Fear Based Decision Making
I just spent 20 minutes perusing the latest retirement fear bait articles on Medium. I won’t link them, they are all basically the same. Anxiety about money… savings running out before death, Social Security running out of funds, company defaulting on pension, inflation, stock market crashes. No one can or should retire… ever … blah blah blah.
Then I drove to our cool fall, but wondrous beach, drank ice teas and ate some truly great pizza while gazing out across our inland sea. Stress free now for over six years.
Past life
I had anxiety. Bad. Working 60+ hour weeks. Worried about making income for the month/quarter/year for my crazy toxic company. Topped off with personal worries. So all consuming I asked my doctor how I could tell the difference between a heart attack and “just” anxiety. “Get up and walk,” he said, “if the pressure/pain gets worse, go to the hospital. If not, it is stress.”
He gave me a prescription for anxiety meds. I googled the side effects before filling it. Tossed the script in the trash… I just have to fight thru this!
I was always known to say I’d work till I die, or turn 70. My job was killing me day by day… I’d never make it to 70.
Escape Plan
Thank God I have a wife who would rather have me alive and happy versus miserable… or dead. She valued me more than a few more years of income… or life insurance payouts.
I came up with a plan to quit the day I turned 60. Did I ignore all the financial fears? No, I evaluated each possibility and probability. Much less scary when quantified. We came up with a plan. Stress tested it. Showed it to a few trusted friends. One work friend, Scott, also turned me on to the movie “Shawshank Redemption”. Great movie for inspiring my escape! Scott started calling me “Andy”, I called him “Red”.
Trust the plan
Quit my work-hell corp job. Sell our house. Downsize and move to a beach community. Use my modest savings to bridge to Social Security seven years later. It would work! Every plausible bad news event was covered.
It was then, I developed the confidence that melted away my anxiety. I also made the conscious decision to be happy. Sustained happiness did not begin the day I walked away from work. It began earlier, when the final decision was made… with my public 200 day countdown.
Every day I was happier and happier. Fear was defeated. Over six years of freedom now! Sitting along our blue coastal waters.
I invented a saying: “For 99% of people, for 99% of the time, happiness is a choice. I hope you choose happiness.”
According to Google no one else had said it before. Another saying I am apt to use is not my creation: “Money cannot buy you more time!”
I have former colleagues still slaving away in fear. Sure, maybe some truly love their jobs (doubtful in my old company), some have been imprisoned so long they have a fear of freedom. But most, I believe have a completely overblown fear of money woes. They decide to stay. No matter how big their war chest has grown.
Six+ years of freedom in the books. And my plan for the future is still solid. Freedom is not for everyone, but it is for me.
