Top 20 Reasons to Retire Now (or as Early as Possible)

Maybe you’ve always dreamed of living in Paris, New York or Sydney for a while. Maybe you’d love to live on a remote farm in Peru or New Zealand or Sweden. When you’re retired, where you live isn’t bound by your job anymore. You can spend time living in any of the cheap and stylish global retirement spots and immerse yourself in the local culture.

Even when you’re retired, you may want to keep on working and earning an income. However, now you can work on your terms. You’re not bound by having to go into the office every day. If you’re considering pursuing a new career post retirement, you’ll find plenty of surprising jobs you can do from anywhere.

Many of us get so used to work stress that we don’t even realize we’re stressed anymore. Of course there are ways to relax when you’re stressed at work but when you retire, you’ll feel as if a huge weight has been lifted.

Some people are lucky and have amazing managers who support and encourage them. Unfortunately, many have the kind of managers who make good employees quit. Once you’ve retired, you won’t have to answer to a manager. You, and only you, are responsible for the decisions you make.

It’s cold and dark outside and you just want to stay in your warm bed. Once you’ve retired, you can. Even better: you have the freedom to move to one of the best places to retire to if you hate the cold.

Being retired means you can wait until rush hour is over before you venture outside. In the middle of the day, public transport is emptier. You can find great seats rather than having to hang on for dear life while having your nose stuck in a stranger’s armpit. No more of those expensive commutes day in and day out!

Every job has them: the people who have habits making them unpopular at work. They’re the ones who are always late, are always taking sick days even when they don’t have to, are gossips and always blame others when things go wrong. When you’re retired, you won’t have to deal with the horrible co-worker anymore.

There are many ways in which early retirement is good for your health. If you’ve been in one of the most fatal occupations, retiring takes away the risk of accidents. Even if you’ve had a safe desk job, though, retirement can improve your health. You’ll suffer less from stress-related ailments and you have more time and energy to prepare healthy meals and to work out.

A great way to deal with the boredom of the daily slog is to take on a side project you feel passionate about. Retirement allows you to spend more time on that passion project. You can even make it your new career. In fact, as celebrities who make more money in business than from their day jobs show, your passion project may even make more financial sense than your real job.

One of the surprising things about early retirement is that it causes you to change your spending habits. Instead of spending for instant gratification, you now get into the habit of spending with a goal in mind. You spend less and when you do spend, you do it sensibly.

Retiring from a full-time job means you have more time to spend at home. You don’t even have to stop working: now you just get to work from home with the cat sleeping on your lap. You can spend work breaks doing quick things around the house. Just keep in mind that working from home has its own pitfalls and that there are work-from-home mistakes you need to avoid.

Having one of the jobs with the best work/life balance is all well and good but not everybody is lucky enough to score one of these. More than at any other time in your life, retirement gives you the opportunity to get some balance between work, relationships, spirituality, health and leisure.

When you have a job, your days can easily fall into a pattern of the same old, same old. With retirement comes unpredictability: you get to meet new people in unexpected places, take up activities you never dreamed you would, discover unusual places you never even knew existed in Canada. Retirement is many things but one thing it definitely isn’t is boring.

Anybody who tells you they love meetings is lying. When you retire, you won’t have to spend your days attending pointless meetings and thinking about all the work you could have done in that time. The only thing about office meetings you might miss is the free refreshments (if your workplace offers them).

A 9-to-5 job eats into the time you have for family and friends. Even when you get home after a day at work, you might be too tired to deal with the people close to you. Not having to go to the office five days a week leaves you with much more free time to spend on the people in your life. This is sure to improve your relationships.

Everyone makes mistakes: it’s how we learn, so a mistake shouldn’t be the end of the world. Unfortunately, the biggest career mistakes can cost you your livelihood. When you’re retired, you’re free to make mistakes and learn from them without it affecting your career.

The clever people who study these things keep telling us that taking a nap during the day can make us more productive. They seem to forget, though, that most 9-to-5 jobs don’t come with built-in nap times. Not having to spend set times at work means you can take those power naps and be refreshed for doing the things you want to do.

Does spending your time heading into the office each and every day leave you with a sense of longing? Just like many others working the daily grind, you may find yourself wishing for adventure but being stuck in a job that won’t let you go and chase your dreams. Retirement gives you the freedom to go volcano-boarding or sky-diving or exploring the streets of Tokyo or any of the great adventures every Canadian must try.

No more uncomfortable business suits and heels! When you’re retired, you don’t have to adhere to a company dress code anymore. You can finally express yourself sartorially without potentially damaging your professional reputation.

One of the best things about retiring as early as possible is that it allows you to travel where and when you want. Not having to apply for vacation days and not having to plan your travels around work commitments means you can experience Paris in spring, Berlin in summer, Boston in fall and Kiev in winter. You can go attend Carnival, Italian food festivals or Holi in India. You also have more time to find cheap flights. In retirement, the world is your oyster.