Retire Early and start Enjoying your Life Again!

 Dears!

  I will be 47 in few months and I am a software professional. I have recently achieved a level of financial freedom, after paying off my loans. Right now,  I am experimenting with a retired life, consciously living out of my passive income only, though I am not yet resigned from my company. I am already seeing some very interesting positives and few negatives and want to share the experience so that it may help someone else in their planning.

( Please note, the ability to retire early is heavily depends on having a passive income.  You may want to see my own experience in raising one here or visit the topic from the home page: 

Ways to Raise Passive Incomes )

The positives I am noticing till now:

1. Completely stress free. The fact that you don't need to meet another loan emi by end of a month is relaxation in itself. It also makes you a little bold in your office because, you know you can thrive even without it. You can also enjoy  your free time a bit more deeply than before.

2. Take good care of your family. Be there when they needed you. It is particularly important when you have kids in their teens or doing higher education. 

3. I am realizing I have more time to take care of my house, my small farm and my cars (I self repair the cars most of time).

4. I am getting the feeling, I have more time to visit old friends and relatives. 

The negatives I could notice so far:

1. I found, since I am living within my small budget,  some of the luxuries are hard to come by, like going on a family vacation to a resort.

2. I used to be generous in my tips, to some of the poor folks I knew etc. Living in a tight budget make it harder.

3. Since I have a family to take care of, it is not easy to go for a solo trip to see the Himalayas for instance,  though I like that sort of things a lot!. So, most of the time, I left with nothing much to do except browsing the internet or sleeping!

So, in the long run,  I  may start following my usual pattern  of work and life.  But, I am sure taking a small break of a month or two is not at all a bad idea for pursuing a great vacation or doing something completely different. 

Here are few tips to save money while you are on a budget that I could notice meanwhile:

1. Cook your own meals rather than having it  from a restaurant. It is much cheaper to buy the ingredients and cook a healthy meal for yourself. 

2. Plan your travel so  that you can achieve as many targets for the day as possible in a single trip. This way you can save on your fuel or transport costs. 

3. It also better to travel or drive between 11am till 4pm in weekdays to avoid the office rush hours. This time slot allows more relaxed drive or travel with less congestion and gives more peaceful experience. 

4. If the authorities allows it, the fuel produced from plastics , chicken waste etc will come at much lower price per litre than normal prices . If you happen to own an old generation diesel or petrol car, these fuels should be used as an alternate to the fuel available through petrol pumps which comes at a very high price nowadays. Unfortunately the governments in India yet to give a major promotion to these alternate fuels.

5. It is very satisfying to get those small incomes generated from your farm. I have started generating small amounts by selling my farm products and it involves some physical strain as well. It gives me good satisfaction when I can meet few days expense through these alone. If one can raise chickens,goats or cows as well, it will be much more profitable and satisfying as well. 

Okay..here is the update after 4-5 months of the experimental self retirement:

• I realized, I can live as a family with my passive income only. Believe me, it is such a great relief.

During this time, My dear company TCS, in which I considered will spend my career till I am very old, start sending me reminders to come back to office from work from home arrangement. It actually raised an alarm, since WFH allowed much better savings(travel,renting,food) and much better health conditions due to homely food . And most importantly, we can much better take care of our family. All these seemed so valuable, I decided to resign from TCS, due to the belief that, I can live without a job for few months as I felt stable.

• After initial few weeks after submitting resignation, boredom creeped in, as there was not much work to do. I was in bench when I resigned and no new project will take me as I am leaving the company. So, I started polishing my coding skills for the rest of the notice period, as, as a software engineer, I always loved coding and my last 4-5 years as a pure software architect, required very little coding as it meant leading the software teams from the top. So, I started coding again and it could learn many new things.
•  I started job search for a 100% remote, working from home type of job , and by the grace of God, I could land in one. I could join the very next working day after leaving TCS to the new company by the grace of God only.

An Update on 25th November 2024:

I continued doing my remote job till february 2024. There after I had some serious backpain and other health issues, so took a break of few months from work. Once I undergone some medication, my condition improved and decided to continue my remote work. I had to devote 2-3 months to prepare again on technical aspects as I work in a technical field. Unfortunately, I found there are very few 100% remote type of jobs that I was looking for. Most of the available jobs were in Hybrid manner, where you need to be in office atleast 2-3 days per week. I got few interviews for remote work, but they didnt materialise as well. So, rightnow, thinking seriously of taking full retirement.

Update: 20th December 2024:

I finally updated my last remaining career portal, LinkedIn with my "Retired" status.  It was not easy, as declaring yourself as retired, is like letting go off a support you have for many years. 

Lessons Learned from my actual departure from work since february 2024:

1. When we are working and having a steady income, we are tend to be much less bothered about the value of money. We end up to spending it in foolish ways. For example, when I was earning good,  I went to a famous resort near Alappuzha with my family for a weekend trip. Even though the resort, which is run by a government organisantion advertised a family room stay for 15k for 2 days, I ended up paying for 21k just for accommodation, as there were many taxes and also for food another 5k. Now, with the petrol costs for the trip and other food and toll charges, it took me a whopping 32k for the entire trip! what a waste of money!, Now in retirement, I can manage atleast half a month of expense with that money for the entire family. To compare to this experience, last week, I was in the same area with my family for a marriage funciton and instead of a resort, I stayed in a nice homestay with beach in walkable distance. It was a full bunglow entirely for us with the host providing us home cooked food(delicious prawns and other sea foods) as and when we needed. It was a very nice experience and the entire stay plus food only cost me  3600!. Eventhough, we cannot compare with the facilities we get in a big resort, I felt my recent stay was much better in terms of comfort and peace of  mind. Big resorts tend to be crowdy in weekends and it can ruin your experience. For example, the pools can be quite crowded in weekends. So, just by choosing wisely, like staying in a good homestay instead of an expensive resort, we can save a lot.

2. One advantage I felt when visiting remote tourist places like a hill station. We can go to these facilities other than weekends while we are retried. We can enjoy more, since there will be less crowd, and also the journey to these remote places is much less difficult in a weekday, as there will be less congested traffic. Also we can bargain in room costs and most hotels will give you discounts in a weekday.