Woo hoo! TEN YEARS of retirement!!!!
Let’s celebrate! Hahahaha.
Regular readers know that this has been coming as they’ve read some of my “10 Things in 10 Years of Retirement” series posts (there are more to come BTW), and today is the official anniversary date.
If you want to go back 10 years and get the full story of how it all went down, check out I Retired!!!!
Before we get into today’s post, I do have a couple thoughts to share after ten years of retirement.
First of all, if I had stuck to my original early retirement plan, I’d only be two years into retirement.
I remember when my plan was to retire “early” at 60 with $4 million in the bank. I wrote about that goal many times on Free Money Finance (which has since been taken down as Typepad, the company I used for the site, went out of business.) BTW, it’s strange for me to realize that I’ve now been writing ESI Money for longer than I wrote at Free Money Finance. That blows my mind!
But thankfully the combination of a terrible boss and moving to a great state (Colorado) convinced me it was time to retire in 2016. And it’s been pretty great since then!
Anyway, my second thought is that I’ve now aged to a place where I’m not really an “early” retiree any longer. Hahahaha.
That said, the other day I did have a guy at the pool tell me I looked like I was in my 40’s (I do have good genes from my parents in that way), so maybe my looks might imply I am an early retiree. But with the average age of retirement in America now at 62, I’m merely “average” at this point. But I do have ten (GREAT!) years in the bank, so there is that. lol
BTW, this seems like the perfect place to tell an age-related story.
I had my teeth cleaned at the end of June by a new dental hygienist (my other one had an appointment.) About three minutes into the cleaning she stopped and looked back and forth between me and the computer screen. I thought she had discovered something really wrong with my mouth as she seemed confused.
Then she said, “Can you confirm your name for me?” I told her my name.
She said, “I have the right file called up but there’s an error on it. Somehow they have your age listed as over 60.”
Hahahahaha.
I told her I was over 60 and gave her my bith year. She said she would have pegged me at 50 at the very oldest.
Needless to say, I love her. LOL.
A Real Update
It’s been a while since I did a proper update. My last official retirement update was at the 8-year mark, but that one wasn’t very detailed. The last “real” update — other than posts where I share bits and pieces of what’s going on in my life — was at 7.75 years. Needless to say, a few things have happened since then.
I stopped posting quarterly updates because they were getting a bit monotonous — so I’m not going back to that schedule again. But there was no way I could let 10 years pass without sitting down and sharing where life stands now. In fact, there’s so much to share that I’m going to make this a two-part post.
A decade is long enough to move well beyond the honeymoon phase. Long enough to test assumptions. Long enough to see what retirement really looks like after the novelty wears off and normal life settles in. Long enough to experience both the highs and the lows that come with any meaningful stage of life.
And that’s probably the biggest takeaway I have after 10 years: Retirement is still life.
It is freer life. In most ways it is better life. But it is still life. You’re probably seeing that in my “10 Things” series.
You still have joy and disappointment. Gains and losses. Family wins and family pain. Good health seasons and difficult health seasons. Financial victories and financial frustrations. Great days, boring days, memorable days, and days where you wonder what exactly happened to the last eight hours (which is actually quite common — in a good way).
In other words, retirement doesn’t eliminate life’s ups and downs. It just gives you more control over how you live through them.
That said, I still think that (for the most part) the worst day in retirement is better than the best day of working (working for “the man” that is.) If that’s not true, it’s at least close. 🙂
By the way, some of what I’ll share has been detailed in other posts (and will be again). I don’t assume everyone reads every post so I work to make each post stand on its own as much as possible (which is why you may see the same things, or similar things, in different posts).
Furthermore, this is the most recent post I’ve written lately. I’m writing it just a week before I publish it (which is unusual for me as I usually worth months in advance) to give you the latest scoop on what’s happening in my life. So if you see a post saying I do X but this one says I do Y, just know that I used to do X, but that post was probably written three months ago and now I do Y. 😉
With that said, let’s get started.
Life
It’s never a boring life in retirement — at least not for us.
If you’ve been reading the couple of years since the last update, you know a lot has happened over the past two years. We’ve had major life changes, family developments, health challenges, travel, loss, new rhythms, and all the normal stuff that comes with building a life in a new place.
