The Peace of Subpar: Ten Things I Learned by Letting Go

Earn & Invest Episode 739: Ten Unexpected Joys of Retirement

In 2018, I did something that terrified me. I stepped back from clinical medicine.

For decades, my identity had been wrapped up in being a doctor. It was a path born out of a deeply personal place—the sudden loss of my father when I was just seven years old. For a long time, I thought that saving lives was my singular, grand purpose. But it also ran me into the ground. I was exhausted, burnt out, and constantly running on the fumes of time scarcity.

When I finally discovered the personal finance community and realized I had reached financial independence, I walked away from the traditional clinic grind. I moved into what I call semi-retirement: focusing on hospice care, writing, and hosting the podcast.

I thought I knew what retirement would look like. I thought it would be about big travel, grand projects, and meticulous schedules. But over the last few years, the reality of open time has taught me something completely different. It’s the small, quiet shifts that have brought the most profound joy.

On this week’s episode of Earn & Invest, I open up about the “10 Unexpected Joys of Retirement” that I never saw coming.

Here are a few things I’ve realized when you finally stop rushing:

1. The Magic of Inefficiency

We live in a world obsessed with optimization. We hack our schedules, maximize our productivity, and look at a blank calendar as a puzzle to be tightly packed. In retirement, I learned to forget optimization. It turns out, being “subpar” or wildly inefficient with a day is perfectly fine.

2. Time Abundance and “Dillydallying”

When I was practicing medicine full-time, every minute was accounted for. I lived in a state of chronic time scarcity. Now? I wake up early not because an alarm is screaming at me to rush to the hospital, but because the morning is peaceful. I have the luxury of time abundance. I can dillydally. I can take three hours to drink coffee and read, and the world won’t end.

3. Wearing Sweats at Noon

There is an incredible psychological freedom in dropping the “public face” of life. It’s the joy of canceling plans simply because you want to stay home, putting on sweatpants at midday, and recognizing that you have zero formal obligations to anyone else’s timeline.

4. Dropping the FOMO

I used to feel a constant pressure to say yes to every amazing opportunity, every trip, every event. Now, I’ve lost the fear of missing out. Retirement gives you the luxury to say an easy, guilt-free no, secure in the knowledge that there will always be other opportunities—and that staying exactly where you are is often the best choice.

5. Health as a Primary Project

Instead of trying to cram a 20-minute workout into a chaotic workday, I actually have the mental bandwidth to focus on nutrition, weightlifting, and cardio. The irony? At this stage of life, I feel fitter than I did in my thirties.

The “Die With Zero” Dilemma

We couldn’t wrap up the episode without hitting the community segment, and this week, a listener named Cobin pushed back hard on a recent post I wrote critiquing Bill Perkins’ Die With Zero philosophy.

Cobin raised a very fair point: Isn’t there a massive risk in working too long and missing out on experiences like international travel while you’re still young and healthy? He also argued that giving an inheritance to your kids when they are in their 20s or 30s is vastly more impactful than leaving it to them when they’re in their 50s.

I completely agree with Cobin on the timing of giving. In fact, I build early inheritance and charitable giving directly into my own budget. If you wait until you die to pass on wealth, you miss out on seeing the impact.

But where I differ from the Die With Zero ethos is the assumption that meaningful life experiences require a massive price tag.

During my years working in hospice, sitting at the bedsides of hundreds of patients looking back on their lives, no one ever told me they regretted not spending more money on a luxury vacation. They didn’t care about the five-star hotels. What they regretted were missing connections, unhealed relationships, and not spending time with the people they loved.

A $5,000 local road trip with your family, packed into a car with bad music and cheap snacks, can build the exact same deep, purposeful connection as a $30,000 first-class trip to Italy. Money is just the fuel; it isn’t the experience itself.

Retirement isn’t about spending down to the last penny, nor is it about hoarding wealth. It’s about having the space to discover what truly matters to you when the noise of the career fades away.

We dive much deeper into all ten joys—including how my relationship with making money has changed and the sheer freedom of accomplishing absolutely nothing—in the full episode.