And that's something you will want to get in front of because once you reach five, that time to think that I described, you are suddenly going to be aware that there's a clock out there. Okay. Now that I don't have to work, how many years do I have in front of me? And not just how many years, how many good years do you have in front of you? I'm 56 years old right now. And the reality is my best 20 years are in front of me. Although I fully anticipate to live 40 more years based on my family history. We don't have a lot of medical problems in my family.

35:17Medicine's only going to get better. I take good care of myself. So there's no reason why I shouldn't reach my mid nineties, which is fantastic. I've got 40 years, but I shouldn't think about it as 40 years because between 56 and 58 is going to be better than between 94 and 96. So taking advantage of that real quality time that you suddenly have in front of you is going to become supremely important. Yeah. Yeah. This is such an important topic generally. And like you said, clearly cut yourself some slack as you so appropriately said to the people who are, if you're in the workforce, you have a busy life.

35:53Obviously you can always improve your health. That's one of just the mindsets of five is you can always improve period. Just fill in whatever blank at the end you want at the end of that. And Chris, I'm, I'm in the same boat as you. I mean, And I look back at some pictures from even when I got married, I'm like, wow, I look dramatically worse. And I was in my mid twenties at that point. I'm 43 now. And I mean, I'm in such better shape. I'm so much healthier in every way, in every possible way. I think I was talking with Jonathan because actually Jonathan and I work out four times a week. Now we're talking about all these little, like his dad asked him like a blanket question of like, how would I X?

36:33And it was like, get healthier or detox or go through some type of detox diet or something. I forget what the exact question was. But Jonathan's like, well, how much time do you have for me to answer this? And that's almost where I go is I've made hundreds of little changes over the last 15 years, hundreds and hundreds of them. And they're all tiny. I can't point to any one dramatic one, I guess, other than the gym. I think the case is closed at this point on an argument that strength training is essential. That is a hill I will die on at this point. I know we don't like to get into arguments about what's the best exercise because any type of exercise, any type of movement is important, but strength training is critically important.

37:14I think just hard stop, end of story. But other than that, it's all of these little things. And this, Chris, has been a 15-year journey for me. And that is the advice I would give to people is, like you were saying, time is finite. You know, we've referenced so many times the Die With Zero book, the Wait But Why, the tail end article, which just shows you just very graphically how finite your life is. And I think just looking at my age, I'm almost 44. Doubling that is 88. I mean, based on my family, I'd be pretty happy to get there. So by any definition, I'm halfway through. And as you're saying, the ages between 80 and 88 probably are maybe it might be a limiting belief, but those probably are not going to be as healthy as the next eight years.

37:58So, okay, how can I maximize that time? And I think being healthier and being fitter makes everything for me better from that volleyball. Like Molly, my little one likes to joke. She's like, daddy, you are sprinting around the entire hour because I'm like running after the volleyball and like quickly getting it back instead of just wasting the kid's time and slowly walking over to the ball, which I know this sounds so silly and such like a microcosm, but it's one of those things like Chris, if you had asked me 20 years ago at almost 44, would I be sprinting after a volleyball a hundred times in an hour long practice?

38:34The answer obviously would have been no. I would have said, oh, I'd be over the hill at that point. There's no way I could do that, but I'm in as good a shape as I've ever been in, in my entire life and the add-on benefits. I think we don't want to beat a dead horse here, but this is so important. The add-on benefits of being healthy and being fit and being strong and being agile, you just cannot overstate how important every aspect that is. And it adds such a level of positivity to your life as well. You simply feel good. Being in better shape now just changed my outlook on things. It really did.

39:10And it made me happy. It gave me more confidence. It's just better in every single way. And it helped me realize that I'm on this journey for the long haul and I only have one vehicle that's going to take me there and I better take care of it. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And the way we got into this health conversation was you talking about there not being that many people your age around. And interestingly, I guess the immediate kind of argument to that is it doesn't matter, right? So you could go out on the pickleball court and even though you're 56, you could play with 20 and 30 year olds very, very easily.

39:48Well, A, because it's a skill based game, but B, because you were very fit, just period, hard stop, end of story. You're very fit. It doesn't matter. It's not for a 56 year old, right? Like that qualifier, I think goes away, at least how I see the modern, the modern day human who's healthy and fit is like, I don't need to qualify. like I'm really strong for like, I'm not qualifying that as for an almost 44 year old. Like I think you go into the gym with me and like, I'm really strong period, hard stop, end of story. Like I don't need to qualify it. Right. And that, that feels really good. Yeah.

