When people talk about early retirement, they tend to talk about it in a very idealized way, as if there could be absolutely no downside to it. But this is not the case. Even though there are many great things about retiring early, it is not all roses. There are some downsides to the equation. The biggest disadvantage of early retirement is that it’s hard to save enough money for it. If you retire at 40 or 50, with life expectancies these days, you have a very good chance of living at least 40 or 50 years longer. Which is great from a living standpoint, tough from a financial standpoint.
This is one reason why you need to be more aggressive in your saving if you’re planning for an early retirement. In reality, you probably need double the retirement money than if you’re retiring at a “normal” age, and that’s with less earning time. Which means that you better have a pretty nice income to be able to save from. You will need to save a lot of money from a very early age if you want to have any chance at retiring early, and you have to try to make those investments do as much work as possible for you, meaning you need them to grow as quickly as possible. Of course, this is always true in investing, but especially true if you plan on retiring early.
Another non-financial disadvantage of early retirement is that you might just get bored. It seems hard to imagine, but having no work obligations or anything like that can possibly get boring after many, many years of it. Once again, if you retire you could have 40-50 years to spend at your leisure, and that’s a lot of time to occupy. So that’s why you have to find hobbies… you can’t count on sitting and watching TV for 40 years, because that will probably be boring. Write a book, find a part-time job or volunteer job you enjoy, etc. You have to find as many varied things to do to expand your mind and continue your growth even in retirement.
Early retirement is a lofty goal to have. You will have to work very hard and sacrifice when you are younger if you want to have a chance to be able to retire early. Most people think only of the positives when they consider retiring early, but there are many different angles to look at things. These are a couple of the disadvantages of early retirement… it’s hard to save enough money for it, and you might get bored. However, if you do it right, you could retire early and enjoy your glory years in style!