2023: What No One Tells You About Early Retirement

**Farnoosh Torabi** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:36)
You're listening to So Money with award-winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi.
Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons? Sorry, you're in the wrong place.

**Bernadette Joy** (1:03)
Well, as of today, our current net worth sits around 2.2 million, which, side note, I want to go back and listen to our previous episode, and I wonder where my net worth was there and just how much I underestimated the power of compounding in a short amount of time. I feel like it took me almost three decades to build the first million and then took a much shorter time to build the next million just from investing. And of the 2.2 million, my husband and I did decide over time, we downsized from our single family home in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we decided to move to Las Vegas, Nevada, where I'm sitting right now, which now we live in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo where you see me.
We are very minimalist. If you come to our place, people ask us if we've moved in yet. We're like, no, this is it. This is all our stuff.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (1:53)
Has the moving shock arrived?

**Bernadette Joy** (1:54)
No.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (1:56)
Welcome to So Money, everyone. I'm Farnoosh Torabi. Question, what does retirement really look like when it happens at 40? My guest today, Bernadette Joy, thought she had the answer. After paying off $300,000 in debt, building a multimillion dollar net worth, and stepping away from her career, she expected early retirement to feel like freedom. Instead, she found herself navigating unexpected questions about identity, purpose, health care, community, and even how to emotionally adjust from years of saving money to finally spending it. In this candid conversation, Bernadette shares what has surprised her most during her first year of retirement, why she's rethinking what retirement actually means, how a global pop phenomenon, BTS, unexpectedly helped her rediscover Joy, and what all of us, whether we're 10 years from retirement or nowhere near it, can learn about designing a life that's rich in more than just money.
Bernadette Joy, welcome back to So Money. It's so good to see you.

**Bernadette Joy** (3:00)
So good to see you again. Thanks for having me.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (3:02)
Yes, you are in retirement?

**Bernadette Joy** (3:06)
I am. How is that possible?

**Farnoosh Torabi** (3:09)
With the beautiful skin that you have, you don't look a day over 41

**Bernadette Joy** (3:15)
Well, I am 41, so I guess it's good. And it's actually been a year since I decided to retire. And then my husband left his job in December. So we've been hanging out since then. And it's been really weird. I don't know how else to describe it.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (3:33)
Well, let's get into the weird. I mean, is it weird because it's not what you planned?
Is it weird because just weird things are happening? Like, tell me the specific thing. Yeah.

**Bernadette Joy** (3:49)
Yes. So weird in that it's definitely not going as we planned, in the sense that I, you know this, as someone in the kind of personal finance space, we plan and we plan and we plan. And then you expect things to go how you want them to. And then they just don't. So a lot of things have happened, good and bad, I would say, in retirement. We can talk a little bit more about those things. But also, I think because there was a lot of unexpected emotions and feelings that came up with detaching myself from productivity and detaching my identity from kind of being like the go-go-go-to person. And I'm realizing that a lot of the things that people, I think, preconceive about what retirement would be, and I had some preconceived notions myself, like they just didn't turn out like I thought.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (4:41)
Yeah.
Well, we're going to get into some of the things that have shocked you about retirement and how it's not, quote-unquote, going as planned as you wrote for CNBC recently. But let's get a little bit, let's backtrack a little bit. And we'll first remind people that you've been on the show before talking about how you paid off $300,000 in debt, you became a millionaire, and now you've left your, well, then you left your corporate job behind, you became sort of a personal finance educator and expert. What was your reasoning for wanting to quote-unquote retire at 40? I mean, that's hyper early.