There are seven reasons more people are retiring early today than ever before. I'm going to walk

through all of them right now and give you my insight as a financial advisor and host of the

early retirement podcast. So let's have some fun. Number one is the COVID-19 impact. So the

pandemic accelerated early retirements significantly. 2.6 million more people,

according to Federal Reserve data, retired during the first 18 months of the pandemic than would

have been expected from pre-pandemic trends. I am seeing this as a financial advisor.

So many more people are prioritizing their health going, hey, I don't know if sitting at home all day is best for me. I now, and I have a famous story that I've told before, which many of you know, a woman who reached out and said she was really upset that she had three million dollars. And I said, look, I don't want to be mean here, but I just don't hear that every day. And that kind of sounds bad because there's a lot of people who would love to have three

million.

So why are you upset? And she was upset because she didn't need three million. She thought she just needed more and more. And she kept saying, I'm going to work one more year, one more bonus, one more project. And that happened for a few years. and she had really bad sciatica, which I'm not too familiar with,

but she was telling me it is excruciatingly annoying, not painful, but excruciatingly annoying,

which I think also is painful because she told me about that later. But she wants to hike in

retirement is the point of the story. And now she's like, I can do it, but it's just, it's going to

be a lot more difficult.

And if I would have retired earlier when I was in better health, I would have, I think,

been a totally fine financial spot. So she was just beating herself up because she's like,

I think I have too much, which I don't hear that every day. But the point of the story is,

I don't need any of you and my hope is that you're

not sitting at work I'm sitting recording this right now but that you're not sitting

at work just going okay it's me right now and I know that my spouse wants to travel

in retirement but I'm the one that needs to work and bring in more money so I'm

happy to you know not prioritize my health just so that one day as a family, we can retire and do everything and want to do and more. And if that means I need to work 10 more years and not focus on my health, and that's fine, don't do that. Yes, make sure financially you're in a good spot before you retire. But can you practice your health? And the way I

explain it to my clients is, can you train for your early retirement? It's a fun way of thinking about it. Yeah, I'm going to train for when I hike and travel. And it might not seem like a big deal, but like you might be in an RV for a long time if you're going around the country. Well, it makes sense to actually go, hey, I'm going to like train.

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