Year two in early retirement was very different for Jason than year one. It’s common that the honeymoon stage of retirement is followed by disappointment and a search for meaning. In this episode, Jason and Eric discuss a recent project Jason abandoned and what stage of retirement they think he’s in. You’ll hear his approach to guarding his free time, what Eric fears most about retiring early, and more.
Show notes may be found below the video
Show Notes
Jason took his blog down, but an archive of all his posts is available for those interested. At the same page you’ll see an option to subscribe, which will ensure you are updated of any future writing or projects he takes on.
Essential Background:
- How has Jason’s post-RE experience changed over time? To learn more about that, you won’t want to miss our two prior milestone episodes. The first is about his first year post-RE, “What I Learned in My First Year of ‘Early Retirement’ ” (our most popular episode to date), and the second is “My New Life: Two Years After Early Retirement”, following his second year, and Eric’s trip to California to chronicle his experience.
- Back in 2021 we released a two-part series about FIRE regrets, which was our response to posts on the topic we found on Reddit. Part 1 is about pre-FIRE, “How NOT to FIRE”, while Part 2 covers post-RE, “Retired Early and I Hated It”. This is our only episode filmed with one of us remote (Jason was traveling with his family) so you’ll note it looks a bit different!
- Speaking of blogging, did you see our interview with well-known FIRE blogger, Fritz Gilbert from Retirement Manifesto? If not, you’ll definitely want to check out “Retirement Is Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be“. It’s one of our most popular episodes to date for good reason!
- In this episode, Eric makes references to how Jason has changed with age, and how he’s learned things about him he didn’t know growing up. For more on the history of our relationship, you won’t want to miss our first episode, “Our Financial Past and our FIRE Present – Two Sides of FI“. This is where it all began for the show!
Robert Atchley’s Six Phases of Retirement was an important element of our conversation in this episode. While not the original 1976 manuscript, the article linked here is a good summary of the concepts Atchley wrote about. If you are interested in the original text, “The Sociology of Retirement” is available from Amazon. On a related point, this blog post from Can I Retire Yet by Chris Mamula is a good deep dive into the six phases. It’s a worthwhile read.
You can find information on the tools we mention in each episode along with additional information in the Resources section of this site.
- Eric’s business: 30X40 Design Workshop
- Eric’s YouTube Channel
- Our podcast