So let’s begin with this…
We moved. Again.
The biggest lifestyle change, of course, is that we moved from Florida to North Carolina.
If you missed the first move, that was the jump to The Villages in Florida. You can get the details by reading Life in The Villages, Florida: Purchase, Arrival, and Getting Settled.
If you missed the second move, that was our later decision to relocate to North Carolina. We’ve now been here almost two years (we’ve owned the house more than two years but we had a month of work done on it before we moved in), and we’re settling in nicely. It takes awhile to get used to a place, but after two years this is starting to feel like home.
BTW, we’ve now lived in North Carolina longer than we lived in The Villages.
I still miss Colorado for many reasons, but those feelings have moved from “did I ruin my life by moving?” to “I loved that time of our lives but this is great too.” As for the Florida years, I try to block those out. Hahahaha.
One reason this move has worked so well is the weather. I think we’ve finally found a place with balanced enough weather that we’re both happy for about half the year or a bit more — though different halves.
That may sound like faint praise, but finding a place where both spouses can say, “I can live with this,” is a win. Retirement location decisions are often portrayed as though there’s a perfect place out there just waiting for you to discover it. In reality, the right place is often the place with the best set of trade-offs. No location is perfect.
One place is too hot (Florida, for me). Another is too cold (Colorado, for my wife). One is beautiful but isolated. Another is convenient but crowded. One is inexpensive but lacks amenities. Another has everything but costs a fortune. And then you have the “which house should we buy?” question with the same sort of trade-offs.
What you’re really looking for is not perfection. You’re looking for a place where the positives are strong enough and the negatives are manageable enough that you can build a good life there.
For us, North Carolina has turned out to be that place.
Family is Close — Really Close
The biggest plus of the move is that our daughter and son-in-law moved to North Carolina as well and live about ten minutes (maximum) away from us. That has been a tremendous blessing.
They have a nice house that we helped them buy with a down payment (taken as an advance on our daughter’s inheritance), which of course led to the Chase fiasco. Hahahaha. I can laugh now, but it was a ridiculous experience at the time.
Still, helping them get established nearby has been worth it many times over. We see them at least once a week for dinner, plus more impromptu times each week. Sometimes it’s planned. Sometimes it’s just life. And that’s one of the underrated benefits of living close to family: you don’t have to turn every interaction into an event. You can just see each other.
That’s a much different dynamic than trying to cram all your family connection into holidays, long weekends, and occasional flights. Proximity changes relationships. It creates room for normal life together. And in retirement, I’ve found that normal life together is better than the big flashy family experiences people imagine.
Our son is still working in Colorado Springs and shows no signs of moving yet. We’ll see what the future holds for him. As every parent of adult children knows, there’s only so much predicting you can do. Their lives unfold in their own way, on their own timeline.
North Carolina has Turned into a Hub
Another plus is that our location has made us a convenient stop for family and friends traveling up and down the East Coast. So we’ve had a lot of visitors.
My wife’s oldest sister and her husband have come through a few times. Her middle sister and her husband have visited twice. My step-dad has come up (when he lived in Florida — more on that below). Other friends have stopped by either on their way somewhere else or because they were in the area visiting family or friends of their own. That has been really nice.
One thing I underestimated about retirement is how much value there is in having a home base that works not just for you, but for your broader relational life. When you’re working, home can sometimes feel like a place you sleep and occasionally maintain. In retirement, home becomes more than that. It can become a true gathering place.
That’s become part of our life here, and it’s something I’m very grateful for.
Loss is Still Part of Life
As I’ve noted before, my biological dad had pancreatic cancer. And he beat it. That was a huge win and a major relief.
But a few months later, they found a tumor in his liver, and there was nothing they could do for it. Six months later he passed away.
His passing was a reminder that as the years roll on, retirement isn’t just about freedom and fun. It’s also about walking through the realities of aging — your own and those of the people you love.
And that’s another truth about retirement that doesn’t get enough attention: the older you get, the more your life includes both celebration and grief.
You become more aware that time is precious because you see more clearly that it is finite.
So now both my mom and my dad have passed. I only have my step-dad (who I call “dad” mostly on this site because he was the one in our lives from the time I started high school.)
