My Semi-Retirement

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A temple at nightfall in the mountains of Japan close to Osaka.
A place I never would have found time to visit if
I hadn't taken my semi-retirement.

My semi-retirement started April 2016 when I was 28 years old. It consisted of selling most of my stuff including vehicles, bicycles, electronics, furniture, laser engraving business, tools and whatever else I could. I also quit my full time engineering job in San Diego which was just a little bit stressful. After that, I moved my pile of cash into various bank accounts and started traveling.


First a short trip to Malaysia, then 9 months in Australia, 1 month in Japan and now several months in Germany. I quit my job in April of 2016. I am now 1 year into my semi-retirement. There have been moments of regret and fear. "Did I make the right decision? Should I have played it safe and kept my well paid job in San Diego?" I have also had many thoughts wishing I had done things slightly differently. "I should have kept this... or I should have sold that..."  But, I am so very glad I made the decision to quit work and travel at this point in my life.

I call this my semi-retirement because I do not have enough money saved to completely retire. I have enough saved to last me 2-5 years if I live on a budget and maybe longer if I tighten that budget down even further. I get a lot of questions from friends and family on how I could save up this pile of money from only working professionally for four years. The answer is, I made many lifestyle choices that allowed me to live happily on a small percentage on my annual income. If you want to learn more about this, here are some other blogs dedicated to how to do this.


Mr. Money Mustache - Blog Homepage Link.
     "The shockingly simple math to early retirement" - Best and most popular Mr. Money Mustache blog post.
     Presentation by Mr. Money Mustache, Vimeo - A great video summing up MMM philosophy.

The 4 Hour Work Week - A complete audiobook of the very popular book by Timothy Ferriss on YouTube.

Boglehead.org Forum - Full of similar ideas as MMM and tons of investing advice usually related to index funds.



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