I retired from my job managing a group of software engineers in Silicon Valley a few years ago. I'd been quite frugal, mostly driving old beaters I bought outright. I owned a condo outright. I ate the free and discounted food at work. I was making $300K+ a year in base salary and equity compensation, and my expenses were only about $20K a year. (My biggest bill was my monthly homeowners’ association fee of about $400.) So, I was able to save a metric ton of money and invested it all in the stock market.

As a child, I loved computers. I taught myself 6502 and x86 assembly languages, as well as some other languages. When I got to the university and actually understood how digital circuits worked, I was so fascinated. When I finally landed in Silicon Valley, I felt like I was in a dream. I was good at what I did and I met awesome people who were good at what they did. Actually, the greatest pleasure was meeting and working with people who were much smarter than I was.

Eventually, the thrill wore off. I’d seen so many bugs and new projects that they started all feel the same, kind of like my personal version of the film Goundhog Day. I didn’t love it anymore. And then later, I didn’t even like it anymore.

At one point, I calculated my net worth at a few million dollars and realized that I could just quit my job and live off the investment interest. So I just did it. I’ve been retired for four years now.

I travel a lot, which was something I couldn’t do much when I had a job that only gave me three weeks of vacation. I can also travel in a different way: taking the time in a new place to see un-touristy things, meet locals and study the language a bit. I read a lot of books, none of which are about computers. I haven’t been back to the United States in over a year.

Thanks to my frugal habits and the runup in the stock market, my net worth is higher. My “burn” rate is under 2%, which means that I can do this indefinitely. I don’t miss Silicon Valley and will never live there again. In fact, I probably won’t ever live in the United States again. And I don’t miss my cubicle one bit.

What I did is unusual. But the thing I don’t understand is why it is unusual: most of the professionals I worked with could have made the same choices and had the same result. I guess they found more enjoyment in the cycle of work and consumption than I did. And like most people who lived in the Valley, I knew and had friendships with people who were far richer than I was: whose net worth was $10M or $30M or more, who could retire today and have a very comfortable life anywhere in the world. But they continued to work. I can only guess that they found more enjoyment in work than I did.