Irish Financial Independence & Personal Finance Podcast

Wednesday 6th May 2026

Early Retirement Crossroads and the reality of too many options

Yes, hitting financial independence is a fantastic place to be. But there is one thing that isn’t often talked about - the challenges of too many options.

Ever walked into a food court and you can’t decide what restaurant to pick from? So you end up ordering from Subway, then kinda wish you had gone for the KFC instead? Welcome to financial independence.

You see, there are multiple paths one can take once we get there:
1. Adopt early retirement
2. Scale back work and withdraw a little
3. Just keep working as before and coast
4. Just move the goal posts and keep working and saving as before.

Of course, we end up making no decision, and therefore sticking to the status quo, in other words, nothing really changes!

The big challenge is that leaving work is scary. It took me 18 years of working horrible jobs and projects to finally find a job that I love. A job that is fully flexible, with a team of people that I care about and who care about me. How many people do you know, who say they are overpaid for what they do? That says that they are paid far more than the effort they need to put into the job? That says they are satisfied with the number of holidays they have each year, and the working hours and the flexibility? Pretty much no one right? I honestly feel I have this with my job.

And I have cut back work considerably since my peak working in 2022. These days I work seasonally, working longer in the winter months and taking a lot of time off over the summer months. This year I am hoping to take as much as eight weeks off in July and August, so it will be like a mini retirement.

But honestly, I don’t really mind work days either way. Work has become like a hobby to me, and I have changed the focus of work so much that even on days where I am busy with day to day household things, I tend to plan work around my day, rather than my day around work.

I have somehow gained all the benefits of early retirement, all while managing to still work in a job I love.

I fully respect that this isn’t really exciting from a true early retirement point of view.

But in many ways, I feel like I am an early retiree, because I gave up the hard part - I stopped chasing the career opportunities. With AI, new technology stacks, new challenges, most people in software would continue to evolve their careers. Not me. I have all but stopped advertising myself as a software developer, updated my LinkedIn, and have accepted that this job I am in, will be the last job I will ever have.

I have stopped freelancing for other clients - keep in mind, this is a huge step, given I have had some clients since 2004!

My focus is on my one client, my one contract that pays me well in a job that I am very good at.

A job where I know the whole system, can turn things around quickly and very rarely need to learn on the job.

This makes me super efficient, allows me to work at my own pace and around my flexibility.

So yes, not an early retiree, but the next best thing as far as I am concerned.

Could I retire today?

So yes, I have options - lots of them. But could I really retire today if I wanted too? I still think about it. I wrote last month about my fantasy of renting out our house in Limerick and moving to our holiday home in Carriagholt, but the reality is, this isn’t our only early retirement path.

We have gross rental income of around €11,500 per month. An insane number, when you consider the cost to service the five mortgages on our rental properties is around €4,000 per month. There is so much scope for us to live off our rental income now, that early retirement is a genuine option for us - even accounting for our typical monthly rental costs, there is more than enough gross income there for us to live comfortably, even for a family of 5.

But for us to do this, we would need to make some changes - namely, stop using property managers! I would need to start managing the properties myself - which isn’t a bad trade off, if it meant not needing to hold a full time job anymore.

I am aware that I need to start enjoying some of the benefits of the early retirement side. I don’t think this will mean full time retirement, but it would be nice to continue to scale back further. I am thinking that it would be nice to “retire from full time work” and work towards working a four day week, then eventually down to a three day week. This is likely the next path for me - a slow transition to early retirement. Not the cliff drop that we all expect will happen once we hit FI, but a more natural, slower pace to slowly leave traditional 9-5 work behind.

As always, I will keep you updated as I make changes here moving forward.

April 2026 Portfolio Update

Hello stocks! Our equity portfolio had a massive jump in April, after a disappointing number in March. This helped our overall portfolio climb to €870,000 for the first time.

We closed on our fifth investment property in April. I had promised my wife that I would hand over the keys to the property manager and be done with it - but I was wrong. It is just so hard and expecting to find good tradespeople to do work that I have ended up doing a lot of it myself. Jobs such as painting a shed, power-washing or cutting grass, it is just easier for me to do it directly than finding someone.

I used my usual team to do jobs such as replace the boiler, put in a new stove and fix the windows. My handyman is doing all sorts of odd jobs and my property manager organised the painters.

Property is not passive, and there is part of me frustrated that I wasn’t able to just hand over the keys and let it be passive. I will be reflecting on this over the next few updates.

Our rental income was down slightly as the new property was empty in April, however we have a tenant lined up and ready to move in May.

Let’s break down the numbers:

Monthly Portfolio Growth Report

Portfolio Breakdown

The table below shows the breakdown of my portfolio into the various asset classes:

2026 Year to Date Returns

Here is a summary of my year to date returns for 2026.

2025 Year to Date Growth Report
Opening Balance	€846,030.49
New Contributions	€140.00
Equities Capital Gains + Dividends	€10,507.02
Real Estate Rental Income	€13,431.93
Interest on Cash Savings	€9.35
Closing Balance	€870,118.79
Portfolio Return	€23,948.30
% Return	2.83%

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