A Preview of Early Retirement

I haven't posted anything for a while now. I apologize for that. I have a reason for that, though. I took the last week off from work. I only just returned to the rat race today.

So what does taking time off have to do with blog writing? No idea. I didn't say it was a legitimate reason.

Anyway, with this week off, I got a glimpse of what early retirement would be like. Frankly, it was great.

I woke up everyday at around the same time I normally wake up. Seems my body is conditioned to wake up at approximately the same time. However, there were days I didn't wake up until 10-15 minutes later than usual. It was a good feeling to wake up when my body was ready. You know how sometimes when you wake up you get the feeling that you don't want to get up. No such feelings this week.

I'd prepare myself some breakfast. After eating, it was using the computer to catch up on the general happenings. Sports and news were the big ones. A lot of research as well since wifey needs to practice for an upcoming road test.

After I caught myself up on what was going on, I played some Marvel Heroes. By the time 8am rolled around, I went to wake up wifey. She's not into the wake up early thing like I am. Even though we wake up at the same time on weekdays, for some reason she can't wake up naturally like I can.

After she washed up and ate her breakfast, we'd watch some TV. Nothing interesting on at 9-10am in the morning. If it was summer or fall, we'd probably be taking a walk outside or ride our bikes. We drove quite a bit so she could practice for her road test. We took advantage of the situation by visiting the malls for Christmas shopping and going to some grocery stores for groceries and supplies. By the way, grocery shopping on a weekday is great. Normally, we shop for groceries Saturday morning before the big rush at 11am or so. Despite arriving at the grocery store around 10:30am, it was very quiet.

Since we were at home more often, there was a lot more time spent on food preparation. We made stews, salads, stir fries, etc. I don't remember everything we ate. But we didn't need to use the microwave as much.

In the evening, wifey would call her mom back home or her cousin in Vancouver. When she was done, we'd watch some Christmas movie on the CBC or something. We even spent some time visiting my family.

Despite having nothing planned in particular, we seemed to have had a lot on our plate.

The best part I feel was the no driving. Without a daily commute to and from work, I didn't really need to do a lot of driving. Wifey did most of the driving as she needed the practice, so I just sat back and relaxed somewhat. I still kept an eye on the road and gave wifey some pointers if she did something that would be frowned upon by the MTO. Fortunately, this week the kids are off school. As such, the commute to work was extremely fast. It took me only 20 minutes. I imagine the commute home would be similar.

This past week made me realize how busy we still would be if we retired early. The best part was that our time was our own and we decided what to do with it.

All we need to do now is to keep our savings up to realize our plan.


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