Emily Samson (not her real name) retired two years ago in her early 40s and says it wasn’t as hard as she thought it was going to be to save enough to never have to work again – despite living in one of the most expensive cities in Canada.
The 45-year-old is part of the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) movement and says there were so many reasons that early retirement may appeal to people, but in her case, it was the idea of being financially independent that she was really after.
“My goal at the time (12 years ago) had been no mortgage by 40. But you could also look back at why I had decided to close off my mortgage by 40,” recalls Samson. “It was because (at) my first job that I was working at, there were a number of women who were laid off in their late 40s.”
Watching these women, who Samson refers to as her mentors, struggle to get another job that would pay them what they were worth – and had been earning at her company – was a major catalyst for her to pay off any debts, invest and save.
But there was also a familial motivation. Samson watched her grandfather get laid off before “he was ready to retire” and when she was younger, her father was informed by his company that he would have to move cities to keep his job, but he didn’t want to do that to his family so he quit, recalls Samson.
“I can mark all of these different points, each of them being part of the decision to get to a point where I could FIRE,” she adds.
Getting to FIRE
With her mortgage paid off, she was able to make some other cost-saving measures that helped her build a healthy savings account and investment portfolio. At that point, 70 per cent of the household income was being saved so the couple could FIRE.
And living in Toronto was actually a big help with those cost-savings measures.
First off, Samson doesn’t own a car and says that city living actually allows her and her partner to save more than they would if they lived in a more rural area. For instance, there are way more options for cheaper groceries and free sources of entertainment in an urban setting. In fact, the couple had rarely made an annual salary of more than $200,000.
Samson makes decisions about where to spend her money, but she says it’s not necessarily a discipline thing for her; it’s more of a habit she’s honed for decades, this taste in where to spend money versus when to hold off. For instance, she has expensive taste in some things: like her Fluevogs. On the other hand, she has an old laptop that she bought for work – two jobs ago.
Like her approach to her savings, Samson didn’t look at her investments with an extreme lens.
“I was very boring; (I had) a 60-40 portfolio for a very long time,” she recalls. “At a certain point, I realized the impact of fees, but even then I sat on that knowledge for three years before I did anything about it.”
Life in the FIRE lane
Online, there are stories about members of the FIRE movement that have either quit the movement because of its severe financial restrictions and impact on lifestyle and another cohort that have gone back to work because they simply don’t know what to do with themselves in retirement (which can happen at any retirement age).
But Samson is part of neither group. She says early retirement and financial independence have allowed her to say yes to volunteer opportunities that she wouldn’t have had time for otherwise. And while there is potential to turn this volunteer career coaching into something with financial benefits, Samson says she isn’t ready for that either.
“I personally like the idea of not being heavily into a profit motive. Now I can value it in terms of, ‘I’m helping other people,’ ‘I’m making the world a slightly better place.’ I don’t need to make money doing that,” explains Samson.
But it’s hard for others to understand, so when Samson is at a cocktail party or over for tea with someone she doesn’t know that well, it’s not something she offers up.
“Saying that I’m retired is not a good answer, so I’ve experimented with different things,” she says, adding that even people who do know she’s retired in her 40s often have a retort similar to a sarcastic, ‘must be nice’ or the well-meaning, ‘you must’ve sacrificed so much.’
Samson likes neither of these responses, because “both sets of assumptions assume a level of extremeness, which is not my lived experience.”
Light my FIRE
Being able to dig deeper into the things that were considered once-in-a-while hobbies (like cooking) or undiscovered interests (like the couple’s current interest in bird watching) has been the most calming part of the experience as these are the things that are allowed to fill her days now. But she quickly adds that she doesn’t need to map out her days and doesn’t panic about what to do with her time, likening her current day-to-day to writing in the margins of a book or doodling.
“Imagine, you’re writing in the margins of the book and then you run out of space. Then imagine that you had bigger margins and then you could write more and then all of a sudden you’re given a whole blank page and you’re like, ‘Oh crap, I don’t know how to fill this blank page anymore’,” she says.
“Now it’s your blank page that you’re responsible for making it worth having created a blank page.”
For her, there is power in the doodling.
“It’s scary to say, ‘Well, I’m just going to doodle a bit and eventually this blank page will mean something’ and I’m finding that doodling is the most helpful thing for me,” says Samson.
“I don’t want to be responsible for writing the next great novel with my blank pages. They’re for me.”
