I'm young and nowhere close to retiring, but I already have friends who have bought into the whole retire early train. Except, it's kinda like the recent SNL sk

I'm young and nowhere close to retiring, but I already have friends who have bought into the whole retire early train. Except, it's kinda like the recent SNL skit Romano Tours^[1]. If you're sad now, you're gonna be sad then. Retiring isn't gonna fix their problems. They're not going to be suddenly happy. And even if everything goes right (no kids, no health problems, high income, low cost of living) and they retire "early", that's still going to be in their late 30's, early 40's. And then what? My friends claim they'll figure something out, but if they've lived 40 years without any sense of self actualization, I'm skeptical that they'd suddenly find themselves. I'm not saying one should work a meaningless job instead of retiring, but I don't get waiting for decades to find one's purpose in life. Might as well wait for Godot. And if retiring early doesn't work out, one can end up like the main character in Ikiru: 30 years of perfect attendance and absolutely nothing to show for it. But hey, maybe that's just my anxiety about starting out adult life. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbwlC2B-BIg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbwlC2B-BIg