Originally Posted by Unregistered

Back in 2007, I decided to retire when I was less than 50 years old. My wife doesn't work. Net worth was about $5m then. But it was extremely boring as all my friends were still working and the children were still in secondary school, which basically required me to be in Singapore rather than wander round the world. At that point, I found that I was just able to live on my investment and property income without a decline in net worth so I would consider myself financially independent, with a reasonable lifestyle.

After a year of a rather monotonous life, I went back to work and felt extremely happy to do so. There I was making decisions, running a department and interacting with younger people. It felt good. Fast forward to July 2013 and I'm now worth $15m and my net worth is generally still rising despite the fact that I spend about $500K a year (part of this expenditure is temporary due to kids' overseas education) and not considering the $1m hit from the recent stock market downturn. My net worth rose from a combination of my high earnings, rise in property values and stocks but I don't think I would have been so aggressive in my investments if I had remained retired.

So, you're absolutely right that it's probably wrong to retire early and give up the best earning years of your life as I would rather be in this position of having $15m and where I can freely spend $500K per year without thought, rather than have $5m and be a little careful (at least relative to my normal spending). Now that I'm past 50, I'm pondering if I should continue pushing to expand $15m to $50m so that I can try to buy a GCB or retire again. Difficult decision but I'm leaning to retire again since a GCB will probably be quite troublesome to maintain and the kids are finally gone, which gives me the freedom to go traveling.