Am I Still Retired? It’s Complicated
Well, that snuck up on me. Can you believe it’s been more than a year since I put in my notice at my job? After years of saving and investing towards my FIRE number and then months of weighing whether or not our family should make the jump a little ahead of schedule, I actually did it! At the time, I wondered if I’d end up missing the structure of a schedule based around a job. And on a deeper level, I wasn’t sure how my own concept of my identity would shift when I was no longer bringing in a six figure income to support my family.
Mr. Sense encouraged me to take at least six months without committing to any new ventures outside of enjoying time with my family and my favorite hobbies. (Okay, he insisted I not consider any jobs and just relax for a while.) I went on a couple awesome vacations, including a trip to Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia with my mom and two sisters. I ran two marathons. I spent hours just hanging out with my two kids, now 20 and 4, and got to know both of them in ways that I never could have while working full time. And I learned something surprising about myself, too– I’m not interested in working a regular job, ever again!
When I left my career as the finance director at a car dealership, Mr. Sense and I had not hit our FIRE number according to the 4% rule; that is, 25x our predicted annual spending. But we had saved up several years worth of expenses and our plan was to figure out some version of “barista fire,” where we’d try to earn $30-$40k annually between the two of us and cover the rest of our expenses from our savings and brokerage accounts. We talked about one or both of us working part time, maybe taking turns working on projects for a few years, or even starting a business.
Mr. Sense was particularly intrigued by the idea of opening a food truck. He’s always been an excellent family chef. When I left my job, he took a part time position as a line cook at a local restaurant to gain some experience and see if he liked it enough to consider actually owning a food business.
In December, Mr. Sense signed up to be a vendor at the holiday farmer’s market. This was a short term test project, just three Saturday mornings. He wanted to sell bagels, one of his specialties. Our kitchen at home isn’t set up to produce nearly the volume we’d need for the farmer’s market, so he worked out a deal with a restaurant near the farmer’s market to rent their commercial kitchen on Thursdays and early Saturday mornings (bagel prep starts a couple days ahead of the actual baking). Our daughter was home from college for winter break for most of December and the three of us spent many hours figuring out how to produce more bagels than Mr. Sense had ever made before.
The farmer’s market showed us that the demand was much higher than we had anticipated. We sold out early each week, even after roughly doubling our production after the first week. Mr. Sense ran himself ragged making it work– he would come home from his line cook job on Friday night around midnight and be out the door a couple hours later to start bagel production, baking and then working at the booth until we sold out of bagels around lunch time on Saturday, and then head back to his “real job” until midnight again. But it was a temporary thing, and our whole family sleepily pulled together to make it work.
At the farmer’s market, we received constant encouragement to open our own place. Mr. Sense had a lot of ideas about how we could be more productive with a kitchen designed particularly for bagels. When a spot popped up for rent close to our house and well in our price range, we did a lot of number crunching and praying, and then we jumped on it.
We then spent a couple months outfitting our new space. The price was right, but the condition of the building was… questionable. No, actually it was unquestionably pretty grimy and totally stripped out. We were able to purchase all the major appliances used, easily saving more than 50% off the price of new commercial refrigerators and ovens. Our friends stepped up and helped in ways we couldn’t have imagined. One friend spent countless hours working with me to build the front counter using some beautiful wood he’d been saving for years for the perfect project. Another friend with appliance repair experience helped deconstruct and then put back together our commercial oven when it wouldn’t fit through the doorway into our kitchen (note: measure carefully before purchasing!). And another showed up just in the nick of time on multiple occasions to handle handyman disasters that popped up at the worst moments.
After about two and half months of hard work and $30k of start up costs, we opened the doors to the new bagel shop. Customers poured in. Our opening day saw a line all the way down the block. Family members and friends who came to support us were conscripted into dish duty and other jobs on the fly. We are so, so grateful to have such a wonderful support system that rallied around us during those first few weeks. My parents in particular stepped up; they volunteered to come over super early in the mornings to be in the house with our younger kiddo and then take her to school or babysitting for indefinite time slots and frequently invited us to meals or dropped food at our house when it was clear we were not going to be cooking at home. We couldn’t have done it without the help of our village, and we didn’t realize how much we would need it until the shop opened. The first few weeks were a blur, and not just because Mr. Sense and I were operating on a lot less sleep than usual.
But fortunately, we were soon able to hire a couple employees and find our rhythm. These days, Mr. Sense works a pretty consistent 40-45 hours at the shop and I basically just handle some accounting, management, and errands, landing closer to five hours a week. It’s a big improvement from the crazy hours we were both putting in for the first month or so, in addition to trying to be good parents. (The house cleaning and yard maintenance took a major hit for a while there, and our restaurant budget completely imploded, temporarily.) We are currently trying to hire more help, with our eventual goal to get Mr. Sense down to part time hours. Financially, the business is more successful than we projected going in, so we are excited to have the opportunity to hire more help and hopefully put together a team that is capable of running the shop without us when we need breaks.
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind. We have been incredibly blessed every step of the way, and we’re especially overwhelmed by the support of our community and how our friends and family showed up for us as we jumped into a totally new venture. It’s been cool to see how the pieces came together better than we could have ever planned. Mr. Sense credits his part time line cook job with teaching him everything he knows about how to run a restaurant kitchen, handle busy rushes, order new equipment that makes sense and put it in the right place. A perfect location, easily walkable from our house and priced well, opened up right when we were ready to make our move. Our kids have moved seamlessly into family business life– Kid Sense is working full time at the shop during her summer break from college, and Little Sense mows down bagels like Ms. Pacman eating the dots. We’ve dubbed her our Quality Control Manager.
Perhaps the biggest lesson I can take away at this stage is the same one I’m still learning from previous job changes and life changes: it’s easy to worry about what might happen, but if you did reasonable preparation and have a good support system, big shifts are totally worth it. I’m thankful that Mr. Sense encouraged me to leave my previous career when it was clear that I was finding it more frustrating than fulfilling. Having a solid financial foundation and a husband I could count on meant that I could confidently walk away from a higher income even though the future was unknown.
Small business ownership isn’t always easy, and my early retirement still involves very early mornings and a surprising amount of cleaning. But the adventure continues, and I’m thrilled with how it’s going so far.
