Today I talked to a client in his early 60's who is trying to narrow in on a specific retirement date within his original broad timeframe he laid out for himself. At one point I replied to a comment with "well yeah, if you never retired you wouldn't spend any of what you've saved but you can pretty much do what you want, you have optionality."
He walked me through how he got to this point and basically he has optionality today thanks to a couple (or more than a couple) very good decisions when we was younger. At 40, 50 or 60 you are in a great position to benefit from decisions made when you were younger regardless of whether retirement is on your immediate horizon.
Optionality can mean anything you want, I would imagine that for someone in their 40's or maybe 50's one form of optionality would be the ability to change careers, make some sort of radical change to work you'd love doing without having to worry about a pay cut. You want to go from some sort of job requiring a suit that pays $200,000/yr to being a fishing guide making $40,000/yr, no idea what fishing guides make but you get the point, then the decisions you made early on very likely determine the plausibility of such a move. Optionality in your late 50's and into your 60's could be the same but could also be about retiring early.
There's an infinite number of attitudes about retiring and how to spend your time and they are all fair game limited only by optionality. We've been saying forever here, if you're plan calls for $800,000 at age 66 and you find yourself at 64 with $620,000 and hating your job, you can still retire but something will have to give. That scenario has less optionality than if instead of $620,000 you had $1.1 million. Without complete optionality you need to apply ingenuity to figure how manage what thing will have to give so that you can have the outcome you want. This seems obvious but don't wait until you're in the equivalent position of being two years away, a little bit short in your account and miserable at work. If you can't derive optionality from the amount of money you have saved you can derive optionality from ingenuity, from problem solving.
This afternoon I renewed my EMT certificate with the State of Arizona, I'm good for another two years. I think getting your EMT is a great life skill to have even if you never practice as an EMT anywhere. The relevance of my EMT renewal ties into my optionality. I think it is important that I actually do what I write about not just talk about it.
A couple of days ago I mentioned that Walker Fire sent a brush truck out on off-district fires for the 2021 fire season. The firefighters get paid and the truck gets paid, it's a lucrative opportunity.
We are now working on getting our rescue out (it looks like an ambulance but we have to call it a rescue) too. It's too soon to know if we'll get it out in 2022 or later but eventually it will go out. The EMT and Paramedic on the rig get paid and the truck gets paid, it's a lucrative opportunity.
The way the pay and overtime work out, an EMT can make close to $4000/wk going out in this capacity, a Paramedic would make more. I don't see myself ever doing this for a bunch of reasons but it is empowering to know that I could. It requires some work, the need to maintain the certification and stay fit enough to pass the pack test (annual physical requirement to be a wildland firefighter, hike three miles in 45 minutes wearing a 45 pound pack). Maintaining both maintains my optionality.
I didn't know about any of this stuff when I first joined the department in the winter of 2002-03 but my involvement, interest and training all evolved over the course of many years giving me several different routes to pursue, I have no guarantees here, just opportunities.
I would encourage you to cultivate as many of these as you can. If nothing else you'll learn a few things which is important all by itself and maybe you'll create a lucrative income for yourself doing work that you love that you never thought you'd be doing.
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