Dan Caplinger

When I was a younger person early in my career, I'd kind of set age 50 as my target for early retirement.

That was at a stage in my career that I wasn't as happy with my work as I have been at the Motley Fool.

And so being at the Fool kind of took away the urgency for, okay, I got to get out of this rat race as quickly as possible.

At the same time, it just so happened that my 50th birthday came right in the middle of COVID.

And so I had been thinking about it.

I had about $2.5 million in retirement at that point.

And my numbers, I'm not that profligate a person.

My budget, I think I could have made that work.

The early healthcare before Medicare is always the big factor there.

But at that point,

Like all the things I wanted to do, I wouldn't have been able to do.

And so retiring in the middle of COVID just made no sense whatsoever.

Wouldn't have been able to travel.

Wouldn't have been able to do the things that I really wanted to do.

You know, it was just as easy to stay inside and do the same work that I'd been doing for 15 years at that point.

Fast forward to now, and I mean, I've really enjoyed the past five years of work.

And so, yeah, it's been a great market in that period.

I've roughly, probably more than doubled my retirement savings in that period.

And so from a financial standpoint, like I think any financial planner would say that I'm totally set and that I shouldn't worry, but...

Nevertheless, just as I experienced earlier in my career when I was a financial planner, I was working with people who were at the age that I am now, you never feel like you have enough.