Another year can be tough | White coat investor

As young professionals, my wife and I were relatively frugal, but we didn’t think much about money or financial goals. Every year we had more money in our bank account than the year before, and we didn’t really know what to think or what to do with it. Society is not doing a good job of preparing us to have more each year than the next. Neither of us had any idea about investing or retirement planning, so we thought, “Well, I guess we’ll just build a $1 million dream house.”

Then, at age 39, I discovered Mr. Money Mustache and I realized there was another way. Instead of building a dream home, we focused on saving and investing as much as possible so we could achieve financial independence as quickly as possible.

We reached FI six years later (as Dr. Jim Dahle has said, no high-income professional is more than a decade away from FI). We continued to work for several reasons, mainly because our goal was to never get our FI number and then retire immediately. Our goal was to live the best life possible. Ultimately, in the spring of 2024, we decided to pull the plug in the spring of 2025. We decided to wait a year between decision and implementation because I had clinic responsibilities scheduled and my wife had classes she wanted to teach. So we still had a year between making the decision about retirement and it becoming a reality.

Another year and why it wasn’t so great

Many people advocate “One More Year” when planning for financial independence. Another year on the labor market can make a significant contribution to your investments and provide you with a nice buffer in your capital. It’s also one less year you need to finance your life with your investments. The doctor on fire Fritz at the pension manifesto both did another year and had a good feeling about it.

Some people think that ‘One more year’ is a syndrome, where you postpone your retirement for another year. You may be concerned about your financial situation. Maybe you think you’ll be bored in retirement, so you stick with your job. Neither appealed to us. Our songs had been working for a few years. Our identity has never been tied to our work. We have numerous extramural activities that we want to pursue after retirement. We did a short retirement training that went well. We weren’t afraid to retire.

We committed to One More Year, and then we had to survive. To be honest it wasn’t great. I have always liked my job and actually enjoy going to work on Mondays. But that year came Sunday afternoon and I said to my wife, “But I want to hang out with you and the cats!” I was clearly having trouble staying motivated at work and often felt like I was doing nothing at all. What explains my experience with One More Year versus those who had a good One More Year? I can think of a few possibilities.

One of them is that I wonder if other people who have had a good One More Year have done the same always actually hated their jobs. For them, having to go to work on Monday was the same as usual – somewhat unpalatable. However, in general I have always liked my work. Only now, after we decided to retire, did I start to feel a case of The Mondays.

Another is that our why wasn’t strong enough. We didn’t desperately need another year of income to make our retirement finances work. Another year of work wouldn’t change our emotional relationship with our retirement finances. Our motivation was to help our colleagues and teach our students. Maybe that’s not convincing enough. When I was relaxing on Sunday and thinking, “I can just relax and never go to work again,” responding to that thought with “But my coworkers need me” might not have been strong enough to motivate me. This is partly because I believe that no one is irreplaceable. Within a short time after I leave, I’m sure my colleagues will have figured things out just fine. I didn’t feel particularly needed.

Finally, it is possible that we had already been living with One More Year for two years, because we had already reached FI. Previously, we had not seriously considered retirement because we both basically enjoyed the work. But after a while I started looking around and thinking, “Wait, would I rather go to work or would I rather hang out with my wife and go for walks and see friends and otherwise spend my time exactly how I want to?” Once we set a date for retirement, every week seemed to drag on. I just wanted to go there already!

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The countdown to retirement

When we reached six months past our planned retirement date, we decided to start a countdown clock, especially for all the annoying work-related things that we no longer had to take care of – going to the surgery lab for me, scheduling students for exams for my wife, etc. This helped us stay focused by tracking our progress, and we could feel a little better about looking forward to a future without the negative aspects of our work.

We had planned to submit our notice in November 2024 for a March 2025 retirement, but decided to postpone the retirement until July 2025. Nevertheless, we met with our department chair in November and submitted our official notices. About a week after doing this, I was in a mild panic mode. Have we made the right choice? Can we take it back? After a few weeks I relaxed and when our department chair distributed the notice to the entire department, the deal was done.

A few weeks later I didn’t think about it at all. We were going to retire in July, and I stopped worrying about that decision. Interestingly enough, we also stopped our countdown clock because we felt we didn’t really need the motivation anymore. We focused completely on completing as many work-related projects as possible before we finished our time at work. I stopped feeling bad on Sunday, knowing that the end was in sight.

More information here:

Real-life examples of how WCIers live, worry, and withdraw money during retirement

Giving up a $250,000 salary to retire early is tough

The bottom line

Some people see One More Year as a necessity to give themselves the comfort that they have enough. Some people are stuck in One More Year because they can’t imagine life without work. When we were in the middle of One More Year, we couldn’t wait for it to be over, to get to the point where we could retire and start doing things precisely what we wanted to do with our time.

If I had to do it all over again, I either wouldn’t have set a concrete date to target, OR I would have just pulled the trigger when we realized we wanted to stop working. If you’re considering retirement, these thoughts may be worth considering. Will One More Year help you feel better about your retirement, or might it be better to just retire when you reach your retirement number?

Have you experienced One More Year? Why did you continue to work? Was it worth it? Would you do it again?