De slutade jobba vid 35: ”Livet blev meningslöst”

Retiring before age 65 is a dream for many workers. For Taylor Kovar, turning dream into reality made him anxious and depressed.

Having worked since he was a teenager, Kovar decided when he got married at age 23 that he wanted to say goodbye to working when he turned 35. The Lufkin, Texas, resident saved and invested aggressively—some years setting aside as much as 50% of his family’s income—and sold a healthcare business to retire in late 2021 at age 35. The next three years were spent traveling to all 50 states with his family, and trying hobbies like golf and fishing, only to learn how unsatisfying he found those pastimes to be.

The mental shift that came with retirement was even more difficult. Kovar remembers taking his children to a holiday event and checking his phone just to realize over and over again he no longer received messages from work.

“When you have a job, you have this sense of importance and people depend on you and you depend on others,” he says. “When you go from checking emails several times a day or all day and managing groups all day everyday—and all of a sudden that stops—that’s a very hard transition.”

Kovar isn’t alone. Studies show that some people who hang up their briefcases end up suffering from depression and loneliness. It’s a problem that may need more of a spotlight from the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement, which involves aggressive saving and investing to say goodbye to your day job early. The personal finance phenomenon started in the early 2000s and gained traction in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

Sam Dogen, based in San Francisco, started blogging as “Financial Samurai” in 2009, and was one of the pioneering voices of the FIRE movement. But his own experience illustrates that walking away from work forever isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Dogen left his six-figure job in 2012 at age 34 with a severance package, only to realize that going from working 60 hours a week to having little to do but play golf and tennis was unfulfilling. Even having his wife join him in early retirement in 2015 at age 35 and traveling to more than 60 countries couldn’t keep him from missing the social interaction that came with work, like holiday parties and drinks with clients after work.

“Too much work is not good, and too much leisure is not good,” Dogen says. “Not having purpose makes life kind of pointless.”

So he dove head first into writing, providing insight for other people navigating the FIRE movement until he was approached to write a book about how to achieve financial freedom (he’s since written a second and is currently working on a third). He’s also had two children, which he says made his life meaningful.

“I feel like I’ve been able to hack life by doing both things full-time without guilt: being a full-time dad and a full-time writer,” he says. “I now measure fulfillment by something much simpler: being able to provide for my wife and two children while spending as much time with them as possible, given I don’t have a traditional job.”

For more than 22 years, Peter Sanchez Guarda worked as an attorney for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. But when a buyout at the end of 2024 allowed him to retire at 53 with both his pension and health insurance, he jumped at the opportunity. He spent his free time globe-trotting, fixing things around the house and starting a YouTube channel where he explains the ins and outs of financial law. But Sanchez Guarda describes himself as a type A person, and said that you can’t just switch that personality off once you stop working.

“You can’t go from being type A to sitting on the beach everyday with a beer in your hand,” says the Washington, D.C., resident. “In retirement, I’m still the same type of person.”

Sanchez Guarda has picked up some consulting work, but with a baby on the way and a constant need to stay busy, it isn’t doing the trick. While his investment portfolio is large enough that he doesn’t have to work, he is interviewing for full-time jobs with banks, law firms, and fintech and insurance companies.

In the post-Covid era, work—and the flexibility comes with it for many people—looks a lot different. Dogen, wrote in a blog post late last year that FIRE is becoming “obsolete” because there are so many better ways to earn a living these days. After his three years of early retirement, Kovar reached out to other early retirees who told him: You don’t actually stop working when you have the freedom to retire early, you just do it on your own terms.

In 2024, Kovar returned to more regular work at the advisory firm he still owned but had turned over to another advisor to run. He focuses on helping business owners scale up their companies without burning out—a role he’s always enjoyed.

“That blend of advisor and consultant work is something I genuinely enjoy, and it’s been energizing to be more involved again in a way that feels purposeful and balanced,” he says.