Its is now eight years since I retired early in 2018. When the first year had passed since I retired, I felt very excited. It was like a milestone. Not knowing if I can really do this FIRE thing. Passing one year in retirement vindicated it.


Yet, it still felt like a dream. I could not tell if I am really retired! I was thoroughly enjoying the new found freedom, but still questions remained. Can I do it for ever? Year two went by and when year three rolled in it was again a milestone moment. I felt more confident that FIRE is working out fine. I clearly knew it was a good decision and living through COVID time made me realize how lucky I am. Many others were also experiencing a slice of my life; like me they were home all the time with kids. Some liked it. Some not so much.


But even during those years I was still not clear (not worried mind you) if this FIRE thing will last forever or will I feel bored or run out of finances. The markets fell quite a bit, a whole bunch of my supposedly safe debt mutual fund investment froze with no way to redeem them to use for my expenses. Thankfully I was diversified enough for me to keep going.


After the five year milestone if felt like I was really out of the woods and FIRE will work both financially and also from the perspective of not doing work and having too much free time.


I have seen the whole family stuck at home 24/7 for several months and come out of it. I have seen my portfolio being underwater (compared to my projection) for a few years and later came out of it. Then a sudden notional loss of my debt investments and eventually after some time, I got back the investment with interest minus taxes (unfortunately). All of these events were frontloaded. So I experienced all the pain soon after retirement, testing my rigor in planning and preparedness. This is all good because if I buckled under pressure, I still had a chance to go back to work before I was considered out of touch with latest technology :).


Corpus below projection for a long time right after retirement


Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that after the five year milestone, the rest of the milestones don’t feel that interesting. The count is just going up and I have no doubts about a long retired life. Eight is now just another number. Perhaps year ten will be an interesting milestone. I can say a decade in retirement; just bragging rights I suppose. In all other aspects it feels like life as usual, in a good way!