And speaking of him…
Back to Iowa
My step-dad — who lived in Florida — sold his home in The Villages earlier this year. He had moved back to Iowa last fall.
He was having some health issues and needed to be around family who could help him from time to time. We tried to convince him to move here, but he still drives and was worried about the traffic. That concern is valid. There are a lot more people here packed into a relatively small area — and the drivers are crazy.
So he moved back to our small town in Iowa and has kept busy with various family activities. He has nieces, nephews, siblings, and other extended family there, and being around those people at this stage of life has been good for him.
Watching all this unfold — with my biological dad’s passing and my step-dad’s relocation — has reinforced something I already believed: family matters more and more as life goes on.
Money matters. Health matters. Location matters. But family often becomes the lens through which all the other decisions are made.
FYI, within the last five years my dad has lost a brother, a sister, and a sister-in-law…in addition to my mom. It’s been a tough go for him, but he’s still going strong.
Zeus is Thriving
No retirement update would be complete without details on our cat Zeus.
He is still amazing.
He’s now seven years old, which is hard to believe. He remains my constant house buddy and is living his best life. One of his favorite things about our house is the screened-in porch. We take him out there often and he loves watching the birds and squirrels (we have woods in our backyard).
A lot of people underestimate the role pets can play in retirement. They add rhythm, companionship, entertainment, and in some cases a bit of needed structure. Zeus has definitely been a positive part of daily life around here.
He is calm, friendly, and generally content. In other words, he may be the best retiree in the house.
The Carolina House
We’re also hoping that this will be the year we finally finish getting our “new” house updated the way we want it.
At some point a house stops being new and just becomes your house, and we’re almost there. We’ve made a lot of progress, but there are still a handful of projects, improvements, and adjustments we want to complete so the place fully fits how we live now.
That’s one of the benefits of retirement: you have more time to think intentionally about your environment and shape it around the life you actually want to live.
On the downside, there’s no rush to do anything so we’re taking our time. It’s also known as procrastinating. lol
Home matters a lot more to me these days than I might have expected years ago. Since I’m not all that interested in big travel right now, it matters even more that home feels comfortable, functional, peaceful, and fully ours.
Hopefully by the end of this year, we’ll have that process mostly wrapped up.
Local Travel
One thing that may surprise some people is that I’m not especially eager to travel right now. There are a couple reasons for that.
First, I feel like we already had 1.5 years of vacation living when we were in The Villages. It is after all a huge resort. If you assume we would have normally spent a month a year in a resort-like setting, the 18 months we lived in The Villages covered 18 years of vacations! Haha.
That season scratched a certain itch and, at least for now, I feel much more drawn to being at home than going somewhere else. After all the moving and adjusting we’ve done over the past few years, I think I just need a few years where home is home and I can fully enjoy it.
Second, there’s really nowhere I’d want to go where the pain of getting there is less than the pleasure of being there. That may sound grumpy, but I think it’s just realism. Travel looks great in theory, but airports, delays, crowds, packing, hauling stuff around, sleeping in a strange bed, and the general hassle of getting from Point A to Point B all take a lot of the shine off for me these days.
That said, there are a few exceptions. I’d still like to take some trips to the beach (my wife and daughter took a scouting trip there earlier this year) and to the mountains (we have tentative plans to go there next spring and might even make a day trip later this month) here in North Carolina. Those are relatively easy, close enough to be enjoyable, and fit the kind of pace we like right now. I’d also love to visit the Biltmore during the Christmas season. That seems like the sort of trip where the pleasure would actually outweigh the hassle.
This is one of those areas where retirement has clarified my preferences. I don’t need to travel to prove I’m enjoying retirement. At this point, I’m much more interested in building a life I don’t feel the need to escape from.
We have made a few local trips which scratches the (very small) traveling itch I have. We’ve been to both malls a few times, visited the outlet mall and collectibles/bookstore combination an hour away twice, and started to explore the restaurant scene here. Nothing huge like a cruise or trip to Hawaii, but much more of what I’m willing to do these days.
Entertainment
My wife and I usually watch TV while we eat and select something from YouTube TV, Amazon, Disney, or YouTube (which we probably watch as much as all the others — Zeus loves the videos of birds, etc. made for cats!)
