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I’ve heard it more than a few times. “There’s no point in retiring before our kids are out of the house.”
I can see where those parents are coming from. Most families with teens are tethered to numerous schedules and calendars with school, extracurriculars, jobs, and more.
I can also offer a counterpoint. I retired from my physician career when our boys were 8 and 10 and I mostly retired from the blogging business two years ago when they were 12 and 14. Now, we’ve got two teenagers and while I am still writing on occasion, I work far less than I did way back when I was a teenager. And I’m loving it.
Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of opting for FIRE with teenagers at home.
Availability
Pro: Work will never interfere with your ability to attend another one of your kids’ games, recitals, or presentations. You can be the chaperone for field trips or a volunteer coach.
Most physicians and others with demanding careers regularly work long and odd hours, and best-laid plans to make it to a 7 p.m. kickoff or showtime can easily be derailed when things at work don’t go as planned. Opting for an early retirement means you can always prioritize your teenagers’ activities
Con: You can’t be everywhere all at once.
Just because you can be at every event ever, doesn’t mean that you will be. You may not even want to be. Remember the joy of saying no to everything the nights you were on call? I’m half-joking, but trying to be there for everything when you’ve got multiple kids in many sports and other activities can be a full-time job.
Undoubtedly, there will be conflicts. Your two kids will have games in different towns on the same night. Dad will take one kid to the hockey tournament while Mom takes the other to a dance competition or vice versa. The 9th grade band concert will compete with Monday Night Football (and lose). You get the idea.
My point is that you will still miss stuff, and that’s OK. I have a volunteer job at a ski hill, and I often spend Saturdays on skis instead of on the wooden bleachers in an overheated and overcrowded pool where other moms and dads are screaming for their kids to swim faster. While I could drive four hours to spend six hours at a swim meet to see my kid swim for a grand total of one minute and forty-seven seconds, I have to get my volunteer hours in to earn my ski pass, and that’s just how life goes sometimes.
Pro: Every day they have off (from school), you have off.
This is really great, actually. Here in Michigan, schools are required to schedule 180 school days, and up to 6 days can be called off due to snow and cold without having to make them up. Most years, that means the kids are in school 174 days and have 191 days off.
When you’re retired and have 365 days off, you and your kids have those 191 days off. Yes, the various activities mentioned above will take some of those days away. You may have other obligations, and older teens may very well have jobs, but there is the potential to have plenty of family time for travel and fun.
Being retired means never having to hope you can get spring break off for once. When your kids’ have a 4-day weekend free, so do you. I used to be jealous of teachers getting the whole summer off to enjoy with their kids. Not anymore; I’ve got the whole summer off, along with fall, winter, and spring.
If you choose to homeschool, you’ll open up a whole world of possibilities, and we did that for four years when our boys were younger. With teenagers, we wanted them to have the option of a traditional high school experience, and that has been their preference.
Con: You’re not the only one with those days off.
Assuming you’re tied to a school schedule, your best times to travel will be similar to everyone else’s. Can you guess when the busiest days are at the ski resort? It’s Christmas break, MLK weekend, and Presidents Day weekend. The same is true at mountains across America, and you’ll find the same overcrowding at theme parks and other vacation destinations. Spring break weeks will be busy, too, even if there is some staggering of weeks off by different school districts.
I loved traveling in the off-season, but now our adventures are limited to prime times. This means higher prices for airfare and lodging, larger crowds, and a longing for the days when we could travel for months on end.
Also read: Is Traveling With Young Kids Worth It?
Ephemerality
Pro: There’s a known timeframe. Before long, my wife and I will have that freedom again to slow-travel.
Five years from now, we expect to be empty-nesters. I have mixed feelings about that fact, and it’s hard to imagine life without our boys as part of our daily lives, but I know that day is coming.
I envisioned beginning this section with “this too shall pass” or something about a light at the end of the tunnel, but these days are anything but dark. I often remind myself to make the most of this time as a family, because before we know it, we won’t all be together on a daily basis.
That brings up another benefit of FIRE with teenagers that I didn’t have in my outline. You won’t spend your final years with them at home stressing over work matters or vying for a promotion. You can be fully present. Instead of coming home to an empty house with Mom and/or Dad commuting, our kids usually come home to me getting dinner on the table; Mom has already made the salads. They’re spoiled. We know. But family dinnertime is important.
Tim Urban of Wait But Why fame speculates that 93% of our in-person time with our kids are used up in their first 18 years, at least in his experience. Use that time wisely. It only lasts so long.
Con: What’s that bent wooden slat they toss around in Australia? Oh, yeah. A boomerang.
Some kids fail to launch. Others launch successfully, but come home for a variety of reasons, like the rent is too damn high. Others, like those with special needs, may be with you indefinitely, as planned.
