{"id":281164,"date":"2025-11-13T21:21:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/281164\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T21:21:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:21:12","slug":"retiring-early-the-brutal-truth-is-that-you-will-lose-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/281164\/","title":{"rendered":"Retiring early? The brutal truth is that you will lose friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung with their son. The couple found that when they retired in their 30s, they lost connections with friends who were still focused on the career ladder.Maxwell Giffen\/Supplied<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one common concern among people pursing the FIRE (financial independence retire early) life. They worry that once they quit their jobs, they\u2019ll be forgotten as their co-workers and friends keep climbing the corporate ladder. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the brutal truth: You will lose friends after FIRE.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sad but true. I spoke to Brad Barrett, the founder of ChooseFI<\/a>, the biggest FIRE podcast and community in the world, and discovered that he had the same experience. <\/p>\n

After quitting his job as an accountant, none of his colleagues pursued FIRE and he lost touch with most of them. But it\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing. <\/p>\n

Brad thinks that if it\u2019s that hard to maintain a connection after retiring it\u2019s because they were \u201cproximity\u201d friends, brought together only by work. After that commonality is gone, you don\u2019t bother staying in contact since you have little else in common. <\/p>\n

Does this mean you\u2019ll be sad and alone while everyone else is happily going to work and socializing with their co-workers?<\/p>\n

The answer depends on how much effort you\u2019re willing to put into making new friends. According to a survey by Ipsos<\/a>, 54 per cent of Canadians say that socializing isn\u2019t always a priority and 53 per cent are uncomfortable in situations where there are a lot of people they don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re anxious about making new friends after the quitting the 9-to-5, here are some tips.<\/p>\n

A summer camp for grown-ups trying to escape the work force forever with FIRE<\/a><\/p>\n

Join a local group with similar interests<\/p>\n

For those interested in pursuing financial independence, find a local ChooseFI group<\/a> near you. The one in Vancouver, for example, is a tight-knit group that meets biweekly and the one in Toronto has over 1000 members and continues to grow.<\/p>\n

Brad thinks taking small steps is the way to go. After all, it\u2019s better to have a small group of close friends than a superficial large group of friends for the ego-boost. <\/p>\n

Brad told us that he started ChooseFI because he wanted to create islands of like-minded people who are \u201caligned on money\u201d and could meet to \u201ccut through all the nonsense conversations.\u201d Having been to a number of FIRE local meetups, we\u2019ve found that this is true. It goes beyond surface level conversations and delves into people\u2019s dreams, hopes, and the \u201cwhy\u201d behind their pursuit of financial independence. <\/p>\n

Find a problem you want to punch<\/p>\n

When you retire, your skills don\u2019t automatically dry up. Write down a list of things that annoy you, and chances are other people are annoyed by them also. Then, try to solve those problems for other people and their gratitude will naturally make them want to be friends with you.<\/p>\n

For example, because we were annoyed that rising housing prices were driving up FOMO and everyone was freaking out about \u201cnot owning a home,\u201d we started a free investment workshop showing people how to invest in low-cost index ETFs. Since its inception, it has created a surprising number of millionaires, a huge fanbase, and a close-knit friend group. Solving problems for the world with your gifts is exceptionally rewarding and helps you make friends. <\/p>\n

Get adopted into an existing friend group<\/p>\n

You know that person that just knows everyone? Let them connect you to their friends so you can be adopted into their group. This is how you convert acquaintances to friends. <\/p>\n

After losing most of our work friends, we\u2019ve not only been able to build a new community in our retirement, but much stronger friendships based on much more than status reports and work trauma-bonding. <\/p>\n

We used early retirement as an opportunity to create our tribe \u2013 based on connection instead of convenience. These new friends are people who showed up when my father-in-law was dying from cancer, and when we were struggling on two hours of sleep after the birth of our child. <\/p>\n

So, while it can be sad to lose friends after reaching financial Independence, it could also be the catalyst for creating a new tribe, and that might be exactly what you need.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung retired in their 30s and are authors of the bestselling book Quit Like a Millionaire<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung with their son. The couple found that when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,45,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-281164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}