I have also played a few video games in the past year. I have a particular type of game I like, so it’s hit or miss for me based on what’s released.
But lately here are the games I’ve played:
- Assassin’s Creed Shadows — LOVED this! I have somewhere around 300 hours into it (on the second play — not sure what I had on the first one, probably 100 hours or so). Awesome, as usual.
- Ghost of Yotei — Also awesome! I didn’t play it as long as I did AC Shadows but I did enjoy it.
- Lego Batman — It was “ok” or “fine.” It was Batman, which I love, but it was also kid-ish as it was a Lego game, so that was a notch down.
- Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced — I loved the original and love this as well! I’m still playing it and about 70 hours in so far. Still a lot to do to rule the seas! lol
Health
As many of you know, I prioritize health in retirement. I’ve said many times that one of the keys to having a great retirement is not just having enough money to fund the life you want, but having enough health to enjoy it.
Without health, retirement options shrink quickly.
And over the past couple of years, I’ve had a front-row seat to just how true that is.
The Back Attack
If you’ve been reading for a while, you know I went through quite a saga with my back.
And “saga” is exactly the right word.
It dragged on. It was confusing. It was frustrating. It was limiting. And like many health issues, it wasn’t just physical. It affected my mood, energy, activity options, travel, sleep, and the general quality of life.
Thankfully, I eventually found someone who helped me, and I’m now back to about 90% of my old self (which seems like a miracle from where I was).
Would I prefer 100%? Of course. But after going through the pain and uncertainty of the worst stretches, 90% feels pretty good. And the best part is I’m still making progress, so we’ll get back closer to 100% if not past it!
At some point I may write a full post about what I think happened and what seemed to help. No one — including the doctors — knows for sure exactly what was going on. But I also know many readers deal with bad backs, chronic pain, and mysterious physical issues that can be hard to diagnose and even harder to fix. If sharing my experience can help even a few people, it would be worth doing.
Back in Action
The good news is that I’m back at the gym.
I started slowly and built up day by day.
Since my back was still an issue when I began, I did what I had done in the past when my back wasn’t cooperative: I headed to the pool.
When we moved to NC, we had access to both a neighborhood pool plus a nice one at the YMCA. I began by swimming three laps a couple times a week. I slowly built up day-by-day and ended up (a few months later) swimming 30 laps (1500 yards) six times a week.
Then I did the same thing with walking/running/StairMaster, building up bit by bit. Then I did the same with lifting weights. I started slowly and built up bit by bit over time.
Last year at this time I was only swimming but in September I started the above “bit-by-bit plan” and by February or so I had added cardio and weights. As of now I’ve expanded all of these (I have a weekly training plan that ChatGPT helped me create) to the following:
- Swimming — 3 times a week
- StairMaster — 3 times a week
- Pickleball — 3 times a week
- Weight lifting — 3 times a week
- Yoga/Pilates/balance routine — 4 times a week (on non-weight days)
- Walking — Every day
I supplement these with trips to our community pool with my wife as well as neighborhood walks.
I couldn’t do anything at the height of the back issues, so being able to do this feels like a gift.
One lesson I’ve been reminded of through all this is that health is not something to be admired in the abstract. It has to be maintained in practice.
You don’t stay healthy because you “value fitness.” You stay healthier because you actually show up and do the work — week after week, month after month, year after year.
That doesn’t guarantee perfect outcomes. Plenty of healthy people still get hurt or sick. But it improves the odds dramatically. And it gives you a stronger base from which to recover when setbacks do come.
FWIW, I was 3rd in scans (number of times checked in) at my local YMCA in 2025, so I’ve been working at it for some time now. 😉
Annual Physical
I had my physical in April, and one of my goals now is to get myself back into tip-top shape.
I’m doing well overall, especially considering the back issues I’ve dealt with, but I also know there’s still room for improvement. That’s one thing retirement gives you if you use it wisely: time to focus on the basics that make life better. Exercise, eating well, sleep, recovery, mobility, and consistency all matter more as you get older, not less.
So that’s a priority for me right now. I’m not chasing some unrealistic ideal, but I do want to be as healthy, strong, mobile, and energetic as I can be. If I’ve learned anything over the past couple of years, it’s that good health is too valuable to take for granted.
