Retiring Early - Non-Financial Regret?
tl;dr - Do many people retire early and regret it, for non-financial reasons? I seem to see 3 types of early retirement satisfaction:
1 - Wish I'd retired sooner
2 - My parent/in-law retired, sat around watching TV with no interests and wasted away
3 - I retired too early and I now fear for my financial security
I'm trying to understand if there's a hidden 4th category with much volume - I retired early, and despite having hobbies, travelling the world etc., I'm still bored and wish I hadn't retired so young.
I'm on the path to retiring early, not as early as some. I'm 43, PPOR almost paid off, no other investments outside of super yet, but plan to point the firehose currently smashing off our mortgage into ETFs once the mortgage is cleared. Running the numbers through a range of FIRE calculators, AI generated plans, and comparing against a proper plan put together by a Financial Planner (AI wins BTW), I could retire mid-50s. Wife will be early 50s. That will give us 130 - 140k annually for the first 10 or 15 years, before winding back to 90k annually in our 70s and 75k in our 80s. The plan is to do a LOT of travel in those first 10 or 15 years. 3- 6 months per year.
We'll sacrifice a little to achieve this. I don't think we'll sacrifice many experiences. For example, we still plan to take the kids back to Europe once or twice, and to Africa, but we wouldn't be going overseas every year. Having recently returned from 18 months global travel though, 3 week overseas holidays to fit in with school leave is not that appealing anyway. We were considering moving house, but we don't really need to, so better to save on that fat VIC stamp duty for the one downsize we'll need when we retire. And I might still be driving cars that are old enough to legally drink. So a little sacrifice, but not a lot.
What I'm wondering though, is the sacrifice worth it to retire 5 years earlier? And I know that's a personal question with a lot of nuance, so what I'm really asking is, do many people retire mid 50s, financially independent, able to travel, and regret it? Do you struggle to fill your days, or is retired life really as grand as I imagine it will be?