Originally Posted by
Molly
And if one retires at 30 or 40 and gets part time work, is that still retirement? What about health care? Or Social Security down the line?
Thoughts?
Jacob Lund Fisker, who wrote Early Retirement Extreme, always pushes back at criticisms that he retired early but still works from time to time. He said, the idea of early retirement isn't the armchair type, as herbgeek said, but it's more about the financial independence part. You retire from the need to make money and/or the need to work at a traditional job that you don't enjoy. Being FI opens up a world of possibilities, and work is one of those possibilities--maybe part time work, or maybe low-paying but more fulfilling work--whatever it may be.
Here is his answer to a question about retiring "too early":
Q: I think 30 is way too young to be retired!
A: Could it be that you’re stuck in the conventional “school-career-retire-die” way of thinking about life? If so, you need to read a bit more of this site because that’s NOT the kind of retirement ERE is about. Here retirement is used in the “becoming financially independent and using that freedom to pursue other interests”-sense. Incidentally, this is not a new idea. Rather it is an old and somewhat forgotten idea. If you read biographies of people like Ben Franklin or Joseph Conrad, you will often see that they “retired” from one profession to take up another interest. Being financially independent and also well-rounded and possessing more than one skill made that possible.