One of my focus areas has been in losing weight. During my back issues I gained an extra 20 pounds due to lack of exercise and over-eating. I have made adjustments and have now lost almost all of that weight. Even better I have changed my eating habits and they are now much better than any other time in my life.
BTW, I found an AWESOME doctor here after struggling to find a decent primary care doctor in The Villages. It’s the first time I’ve had a female primary care doctor, so maybe I should have gone that route long ago (but my doctor in Colorado was awesome too, and he was a guy, so there is that.)
Finances
Now let’s get to the money section!
This is ESI Money after all and no update would be complete without a financial update.
Net Worth
Earlier this year I gave an update on our 2025 net worth (and spending).
At that point net worth was $7.4 million.
In between then and now we’ve had a lot of ups and downs (like the Iran conflict when I was down $500k at the worst), but towards the end of July (just as I was putting the final touches on this post) we hit $8.1 million (which we’ve actually been hovering around for some time now).
This is a good reminder that even 10 years into retirement, markets still matter. They move. They fluctuate. They can make you feel brilliant in one month and less brilliant in the next.
That’s just part of the game.
Real Estate Syndications: Not All Roses
I already detailed my sad tale of real estate syndication investing in my 10 Retirement Mistakes I Made (And Why They Didn’t Sink Me), Part 2.
You can check out that post if you want to see the specifics again.
I’m just glad most of my money was in index funds. They have more than made up for the losses in real estate syndications.
Spending and Lifestyle
One thing that has become clearer over the years is that spending in retirement is not just about how much you spend. It’s also about what you’re happy spending on.
At this stage, I have no problem spending on the things that clearly improve life:
- family
- home
- convenience
- health
- generosity
What I’m still less interested in is spending on status, clutter, or things that look impressive but don’t actually make life better.
I gave details on spending in The 10 Best Financial Moves I’ve Made in 10 Years of Retirement and 10 Things I Spend More Money on Now Than I Did 10 Years Ago: The ROI of “Value Spending” as well as the 2025 spending post noted above.
Retirement has made me even more aware that money is best used to support values, not to perform for other people.
Sold Silver
In 2017 I bought my first silver coins. Details are here.
I didn’t know what I was doing – I just liked coins and thought silver was “cool”, so I got some.
I added more in 2020 and 2021…gave some away on ESI Money (until I found out what a pain it was mailing them all over the place), then hauled the rest to Florida and to NC.
I didn’t do anything other than let them sit in a box.
I sold them all in May.
I contacted a couple places here to see what prices were but they both wanted to see what the coins looked like (despite me telling them and offering to send pictures) – they wouldn’t even give me a ballpark price. Plus some of the coins were more specialty in nature (I bought because they had cool things like lions and dragons on them) and I wasn’t sure they’d take the coins.
So I contacted SD Bullion, which is where I had purchased the coins, and they gave me a quote which was 94% of that day’s spot price. I felt like that was fair enough, so I agreed, boxed the coins up, sent them to Michigan, and the money hit my account a couple days later.
The cost basis of the coins I had left was just over $3,700 and I sold them for almost $14,800, so not bad at all.
And now my safe is much lighter…hahahaha.
Welcome to Medicare
Another milestone this year is that my wife signed up for Medicare.
We went with Medicare, a supplemental Plan N, and Part D. And of course, we got hit with IRMAA. Hahahaha. Nothing says “welcome” quite like learning that even after navigating all the Medicare choices, there’s still another surcharge waiting for you.
This is just another example of the sort of financial housekeeping that comes with retirement. People often think retirement planning ends once you leave work, but in many ways it simply changes form. Instead of deciding how much to save in a 401(k), you’re now making decisions about healthcare coverage, prescription plans, supplemental insurance, taxes, estate planning, and all the other details that come with managing life after full-time work.
The good news is that, like most of these issues, Medicare is manageable once you take the time to understand it. The bad news is that it’s more complicated than it probably should be.
FWIW, we’re using my HSA to pay for Medicare as the time for drawing that account down has come. At the current rate, we “only” have 16 years of Medicare premuims paid for from it. Hahahaha.