40:26When I play pickleball, when people say how you qualify that, well, I say, well, I play it a four or five. I don't have to say I play it a four or five as a 55 plus, right? There is a little bit to that, but like you said, I can hang with a 30-year-old pretty much all day at a similar skill level because I've put myself back in better shape again. And when you're on the pickleball court, people don't think about age quite as much. In fact, I don't think they think about age at all. They're simply paying attention to where everybody's paddle is. Right. Exactly. That's a really gratifying feeling.

40:57And coming back to my grandparents, I couldn't imagine my grandparents being on the pickleball court. It's just I look at that picture and say, that's just not where they were in their lives. Yeah, Chris, I hear you about certainly like you're saying about your grandparents. And, you know, I think that's one of the nice things about being where we are and where we all are in the fight community is, is we can think about these things that are important to us. And we've talked obviously for quite some time now on health. And I think it's really important and I'm glad we spent the time. And I think another aspect that, that a lot of people prioritize in our community is volunteering and spiritual pursuits.

41:31And I'd love to hear you talk about this. Sure. One of the things that I personally am getting a lot of satisfaction from now is the opportunity to volunteer. I am doing some work with Virginia Voice in the RVA area that I didn't even know existed before FI. And that was one of those adaptations that you described. I have a few other volunteer opportunities as well. I'm on the board at Richmond Pinball Collective, which is an all-volunteer organization, which is a lot of fun. And someone that I have a lot of respect for, even though we're not in the same place spiritually, is a good friend of mine named Mike, who I just saw again over the weekend.

42:09Five years ago, he had retired a little bit early for some people, and he was not in the FI world. He had just done well for himself. And he and his wife, Lee, had come out to the Richmond area to do 18 months of volunteer work for their church. and I thought, wow, that's pretty amazing. He left his full-time job and basically picked up another full-time job and he told me there was a decent amount of stress involved with that and Pickleball was a fantastic outlet for him but it was deeply meaningful for him and he didn't have the bandwidth to do it for himself or for his church at that time and for people listening that really want to devote more of themselves spiritually as they enter FI, my counsel would be, you are going to have those opportunities.

43:03And I don't know a single house of worship that isn't thrilled to have more people with more spare time to help devote to that cause. Yeah, agreed. I think, right, to expand that is any organization that doesn't want someone who is, I guess, had the wherewithal to get to five. You think about all the positive attributes that we bring potentially to an organization, and then you throw in, oh, and then they have all this time. So yeah, clearly for so many people, that spiritual side is important. And now you can focus on that. Like you said, volunteering, that could mean something very overt, like Habitat for Humanity is always where people's minds go to organizations, to soup kitchens, to, in your case, even something that you're just really interested in, right?

43:52The pinball collective. Exactly. You know, the Richmond pinball collective does not sound like your typical volunteering organization, but we bring a lot of enjoyment to people's lives and I'm passionate about it and it's a lot of fun. And I guess where I'd like to go with that is that when people think about donating to charity, there are two ways that you can do that. You can do that by writing a check, which works. Every organization needs money. But what every other organization also needs is time. And that time can be worth a lot more than money in some instances because time is not something you can write a check for.

44:31You can't just stroke a check and go, here's 50 hours of time. It doesn't work that way. If you're working for Habitat for Humanity, you are taking the time to help build structures. And my wife has done that to a limited degree. She has been involved with Habitat for Humanity and she gets a lot of satisfaction for that. And I have found that my old mindset was people that donated large sums of money were doing the best for charities. And I've sort of changed my thinking on that a little bit. I think the people that are giving their time are perhaps giving an even greater gift in some instances.

45:09Now, somebody strokes a check for a million dollars. That goes a long way, obviously. But donating$100 to NPR or donating eight hours of your time, well, if you value your time, if your time is worth, let's say,$30,$50 an hour, well, suddenly you've just donated$240,$400 an hour, depending on where your skill set lies. Yeah. I mean, you've hit it right on the head. I think just in terms of I volunteer as the treasurer of my daughter's swim team. And on the face of it, it's just a little summer swim team. That's how we think of it. But yet there are 180 swimmers. This is like when we have events, we have 300 plus swimmers showing up.

45:49This is like a pretty significant event that is all volunteer led just by really probably 15 to 20 people across all of the various aspects. And I spend a lot of time. I mean, when I really, I sometimes in fairness, I sometimes grumble about all the time that I'm spending on it, but it's really, really important because without those 15 or 20 people, these events wouldn't happen. This life experience that the kids are getting, like when my daughters look back at their childhood, the summer swim team at our local pool is going to be one of, if not the number one thing they look back on as the happiest moments of their childhood.

