When you think or dream of early retirement, what does it look like? Is it waking up whenever you want, sitting on the couch all day watching television, doom scrolling on your phone, going out to eat, or planning an infinite number of vacations? From personal experience with being early retired for 5 months, I can say that you better have a plan. Is early retirement boring?

I thought I had it all planned out. I was going to get healthy; I was going to spend more time with the family; I was going to get the “honey-do list” done; I was going to volunteer.

I did start learning Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and that has helped me start getting back into shape. After 1 month I fractured my ankle so that didn’t go according to plan. After 3 months, I healed enough to go back and start training again cautiously. I still have another 3 months for it to fully heal.

I am spending more time with the family. I’m able to do drop offs and pick ups for the kids. I’m cooking more which means I’m grocery shopping more so I’m eating healthier. I spend more time with my dog going on longer walks.

After a month or two I started feeling a little empty. Even with having these activities on my schedule, I noticed that I started to doom scroll to fill in that time. The more I doom scrolled the more useless I felt. Was early retirement starting to feel boring?

Luckily, my wife has an online business and I became more involved in it. I started to learn the backend pieces of the business and started to help where I could. This has allowed me to be able to engage more with my wife, talk strategy, and help her business grow. This helped fill that void and now I feel useful instead of useless.

They say “retire towards something.” If you don’t know what you’ll be doing in early retirement, you may be just doom scrolling like I was. You don’t want to ruin the moment without having a plan. Fortunately, I was able to fill my time and be useful. Is early retirement boring? Not if you have a plan. Being able to retire early is a huge accomplishment. Don’t ruin it! If you are interested in following my journey, email subscribe here to get alerts of latest posts or follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.