I’m Retired and Regret Making These 3 Frugal Moves Years Ago

Retirement means different things to different people.

For some, it means working a traditional career path until they’re in their mid-60s — right around the time when they can start collecting their full Social Security benefits. For others, it means following the FIRE movement — that is, Financial Independence, Retire Early — which entails saving and investing aggressively while living as frugally as possible to get out of the workforce early.

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For others still, the path to retirement is completely different — and doesn’t always go as expected. In some cases, it really is a case of the best-laid plans sometimes not working out as intended. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes people who retire end up regretting decisions they made earlier in their lives to get them to where they are now.

GOBankingRates spoke with Aaliyah Kissick, someone who retired early but has since jumped back into the workforce as an entrepreneur, about her path to retirement and the major frugal moves she made that she regrets now. Here’s what she shared.

Also see the expenses another early retiree failed to prepare for.

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An Unexpected Path to Early Retirement

“I retired at 23 due to injuries I sustained in the military,” said Kissick, a financial literacy advocate as CEO of The Financial Literacy Diaries and director of public relations for The Financial Literacy Foundation .

While she didn’t exactly plan for this to happen, she did have a plan to enable her to retire early. She broke this plan down into the following parts:

• She ran projected budgets to prepare for any cash flow changes ahead of time based on her retirement goals. This helped her figure out how much she needed. At the same time, having these projections and keeping focused financially has helped prevent any major lifestyle changes that could throw her plan into flux.
• She planned for additional income. “I chose to pursue a different career in the event of an emergency early in my retirement,” she said. “I always have a degree to fall back on.”
• She had a plan for how to fill her time. “It is liberating to no longer need to work to survive,” she said, “but it may cause an identity crisis.” It might not be perfect, but having a plan goes a long way in preventing major uncertainties in life.

Among other things, Kissick currently holds a bachelor’s degree in consumer economics. She also works adjacent to financial services, having completed the education component of the certified financial planner career path. She’s also currently pursuing a master’s degree in management.

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Frugal Moves She Regrets

Although Kissick has set herself up well for success, she did share a few of her top regrets regarding frugal moves she has made along the way:

1. Cutting coupons rather than spending money on leisure
2. Staying in rather than going out and having fun
3. Not exploring new hobbies when she had more peers who had the time to explore them with her

“I lived way too frugally when I was going through college,” Kissick said. “While Gen Z is typically associated with luxury purchases and overspending, I spent more time trying to cut coupons and save $1 on a meal that I could have spent working or in leisure. I rarely went out and did not let myself explore hobbies.”

As for why she regrets these decisions now, here’s what she said:

“Despite the fact that I am retired at such a young age, I regret being so frugal in college because now that I am in a position to develop some hobbies and enjoy myself, I struggle to find people my age who have the same amount of free time. Everyone is working, even my husband. … I wish that I would have let myself have more fun in college. That’s the age when you are supposed to have fun.”

Not Letting Past Regrets Stop Her

Kissick said she also wishes her life had more flexibility. Despite this, and despite the fact that she has some regrets about her early adulthood, she hasn’t let that stop her.

Her ability to retire so early combined with these regrets contributed to Kissick’s decision to pursue her master’s degree and a secondary career in personal finance. Now, despite having technically retired, she can continue to build her life the way she wants to — whether through her own entrepreneurial pursuits or otherwise.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com : I’m Retired and Regret Making These 3 Frugal Moves Years Ago