So you want to retire before 50?

Or Do you? An Introduction...

I "retired" on the 14th April 2014, 5 months before my 50th birthday. This had been a long term goal of mine and it was a great achievement at the time. However, what I have found is that retirement isn't what I thought it would be. Given there isn't a lot of literature talking about the back 9 of life, I decided to write down my thoughts on the experience. I will also share how I made it happen, should you decide that retiring before 50 is what you want to do.

A bit about me.

I was born in Brisbane (Australia - are there any other Brisbane's? I don't think so), in September 1964. After 3 years, my folks moved to Sydney where I did most of my schooling. After school, I went to Sydney University and picked up a B.E. (Elec.) and B.Sc. (Computer Science & Physics).I also picked up a girl friend who is now my wife (30 years so far). There are of course many stories from that period and I may tell some of them if I can find a way to make them relevant.

I will tell the story of how I met my wife, because that is indicative of my approach to life. Being an engineering student in the 1980's didn't bring about a lot of exposure to the fairer sex. I think there were 3 women, and a lot of men.  My secondary schooling was at an all boys school, so it would be fair to say that I was inexperienced with women. In our first year at Uni, my friend John (a fellow engineer) and I cooked up a plan to improve our dating prospects. We decided to form the Sydney University Skydiving Society. Neither John nor I had jumped out of a plane, but we thought that this sort of image would attract women. At Orientation, which occurs at the start of each academic year, we set up our stall and proceeded to sign up members. Over 150 people joined up. We blew all the membership fees on a huge kick off BBQ.

Because we couldn't actually skydive, we had to come up with alternate "team building" events. One of these was a weekend Yacht cruise on the Pittwater in Sydney. At one of the planning sessions for this trip everyone pulled out apart from John and my future wife. I immediately rang John and told him not to come. To this day my wife claims that I can't call this our first date since I never asked her out...

What did I learn from this experience?

1. Always have a plan.
2. Don't be afraid of stacking the odds in your favour.
3. If you look like you know what you are doing, people will assume that you do.