Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Brian McMullen’s only plan on a Thursday afternoon in March was to watch as many college basketball games as possible. Parked inside his neighborhood bar and grill and eating brunch tacos, he followed one game on the restaurant’s TV screen while another streamed on his iPhone.

As the games played out, Mr. McMullen talked about his new life in Austin, Tex., where he had moved last October from San Francisco. Some of his biggest activities since then: reading the Harry Potter series for the first time and spending more than 100 hours completing “Dragon Quest,” a role-playing video game. He was also working out a lot, he said, and teaching himself a coding language to create his own games.