One of the biggest fears workers have about retirement is losing a sense of purpose. This fear is not unfounded. It is one of negative early retirement nobody likes to talk about it.
For the first few months, maybe even a year, you may feel a little lost. Steady pay is gone. The company of colleagues for long lunches with drinks disappears. A low-grade melancholy may begin. But it passes, and when it does, you naturally find a new purpose on your own terms.
I know this first hand. I retired in 2012 and have experienced every ups and down of early retirement and semi-retirement ever since. Regardless, I wouldn’t trade a single year of that freedom for more money. Offer me millions and I’d still choose the time I spent with my kids, my health and my life over grinding 60 hours a week for someone else’s dream.
But this post isn’t just for people who choose to retire or retire early.
With signatures like Block the layoff of 40% of their workforcea combination of over-hiring and accelerating AI productivity gains, many more bloated companies will inevitably follow. If you’re fired, or suspect you might be, I want to address the fear that you’ll forever lose your sense of purpose and meaning.
You won’t.
Yes, work gives you purpose. The problem is when it becomes your only source of it.
Easy to find meaning and purpose in small things
It took me about 12 months to get over the initial shock of early retirement. By the third year I was completely committed and there was no going back. What I’ve discovered in my 14 years of being unemployed is that the little things provide just as much purpose as the big ones.
Let me share a random day that illustrates exactly what I mean.
Managing rental properties can be a pain, but it also offers surprising purpose. Something always needs fixing, and fixing things turns out to be satisfying.
On the morning of February 27th, my tenant emailed to say that the side door to the outside is rotting. A couple of years ago that email would have pissed me off a bit. This time, with the stock market down, my kids in school, and my substitute teaching wife across town, I was home alone and bored. When the email arrived, I was actually relieved.
I called my worker and we met at the property at 10am with the tenant. We measured, talked and sat on a solid core wooden door. We had briefly considered fiberglass or metal for weatherproofing, but neither can be easily cut or sanded for an exact fit.
Wood won. It was really fun to solve the problem together.
More things to do
While my handyman was there, I put him to work on two more items that were on my mental list.
First, I had him go up on the roof and spray sealant on the parts of the light well that might leak after a particularly violent storm. It was the same issue from eight years ago, when a blocked drain created a three- to four-inch pool of standing water.
Second, I had him fix a side gate that was bent and wouldn’t close properly.
The solid wood door and new doorknob cost $400 and another $350 for labor. Not too bad. For 35 minutes I felt useful to my tenant. I watered 15 more as insurance on the side and front yard, in case they forget.
I gave the business to a mechanic I have trusted since 2020, someone who is not the cheapest option, but has never let me down. And I took another small step towards protecting an important part of us semi-passive retirement income.
That’s a pretty good breakfast.
Next search on purpose
After the property tour, I drove to my office mailbox to drop off nine signed copies of my USA Today bestseller, Millionaire Points for readers who had taken advantage of Empower’s free financial check. You can still participate by clicking this post and reading the instructions.
Writing personal notes on each copy felt really meaningful. I spent about $200 on books and shipping, and I don’t mind at all. These are readers who care deeply about their finances and longtime readers of Financial Samurai.
Then I grabbed lunch at my favorite Vietnamese noodle place and brought extra food home for family dinner.
A signed book, a bowl of pho, a fed family. Not a bad afternoon.
Time off to write this post
After lunch I sat down to write this post to help retirees and the recently unemployed feel better about an uncertain future. Sharing firsthand experience has been rewarding over the years and that day was no different.
Maybe it’s not writing for you. Maybe it’s applying for a job in a completely different field, or taking a continuing education course to become certified in something new. Or maybe you’ll try for a 30-minute run lose the last 10 pounds. Even if the scale doesn’t budge, you’ll almost certainly feel better afterward.
For me, having something mentally stimulating to do after any kind of physical activity provides a happy balance. Usually, I’ll go play tennis or pickleball for 1-2.5 hours. However, I was nursing an injury.
Bedtime and then school pickup
My favorite thing to do after a big lunch is take a nap. No apologies. It’s also easier to sleep after I’ve done something productive, like to write a post.
After that I picked up my wife from the school where she was substitute teaching and took her to our children’s school for a Girl Scout troop meeting.
My wife had insisted on taking the bus and subway to our school, not wanting to feel like she was ostracizing me. I insisted on driving it anyway. She said she felt bad that I was acting like her Uber driver. I told her that her drive was exactly why me provided over 500 Uber rides in 2015. I was training for these moments.
In the end, I saved her 30 minutes of travel time and got her to Girl Scouts before it started at 3:30 p.m. Helping my wife always makes me feel useful. It’s also good for our relationship.
After picking up the kids, we ate Vietnamese food together, helped them with their homework for 30 minutes, then ended the night with the kids and I being completely silly in the bathtub. Bath and bed by 9pm.
Small things provide a huge amount of meaning
That day, I didn’t close a big business deal or give a presentation in front of hundreds of people. Nor have I attended a fancy conference where I fell in love with powerful people. Instead I did lots of little things that made me feel like I mattered. And that was more than enough.
When we are caught climbing the corporate ladder and chasing status and prestigewe forget that there are countless other sources of meaning outside of work.
We convince ourselves that the goal must come from a promotion, a bigger salary, or a more impressive title. But I promise you, you don’t have to.
The little things in life can mean just as much as the Vice President or Managing Director on your LinkedIn profile, often times more.
Diversify your identity before you retire or get laid off
The danger of tying your entire identity to your career is that you slowly stop investing in everything else. And when the inevitable day comes for you to leave your job, voluntarily or not, the void feels great because you never diversified your identity.
From gardening to teaching your kids guitar to doing the dishes with a purpose, there are endless ways to find purpose after you no longer have a day job.
And within three months of your departure, hardly anyone at your old company will be thinking about you anyway. Your position will be eliminated or filled by someone else trying to hit their quarterly numbers.
So go ahead. Embrace the freedom that retirement or unemployment offers. Don’t worry about becoming an aimless, aimless soul. You’ll find something meaningful to do no matter what stage of life you’re in.
Readers, whether you are unemployed or retired, have you managed to find a new purpose with your free time? Do you think some people tie their identity too much to their career, to the detriment of everything else? And do workers really not realize how quickly they will be forgotten once they leave?
Negotiate a severance package and break free
If you’re thinking about quitting your job or think a layoff is coming, don’t quit. Giving up leaves you with nothing. Negotiating a severance package, on the other hand, can give you meaningful financial runway and the breathing space to figure out what comes next.
Both my wife and I have negotiated our separations. That money gave us the courage to walk away and never look back. Since retiring in 2012 and 2015, respectively, we’ve traveled extensively, written several best-selling books, and become stay-at-home parents to two children. It’s been a wonderful life so far.
If you want to learn how to do the same, get a copy of my best-selling e-book How to engineer your layoff. Use code “tip” to save $10 ark.