Again, these circumstances may not be negatives, but when it’s unexpected, your vision of retired life might look a lot different than the reality.
Also Con: An empty nest may be less joyful than a full household. Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.
Driveability
Pro: They can drive!
Our older son got his driver’s license the day he turned 16, and our 14-year old will be in driver’s training this summer. I hear rumors of teens not wanting to get their driver’s license; don’t let that be your teen!
You don’t want to retire from a lucrative career only to become an unpaid chauffer until the day your children leave home. It’s uncanny how much time was freed up for my wife and I when our son started driving himself and his brother to and from school and after-school activities.
The increased responsibility and freedom also opens additional doors for the teenage driver, as long as they know how to be responsible.
Con: They can drive! And it’s scary as hell!
Even though our son had tons of driving time with my wife and me, the first time he drove off with his brother leaving the two of us at home, it was both surreal and frightening. There go the two most important things in our lives. I still follow their progress via location sharing on Google Maps pretty much any time he goes anywhere.
Also Con: Your insurance rates double. It’s not just the insurance on your vehicles. Our umbrella insurance rate also doubled.
That reminds me of another con to life with teenagers, and that’s the fact that the cost of pretty much everything in your life goes up when your little ones become big ones. If your FIRE plan was based upon a budget with elementary-school-aged kids, expect to spend more when they grow up.
Say goodbye to the kids’ menu; they’ll be ordering full entrees. Your grocery bills will likewise increase dramatically. You can no longer (honestly) take advantage of free admission for kids under 13 at any museum or attraction, and you may not get away with them sharing a bed while traveling when they’re teenagers.
The flip side of that coin is that, as detailed above, they won’t be (or shouldn’t be) your economic liabilities forever and ever. Your expenses will rise when they become teenagers, but they ought to drop substantially in their twenties, at least after they complete any higher education (that I hope you’ve also planned for with well-funded 529 plans).
Capability
Pro: They become more capable helpers.
I saw that eye roll, you parents of teenagers, but looking back, it’s incredible how many skills and abilities kids gain over the years.
As babies, they can cry and coo and steal your heart, but they can’t do much for themselves. They’ve got scant muscle strength, and their personal hygiene is deplorable. Eventually, they become kids and learn to forage the cupboards and feed themselves, bathe themselves, and even wipe their own butts. In the teenage years, they can learn how to clean a bathroom and all sorts of other life skills; they begin to resemble adults, and their physical strength may equal or surpass yours!
Retiring when you’ve got teenagers at home means you’ve got someone with the potential to help with those big projects you’ve been saving for your retirement years. Someone who can do the literal heavy lifting. Someone who can shovel dirt and snow, maybe reach the top shelf, unscrew the dang pickle jar, help load up the family van, and map out the route before driving the first leg.
Now, just because they can doesn’t mean that they will. And just because they’re capable doesn’t mean they’re dependable. Nature, nurture, and surging hormones will all play a role in how your teenagers respond to you, but their abilities can certainly come in handy, especially as compared to those crybaby infants who couldn’t open a pickle jar with a pre-loosened plastic lid.
Con: None. None at all.
Our Reality
“Oh, those are such good years” -Everyone, regardless of how young your kids are
When our boys were 1 and 3, people would kindly say “Oh, those are such good years.” They said the same when they were 3 and 5. Ditto for 6 and 8 and everything in between.
When other parents tell me they have kids in those age ranges, I remember how challenging the kids could be at those ages and offer up some empathy. “A lot of work, isn’t it?” Or “and yet, you seem to maintain some semblance of sanity!”
Your mileage may vary, but to date, I’ve found the teenage years to be the most enjoyable years of parenting, and I’m happy to be doing it without the constraints of a rigorous employment schedule.
I can be there for a 9 am scheduling meeting with the school counselor. Work never interferes with games, meets, matches, or performances.
Their vacation time is my vacation time. It’s more limited than it once was, but we take full advantage. Over Christmas break, after celebrating the holiday with local family, we visited my family in Minnesota, skiing 5 days on the way there and back. Over MLK break, we took an extra day off from school and squeezed in a trip to Disney World (with a half-day of skiing on the way to the airport). Spring break is coming up; we’ll ski for 8 days on our Indy Pass.
We take advantage of our summers together. Last year, we bookended summer vacation with two weeks in Peru on the front end, finishing with two weeks in Alaska. In between, we trained up for and ran a half marathon in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula together.
Our boys are becoming young adults. We’re so proud of who they are and excited to see who they’ll become.
I fully recognize that the freedom we have is one that most cannot afford, but we’re eternally grateful for the circumstances that led us here and the choices we’ve made. I have zero regrets over opting for FIRE with teenagers. It’s been well worth the bother.
