I did not want to retire before my kids left home and my last kid is leaving home for college next month. I can now retire at any point but probably still won’t for at least 7-8 more years. My wife is 4 years younger than I am, she’s still in her 40’s, and she doesn’t want to retire yet so I’m happy to keep doing what I’m doing for a few more years until she is ready to be done.

Fortunately if I do want time off I can take it so that might help in me not being ready to retire yet. If I couldn’t take time off and do the things I want to do then I might feel differently. But I can say having the house I have didn’t do much, if anything, to keep me from retiring earlier. And what I am in it for is ridiculously cheap compared to what things cost now and honestly was pretty cheap then because of what I do and was able to capitalize on when I built it.

Most of that was luck but it was also something I’d prepared for.