I’m still with Samaritan Ministries which, by the way, paid for every penny of my back treatments, MRIs, and the like.
Estate Planning
One of the less exciting but very necessary items on our list is getting our wills updated for our new state.
This is the sort of thing that’s easy to put off because it doesn’t feel urgent day to day, but it’s important. We plan to get that done later this year. Moving to a new state is a good reminder that financial planning is not just about growing assets. It’s also about making sure all the legal and logistical pieces are in order so that if something happens, the people you love are taken care of as smoothly as possible.
Along those same lines, I’m also in the process of taking my wife through our finances, passwords, and vital documents in case I pass away first. That’s not the most cheerful project in the world, but it’s one of the most loving and practical things I can do.
A lot of couples naturally fall into roles where one person handles more of the finances and paperwork than the other. That works fine until it doesn’t. If the person managing everything is suddenly gone, the surviving spouse can be left not only grieving, but also overwhelmed and confused. I don’t want that for my wife, so we’re working through everything so she knows what we have, where it is, how to access it, and what needs to be done.
That process has been a good reminder that true financial organization is not just for your benefit. It’s for your family’s benefit too.
ESI Money and MMM
ESI Money is doing well. Readers are still reading and I’m still writing. As long as there’s someone to read, I’ll probably be writing as it provides so many other benefits (like being a challenge, keeping my mind sharp, helping others, etc.)
In fact you probably noticed I’ve reamped up the number of posts to three a week now. It was hard to write when I wasn’t feeling well so I guess I had a lot of pent-up posts in me. lol
That said, I always need more millionaire interviews. These continue to be some of the most helpful posts here because they show readers what real people did to build wealth. Not theories. Not headlines. Not social media nonsense. Real stories from real millionaires with real numbers, real careers, real setbacks, and real lessons.
And…we are SO CLOSE to 500 interviews! If you can do one, I’d certainly appreciate it.
And remember: if your millionaire interview goes live, you can get into the Millionaire Money Mentors (MMM) for free if you agree to be active in the forums. Details in this post.
I do have a very long list of people who have asked to do interviews, received the instructions/questions, and then never got back to me.
Come on, people!
Your stories help others. And every story counts.
I also need retirement interviews too as folks are interested in them as well.
Why? Because retirement remains mysterious to a lot of people. They know how to save and invest, at least in theory. But they don’t really know how retirement works in practice. What do people do? What goes wrong? What goes right? What matters most? What doesn’t matter nearly as much as they thought?
That’s why these interviews are valuable.
One quote from someone in the Millionaire Money Mentors forums captured this well:
“All of those ESI ‘Retirement Interviews’ as well as your breakdown of books on the matter have me feeling like I’ve gained an MBA in early retirement.”
That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.
I want to demystify retirement. I want to help people understand not just how to afford it, but how to live it well.
If you can help with either type of interview, let me know. Here’s how to contact me.
BTW, 500 millionaires at $3 million (my average net worth over the life of the series) is $1.5B and at $5 million (the likely average those millionaires account for now — if not more) it’s $2.5B.
Finally, if you have a friend or family member who you think could benefit from reading ESI Money, please send them my way. I want to help as many people as I can become financially free.
The MMM Conference
The Millionaire Money Mentors had our fourth annual conference this past April, and once again it was a highlight.
There are some really, really great people in MMM.
I’m lucky to know many of them personally, and the conference reinforced something I’ve come to appreciate more with time: community matters.
Money alone does not make a great retirement. It helps tremendously, of course. But relationships, shared purpose, generosity, wisdom, and encouragement matter too.
MMM has become more than a forum. It’s a place where people help one another navigate money, work, retirement, family, giving, and life transitions. That’s far more meaningful than I ever would have guessed when this all started.
I can’t wait for the one next year. It’s already sold out. 😉
And another victory: I made the 9-hour drive this year both there and back (it was in The Villages) with no issues. These were the longest drives I’ve had since my back pains started.
A few of us from the MMM forums also had a get-together in Cary, NC. One member was passing through so the rest of us made an event out of it. We met for lunch at a downtown restaurant and then had gelato a few blocks down. Very nice!
Ok, that’s it for this time. Feel updated? There’s more to come!
Stay tuned as I’ll share more in part 2 soon.
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