For probably a decade before I retired Amy and I r…

Transcript

I thought I'd tell the story about how I was completely caught off guard with what I would want to do in retirement. About maybe six years before retirement, Amy and I started renovating houses as sort of prep for my retirement job, so to speak. The idea was that I was going to retire, you know, in 10 years or something, and I would reno houses as sort of like my retirement side hustle slash thing to keep me busy. And so we did, I don't know, a handful of houses in those years leading up to retirement, just so that I would be sort of, I'd know how the permitting process worked. I'd know how to work with contractors, just all the things that go into renovating a house. And I did that, and I did learn that. She and I both learned a ton in the process. But then once I retired, I kind of lost interest in it. I was like, man, this is a lot of headache. There's a lot of bureaucracy in the permitting and stuff, and there's a lot of hassle dealing with the contractors. It's almost like having employees again in some ways. I was like, I don't think I actually like this. And it took me about a year to actually admit to myself that I didn't like it, because by then, reno-ing houses had sort of become part of my identity. It was like, who am I? I'm a guy who likes to reno old houses. I'm a guy who likes to reno old houses. I'm a guy who likes to reno old houses. So I had to face that, basically. I had to say, this thing that I thought I was, I'm actually not. And I only share this story because we really have no idea, and I've said this in other posts, but we have no idea what we're going to want to do once we retire. And I'm doing a video series right now on retirement prep, like things you can do to prepare for retirement. And this doesn't really prepare you other than to make you aware that everything you think you know about your retirement will probably be wrong.