Indications that you waited too long to retire

[Laura Ingalls]

c) Emotionally charged discussions about benefits, pension plans and a) and b)

I think c) is actually the strongest indicator since it views those things as an end (maybe to wildness?) vs a means to be wild.

I grew up in Philly. Excluding sports, there were two topics of conversation around the dinner table whenever family or friends dropped by, which was constantly.(I can smell the ever-present Entenmann's coffee cake and the percolated coffee right now as I type this).

Illnesses and pensions. Who is sick with what? Who got the job with the city, state, feds, cops, fire department..... and how are they planning on taking the pension after they retire. Master class in EDE . (early death extreme)

That’s interesting. DH had an uncle that we both were very fond of. He worked for the Feds and for many years worked part time (full time seasonal) and wandered the earth all winter. He loved to talk and research about taxes and the market and his next destination always done ERE style . Long story short formally retired and then died at about 55. He clearly had both wild and domestic traits all interwoven.

[jacob]

I hoped at least one of my kids would go in a wild direction, but they both seem hell-bent on pursuing a steady lifelong job with benefits. As in government or big corporate jobs. Where did I fail?????

I resemble that remark. Consider the difference between my sister and I. We were raised to "do whatever made us happy and independent within reason". Our parents would support us in whatever direction.

We both went to high school.

After that I went straight to the university and got a masters. Then straight to grad school for a phd. Straight to my first postdoc. Straight to my second postdoc. Then I retired. You know the story. I was quite "steady" all the way until I was 33.

My sisters post HS resume was crazy random until a few years ago. There was so much YOLO and carpe diem, I don't even recall all the details anymore. She's been an au pair in the US, worked at a vineyard in France, taught English in China, worked at a school for handicapped somewhere in GB, ... started at least four different educations (and completed two) going in and out of school in between the other activities. Then making just enough cash doing menial labor to go back to school or go traveling. Then around early-mid 30s she had had enough. Now she's thoroughly domesticated with a 2000+sqft home, a 30 year mortgage, two toddlers, a full time job as a nurse (RN), and her own car+commute.

It's almost as if we flipped life-directions at the same time.

So give it time ...

[Riggerjack]

Emulate. Next to our resident Jack London (theanimal) you're the wildest among us. You pretend to be domesticated. How does that feel? I would imagine you employ a great deal of your (not insignificant) wits to keeping up the domestication?

Wild, because I live in the woods? Halfmoon lives in deeper woods than I, and truth be told, that is more a landscaping decision than character definition.

Emulating domestication was important in my 20's, when I was trying to fit in in the army, and starting a career. Construction is far more open to different people and ideas than office work. It took some doing to learn to keep my mouth shut, and not overwhelm co-workers with ideas or behavior that created stress for them. but as with anything else, you set up systems and expectations, and then focus on something worthwhile. So, no, it takes no effort or thought to pretend to be civilized. I just come in, sit down, put on my headphones, open up the right programs, then go to work a few hours later.

Most everyone I know in my real life (not work) knows my history, and accepts it as part of who I am. I just don't talk about things that make other people uncomfortable.

How does it feel? I was going to say it doesn't, but that's not really true. It feels soft, and uncomfortably warm. Like being in a herd of sheep. But that is just how I feel about most people. They are generally too close, too soft, with bizarre motivations only loosely associated with survival.

[J_]

Can it be that the (often sudden) transition from active earning (job, entrepreneur) to passive earning (pensions investments savings) is too much dictated by social custom and politics? And that many of us do not pay early attention to that transition?....
Here in Holland and Germany you see the trend that politics say: the (state) pensions become too expensive: we change the rules: everybody has to work longer (until 68, 69, 70). And the people stay quiet...but most of them get some illness long before...

Is it the same human tragedy of neglecting of what is healthy to eat, or not to use your body to stay fit, or not to think...??

In short, it would be so good if the ERE principles were basic stuff teached in every school...

[SustainableHappiness]

This whole thread reminds me of The Shawshank Redemption and becoming Institutionalized...But then I realized that I may have been drawing an incomplete/incorrect analogy to what you are talking about Ego. Institutionalized in Shawshank leads to severe mental repercussions and ultimately suicide/early death, which is the theme I was answering in relation to your "Wild vs Tame"...but after reading a couple more comments, particularly Riggerjacks:

They are generally too close, too soft, with bizarre motivations only loosely associated with survival.

I was like, Daaayyummmnn, I realized that tame isn't nearly as bad as institutionalized by Shawshank, because financial independence/retirement, does not automatically push you into the wild mindset (presumably one where survival and nature are key motivators in your life strategy).

Wild is more likely to lead to FI, than FI is likely to lead to wild, because FI still lets you sit in your tame mental consumer bubble without encroaching on your survival or pushing you into nature.

So maybe, one indication that you've waited too long to retire is reaching FI without ever needing to flex your wild instincts (i.e. survival instincts). Wonderfully, this jives well with the thought from the ERE book to "do at least one really hard thing in your life". Their could be a correlation between too tame to go back, and the number of hard things you do leading up to retirement?

[Riggerjack]

Well, I think of wild and tame as getting used to being fed, or being used to those regular pay checks. When I try to talk about FI to the tame, they don't understand how you live without a periodic influx of cash.

So while the animal's posts are inspirational, his vacations long, and his frugality impressive, I don't think of him as particularly wild.

Ego' something from nothing, and 7w5's whole life, seem wild. Feeding themselves not from savings, or from paychecks, but living by wits. Interacting with their environment and gleaning opportunities as they present themselves.

I have built houses for other people, and built a house for myself. Building for someone else is just moving modifying, and assembling a pile of pieces provided by someone else to make something that matches someone else's plan. It takes about 40 hours per week. Building my own house, and hiring folks to help, takes 24 hours a day. The plan is yours, the modification of the plan is yours, the logistics of getting the right materials in the right place at the right time, is yours. The money, and the overages are yours, the personnel problems are yours. The task, building a house is the same, but one role is considerably more wild than the while niether is actually wild. If you were to take those 2 tasks to make a scale, building your own house is a 7, someone else's, 3, working in accounts payable a 1, and Ego and or 7w5 would be a 10.
To me, wild is a combination of Independence and self reliance. FI only gains us Independence.

[Noedig]

I can't seem to figure out what caused him to lose the spark.

A friend of ours behaved this way recently. Turns out she had cancer, and the lack of interest/energy was an early warning sign. Maybe encourage him to get a physical just to rule something like that out?

My wife was diagnosed with cancer. For a year previous, she was horribly fatigued and depressed, to the point where she was off work for it. In her cancer support group, that's a common story: individually it's just anecdote, but I think there's something to it.