46:28And it just simply wouldn't happen without those people volunteering. sharing. There's no way I could cut a check, right? Like nobody would do my job as this treasurer and all the other things I do for even$5 ,000, right? Like, and I'm not like, it's just, it is invaluable. And obviously I have certain skills that I'm bringing to the table here and all the people that volunteer have their own skills. It's, it is astonishing to see. And again, this is the tiniest little microcosm, but when you think about how many of these organizations and similar organizations exist all across the country and world, like it's run on volunteers and you giving your time is just really, really, really important.

47:07So I know there's, there's lots of these things because that I would love to get involved in, but again, you need to really balance, like, what can I realistically do? And I think that's, that's kind of the larger meta issue that I would love to get across to people. And I think we've done a pretty good job with it is okay. 112 hours week sounds like a lot, but it can also go pretty quickly. And you need to be very judicious with that time and not overschedule. Because I know I look at the tyranny of my calendar, is how I jokingly call it. And having things on the calendar sometimes is tough because you do want some level of unstructured time.

47:44Yeah, exactly. That unstructured time is going to be important because everybody needs a reset. Even in the FI world, I think sometimes people have the notion that when you're not working anymore, whether you're retired via FI or not, you have a clear head 100 % of the time and you don't need downtime. And that is 100 % not true. You absolutely have to have those reset times and you have to bake that in. I think it's very easy to get overscheduled. And I know that I am tiptoeing up to that line. And my wife would probably emphasize that point, especially right now. There are a few extra things I've taken on recently, and she's starting to give me that look like, okay, if you've added this to your life, what are you going to cut back on a little bit?

48:35And that's a wonderful problem to have at the end of the day. But you still have to pay attention to where those hours are going. I need to spend quality time with the missus. Absolutely. And you also need to be cognizant of, okay, if she's having those thoughts, then maybe tiptoeing up to that line might actually be having stepped over the line. You think maybe just a little bit? Yeah, I think she would agree with you. But okay, let's really drill in on this. So how do you decide? So you said you've added a couple of things recently. Now, I think one of the arts of kind of life in general is maybe saying no to things because we all have a lot of inbound, right?

49:12We have a lot of just all these things that we can do, but deciding what you're going to do with those 16 hours a day is an altogether different scenario, right? So like, okay, let's talk that just these couple of things you added recently. Like, how did you decide that amongst all the things you could do, which is, Hey, I could spend more time with my wife. I could play more pickleball. I could play, you do whatever, all these fun things I could sit and read. I could sit and think these couple of things that you just at it, that they were over that whatever this bar is that, hey, I need to clear this before I decide this is something I want to add to my life.

49:47Right. I'd say that there are a couple of internal barometers you should be paying attention to. If you are in a relationship and you start to get that look from your significant other, that's a pretty good hint that maybe you have tiptoed over that line. And in my case, like I said, I may have done that recently and I'm going to need to look at something I spend a little less time on. I think the other thing that you really hit on was the tyranny of the calendar. Recently, I have found myself waking up thinking, okay, I've got this at nine and this at 1030 and this at one and this at three and this at five.

50:30And it's starting to feel like a chore at this point. It's not as enjoyable as it was because it's just become a little too busy. And those five things can all be enjoyable things unto themselves. But when it starts to feel like too much, it's probably too much. And I think everybody has their own sense of what too much is. That 112 hours for one person, that might be, I'm going to be go, go, go for 80 hours a week. And for another person, it might be 32. And the one thing I'd really like to stress is whatever that number is, that's individual and you don't have to explain it to anybody. What feels good for you feels good for you.

51:14And I think that some of the better things that happen in life, like volunteering and whatnot, that all develops organically. Yeah, it does. And I think you also will just figure this out on the fly. And I think that goes back to what I said way at the beginning of the episode is none of this is set in stone. That's just not the way we work. That's not the way humanity works. That's not the way the world works in that everything is constantly changing. And that means down to, hey, what am I looking to get out of my week or out of my month or out of my year or out of my life? That is going to change.

51:49And I mean, even Chris, just down to like that calendar, which is, okay, I told you I work out four days a week with Jonathan, right? So it's Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. So we're actually recording this on a Wednesday. So Wednesday is the one day that I, that I don't have that on my schedule. So naturally I think, okay, this is the perfect day for recording. And that has always been my thought, but now I'm thinking, oh, maybe Wednesday would be the perfect day to not schedule anything and just have it as a wide open day as opposed to, oh, that's the logical because I have time on those days as opposed to saying, oh, well, maybe if I get home at 930 every day from the gym, those four days, maybe I record at 11 o 'clock or 1130, give myself a little bit of buffer to kind of recuperate.

