Retiring Early—Why and How
Today, I’m feeling very blessed. After nearly 25 years of practicing law as an intellectual property attorney, I’m retiring. As cliché as this sounds, I just want to spend more time with my family and travel the country. There’s a lot more to this decision than that though.
Today is the “someday” I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Like many folks, I’ve worked and saved so that I can enjoy the fruits of my labor in retirement. I’ve always taken the safe conventional route career-wise: college and law school at state schools (Kansas State University and the University of Kansas), an associate and then a partner at a large law firm, and finally an in-house counsel position at the University of Missouri System. On the financial side, I’m one of those people who always maxed out the 401(k), and saved a lot more on top of that. I’ve owned fixer-upper homes and didn’t purchase a new car until 2015 (which I still own). So, between working and saving, I’ve been blessed with enough financial security that I could theoretically retire early. Yet, I never had a clear vision of what early retirement would look like until two relatively recent things happened.
In 2019, Kasie and I started RVing, and that changed everything. In that year, I became hooked on the idea of exploring the country with Kasie and the dogs. We took a couple of big trips and constructed our bucket list of other places we wanted to see. We enjoyed finding a good bike trail and chilling in the camper. We also found a refreshing sense of community. We liked chit-chatting with our campsite neighbors about rigs, places, and what-not.
Even when we weren’t RVing, we were thinking about it a lot. After coming home from work each night, Kasie and I would watch at least a couple of YouTube videos about couples who were on the road full time. These YouTubers provided so much invaluable information and insight. RVing was not one big vacation, but instead was a way of life for many. These various how-to videos were critical to the evolution of my thinking. And, slowly but surely, I started to understand that RVing was the sort of life I wanted in retirement. I now better understood what would come next if I retired; I just did not know when that would be.
My colleagues provided some nice farewell gifts.
Then 2020 happened. Again, this will sound cliché, but 2020 taught me that life is short. While Kasie and I have done our best to adhere to good social distancing practices, the reality is that one of us could get sick at any time. Every day…every moment…they just seem a little more precious now. And, there was a sense of urgency to spend more time with my aging parents. My mother was diagnosed with COVID-19, and while she was never hospitalized, it was scary. All of that culminated in me asking myself on an increasingly frequent basis: “what am I waiting for?”
I provided my notice in November 2020, and have been winding down the last three months. While liberating, my decision took some courage too. I’m leaving a profession that I enjoy for the most part, and that is tough to do. The practice of law has been both rewarding and challenging. It has built confidence, but has also been incredibly humbling at times. I’ve been particularly blessed to be at the University for the last 7.5+ years where I’ve learned so much and worked with top-notch professionals. Leaving all of that is bittersweet.
Today, I feel very blessed about the the past 25 years, and am looking forward to what comes next. My path probably won’t be the safe conventional one this time around. But perhaps that is the point.
