We are well into 2020 now. It is a new year and a new decade. Something that has been on my mind a lot is early retirement. Do I really want to retire early? Once you start earning more, it becomes harder to give up the salary. That being said, work has been hard lately, and whenever work gets hard, I begin to think about early retirement.
Something that happened in 2019 was that I was in a brief relationship for about three months, but that ended. It was nice while it lasted but it definitely is over, which is a pity because I do want a girlfriend, but I think I do have a severe case of commitment phobia. I am fairly certain I don’t want children, and I could go on forever about the reasons for that, but I am also worried about marriage, which to me seems very risky. I have also witnessed many bad marriages. Many people say that conflict and argument are a normal part of marriage and you need to just work through it, but this seems to be an unsatisfactory answer. For 2020 and beyond, my plan for relationships is the same as always, which is to stay single but be open to meeting new women.
At this point in time, I am probably as lonely as ever. I don’t think I have any friends. I don’t have a girlfriend either. I pretty much have nothing. Most of my interaction with people is work-related and there are a few people I catch up with every now and then. This is a bit depressing, but at the same time, I do like the solitude. I also like the freedom that comes from just being by myself. It is not like I am completely alone. People do contact me to have lunch or coffee with them, and sometimes I contact others to catch up with them, but mostly these catch ups are not that great. Whenever I catch up with others, I feel like I am just engaging in polite conversation. I cannot really express who I am or what I am thinking. Maybe I haven’t fully built up the courage to say what I want to say.
When I started my financial independence journey, my plan was to retire early in Southeast Asia, and I still want to do this. Whenever times are tough, I’d imagine myself living on a beach on an island in Southeast Asia. I’d sleep in a beach bungalow, wake up late, walk along the sands to a beachside cafe or coworking space, and spend my days reading books or writing books on a laptop, which I would self-publish on Kindle. I’d drink coffee and coconut by the beach while I read or write books. In the afternoon, when the sun sets on the horizon, I could go for a swim, and the water would be very warm.
Part of the reason why I’m hesitant to have children or to marry is because of the threat that children or marriage pose to my early retirement dream. There is something about children or marriage that seems so final. The commitment is so large, and it is a heavy burden.
When you live differently, people naturally challenge you, and when I tell people about my dreams to retire to Southeast Asia, they inevitably talk about how terrible these places are, how they have poor healthcare, how the traffic is bad, and so forth. All these points miss the bigger picture, which is that the reason why I want to go to Southeast Asia is not beause I necessarily want to go to Southeast Asia but rather it is because I want to have the ability to go somewhere else. Even if I don’t like Southeast Asia, I could always move back or move elsewhere. It is the movement and the flexibility that matters. I want to have no major obligations and I want to be completely free. I don’t want to be shackled to a job I initally liked but have grown to hate as I try to pay off a huge mortgage and car loan. There seems to be a tendency for people to push you to decide on something, commit to it, and then settle down, but I want to keep my options open. I never want to commit and I never want to settle.
I Live Off Dividends 