52:33And then it's just, I'm kind of doubling up on one given day. And then I have that entire free day just to do whatever, because as it stands now, I don't have any major time gap, especially with my kids getting home, let's say three o 'clock or thereafter, like I don't have that many hours in a row ever where I just have totally unstructured time. So I think that's one kind of aha moment I've had recently. So this may be one of the last times I ever record on a Wednesday possibly, which is kind of cool that I've thought through, okay, I thought that was a good idea. I experimented with it. It made sense, but oh, maybe I have a better thing to try and we'll see what happens.

53:11Exactly. Exactly. And if there's one more thing I can put into the potential for somebody's 112 hour week that we haven't touched on is the idea of actually doing a little paid work. The notion that you leave the working world and you never make another dime the rest of your life, that's not terribly satisfying for everybody. And I can tell you that for the first year, especially in the middle of pandemic, I had zero part-time work. But over time, I started taking on a little part-time work. And a year ago, I picked up some IT consulting work, which is about 10 to 15 hours a month, which isn't a whole lot, but it really scratches an itch that I kind of knew was still there in that there is still a part of me that likes being in the working world.

54:05that likes making a little FU money, that just enjoys being around people and enjoys being helpful. When I tell people that go into IT, and usually you start at help desk, I tell them the most important trait you can have for being a help desk worker is to be freaking helpful. You just need to be helpful first. Even if you don't know the answer to the problem, be helpful and people appreciate that. And I've always enjoyed that aspect of my job is that I enjoy helping people. So going in and solving problems and getting paid for it, I've enjoyed that, but I only take the work I want to do. And that's so much fun in FI.

54:46I actually have five different ways I make money now, including IT consulting. I teach pickleball. I do a few other things as well. I'm not going to go down all these different rabbit holes, but it's not a whole lot of time. A couple of these things I only do for a few hours a week. I do a little bit of professional voice work at this point, but it's not a big sum of money and I don't have to devote a lot of time to it, but I really enjoy the work when I get it. There can be that as well. So for people who don't necessarily want to step away completely from work, don't work if it feels good. Yeah.

55:21And I suspect the vast majority of people will make money in retirement or FI almost invariably. I can't think of anybody that I really know that has made zero dollars after reaching FI. Right. It's pretty rare. And but I think you approach it so wonderfully in the sense like you're talking about solving problems. Right. So do you really want to be doing IT work after you retired from that? Well, maybe not the mundane part of it. And you're certainly not going to meetings or, you know, filing TPS reports or anything. But if you get to solve problems and you help somebody and you get paid in the process, okay, that sounds like a different proposition entirely.

56:03Exactly. I am going to be in Charlottesville tomorrow because the client I'm working with is redoing a space and they need somebody to come in and look at it from a technical side and figure out how best to configure some things. And that, that for me is just fun. That's just another puzzle. I may as well be a game at that point. And they're going to be, they should be happy with the end result. if I do my job correctly, and then it's just a win-win for everybody. And then they're going to give me some money for that. Fantastic. But to the point I want to stress one more time is if you don't need the money, do the work that you enjoy doing.

56:36Don't work because you feel like you should be working. Do the work that actually brings meaning into your life. Yeah, I love it, Chris. And it certainly seems like, as we've talked about, teaching is a big aspect of the things that you enjoy. And I love to see that you're teaching pickleball and helping and coach people. And I know I've experienced that firsthand and you're a marvelous, marvelous instructor. So thank you for your time. And yeah, this has been fun. Is there anything else that we didn't touch on? Or I mean, obviously we could probably spend another five hours just kind of shooting the breeze about this, but I think we talked about a lot of like the potential pitfalls or struggles and the things that people really need to think about, but any final words or last things you wanted to talk about?

57:20So Brad, if I were to summarize our conversation today, I think I would start with that as you approach FI, it's going to be a big change and it's good to start getting in front of that now and really think about what do I want my life to look like as I get into FI and that you're going to have a lot of unstructured time and it is going to be an adjustment for everyone, even the people who have planned. And being deliberate about what you want to do and then adjusting on the fly when life comes at you from different angles is a wonderful opportunity and embrace it. That is beautiful. Embrace it indeed.

58:02Chris, thank you so much. This was a really fun conversation. Greatly appreciate it. And I look forward to certainly a part three and beyond in the future. Oh, Brad, this was so much fun today. I really look forward to coming back. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player and just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning.

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