Do you know what freetirement is? If not, you are not alone — this word doesn’t really exist in the standard English. It does however appear as a result in google search. Which sadly means that we are living in a world so small that you cannot be fooled into thinking that you are one of a kind. On the other hand, the world is small enough to share my vision of freetirement with whoever stumbles upon this random story on the Internet.
Freetirement is this almost utopian idea of not being forced to be a salary employee or an entrepreneur. It is a life where you do not worry about having your CV and skills up to date, you don’t do choose to do that shitty job that “pays the bills”, you don’t live a monotonous day to day life where you know the date just because you countdown to the next bank holiday.
In my ideal freetirement I still work, but only on things that I have interest in, I learn things that are meaningful to me. I occasionally take a contract or permanent job that I find interesting, but on my terms and being able to quit if reality does not match my expectations.
Freetirement is synonym freedom. Freedom to be who you are, where you want to be, with people you actually care about.
Of course, getting there is not easy, and in some places of the world almost impossible (unless you were born in the right family or created a business that took off and you were able to sell it with profit).
However, I believe in many western countries, if you are lucky enough to be a member of the middle class, you can get there. What you need is a reasonable salary and very low expectations. And those expectations should not rise with the pay, certainly should they not rise faster than the pay itself!
The problem that many people sooner or later face is that the job is taking up a lot of their energy — not only the physical one, but more importantly, the mental one. You just accept the rules and go forward. Every once in a while you cannot cope with stress or boredom, so you compensate it with well deserved rewards — holiday in a fancy hotel, new amazing TV, a car maybe? You work hard and party harder. When you lose the meaning, you prove to yourself that at least you “made it”.
And this is what I really want to avoid in my life. I want to feel that I am living and I want the way I feel to be independent of what I have. I want to be happy with simple things like coffee in the morning or a walk to the park. More importantly, I want to have time for those things. I want to have freedom to be a quitter whenever I feel it is the right thing to do. Sometimes having more money when an interesting offer comes along, but also being able to cut back on my spending when I have barely nothing for a couple of months.
In my version of freetirement the amount of money needed is not extravagant. I do not live a luxurious lifestyle and pose in sunglasses in local hipster cafés. Just having a small morgage-free apartment of my own, maybe some way to generate small passive income. A possibility to lose inspiration for few months and rent out my place to travel to India, where you can certainly live off the rent from your home.
The most important ingredient for freetirement is flexibility and being prepared to let go of expectations.
Maybe I am naive, but maybe it is the world that took a wrong turn and got us sucked into a spiral of consumption and personal achievements. Maybe there is a way out.