Both Mrs Budget and myself counts ourselves as relatively lucky. As compared to most of our peers, we have the option to plan for our early retirement, and have the means to work towards that.

We count ourselves lucky too as we are aligned in terms of how we view money, and our aspiration towards building a comfortable future together.

For myself, being financially independent means that I will have the option to do meaningful work, work that I enjoy. For the Mrs, that means having an option to leave her current comfortable but mundane job and probably spend time with our family and live a carefree life.

I always ask Mrs, that we should spend more time talking about the kind of lifestyle we want. As much as we are actively managing our finances and have a clear goal, I have to admit that we don’t have a clear idea of what we want to do after we reach our financial goals.

Are we going to call it quits and just travel around the world? 

Will that make us happy? 

Probably. 

But for how long? 

I envision that we will probably take a year long break to do the round the world trip with our miles accumulated, and that I will probably be bored and slightly lost after that.

There are a few (couple) bloggers in Singapore who have retired early, and here are what they have been up to:

1. Sipping Coconuts – couple retired by age 34, travelling around the world now
2. Thomas and wife / 15 Hours Work Week – couple, semi retired for 6 months and is now bored
3. Der Shing and wife – retired before 40 for selling off company, angel investing now as their meaningful full time job

There are various articles around the world which revealed that many who had the opportunity to retire early (less than 40 years old), after quitting their jobs, had been facing with a loss of identity and saw their social circle shrunk, mostly because their peers are all still working. 

Because of that, while we plan for our financial independence, I don’t think Mrs and myself will be able to retire 100%. Doing meaningful work and working alongside smart people is still something that I enjoy a lot, and will be something I will be pursuing should we manage to hit our financial goals. 

For now, we have enough miles to do a round the world trip, which we plan to do so hopefully in the next 2 years before we try to have our first baby. 🙂 

However, after we hit our financial goals, which is to have a joint net worth of over S$2,000,000 by 2027, we will most likely explore some form of meaningful work so that we won’t be lost sheeps. By 2027, the Mrs will be 36 years old and I will be 39 years old!

And we have 8 years to figure out what we want to do when the day comes.