This thread reminds me of the ski resort I’ve been to for the last three years. No matter when I go, there’s always this one guy in the same après-ski bar. He’s there the whole evening and buys everyone a drink. The only thing you have to do to get the drink is talk to him.
I always imagine he’s some ~50 year old in FI retirement who bought a house there, has enough cash, and just kind of buys himself conversations in the evenings.
And I never know whether to find that beautiful or weird.
The last months I have not been working much.
The one person I spend more time than ever before is a friend of mine, who happens to be unemployed for several months now.
I am in a very similar situation as you - FI or semi-FI, love sports, finance and the mountains. Contact me if you would like to meet. I will be in Zürich.
Let’s start the introverted FIRE club.
Next meeting date and location: irrelevant!
Honestly not sure if that solves the problem. Working provides most people some kind of „controlled social interaction exposure“ (trademark terminology). Stop working removes this layer and requires significant more effort to satisfy the basic human need for some kind of social interaction.
The areas you are struggling sound quite familiar. I wrote about some of the topics that I wrestle with multiple years into the journey here:
I started to be more active in a club where I organize activities on weekdays. Great way to meet lots of interesting people with similar interest. Also doing some mentoring and development work, which is very satisfying. Weekends, I try to spend with my family and friends.
Great discussion, thanks for being so open. I haven’t reached FI yet, but according to estimates I could hit my number in the next couple of years. For awhile now i’ve also started to think about these issues of “Life after FI”. Really unsure at the moment if I’ll actually stop working immediately because of issues like identity, positively contributing to society, social benefits of work, etc. Currently I could imagine reducing from my current 80% to 50 - 60% once I’ve got to FI to see how that feels. Maybe work at 50 - 60% for a few years before pulling the plug completely. I’ve personally started some volunteering on the side, which I would maybe increase after hitting FI to replace some of the positive things about work that would disappear after leaving work.
Well, FI never meant for me to stop working, I just like the idea that I could. So I am still working stressless in job and enjoy the corporate chaos ;-).
But I have the same problem, I know very few people who know FI and for most it´s even out of reach anway.
So work doesn´t solve the problem 
Thanks for being so open with you two posts, I totally get you! I’m no longer as close as I’d like to FIRE after divorce a few years ago but getting ready to accelerate again soon and hopefully catch up most of it even if it will take much longer than planned.
But i clearly realised that if it were now, I’d be in a very similar situation, especially if I wasn’t divorced 
. I’m really starting to see that even if I manage in 10 years to stop, the large majority of my entourage are planning 65+ … the main difference there is my kids will be older and I hadn’t thought enough about stopping when they were still in school enough.
so I wanted to thank you as in the least, you’ve helped me realise that I was fixating more on the setback the divorce made but in the end, it also avoided a situation you describe with younger kids. So silver linings are more positive that dwelling - thanks for waking me up to this even if I know that doesn’t help you as much.
Coincidently, I’ve already started to take up some of the advice that people have added here (already before, not since the thread but taking notes of new ideas).
Two things I am really told works well : a) daily gym membership to age well and meet new people of all ages b) becoming a regular at a cafe (ie reading there rather than on your couch)…two things I am trying to start soon….
Yeah. I really need to develop healthier habits before RE.
My big fear is that I replace spending time in front of a computer at work with time in front of a computer at home.
At least with work, I’m cycling 40 mins a day for the commute. I would like to establish a good exercise regime before retirement but haven’t managed so far.
I can never do that due to the costs of coffee in zurich 
Just do it the mustacian way and bring your own coffee there 
Hello, This is my first post on the blog and I live in Baar, ZG - I’m also FIRE since last March 2025 and see the same setbacks. I’d love to organise a meet-up with you during the week.
Congrats!
Would you like to share your own story? Share your story
@Haemocaro welcome and congrats on the jump. The identity part is the thing nobody really warns you about. The math is the easy bit, the “who am I when I stop doing the thing I did for 20 years” question is what actually needs the most prep.
for me what helped was thinking about it in stages rather than one big cliff. Even before pulling the trigger, knowing I had maybe 5 years of runway without a paycheck made it easier to test smaller versions. A sabbatical. A part time switch. Saying no to projects that would have defined me 2 years earlier. By the time I got close to actual FI the identity shift had already happened in the background. Not sure if that works for everyone but the cliff version sounds terrifying to me tbh.
Some things to consider:
Define personal projects (fixing up a piece of furniture, or whatever) that give fulfillment. Aside from the obvious beneficial ‘doing more sports’.
Consider taking up advisory work (paid!). Can be intellectually stimulating, well compensated (per hour) but not excessively stressful. E.g. I help out PE firms on due diligence occasionally. Currently working with a scale-up on fine-tuning their growth strategy so they actually grow (and become profitable).
I am spending a LOT more time on investments => generating much better returns. OK, you could consider that as labour and a drag but I’ve also found that I’m using more time to dig into small/mid-caps which is fun and I’ve made 2 small-cap investments. THose were listed, but have on my list to join an angel investor club to invest in start-ups in the CH space.
It doesn’t have to be a choice between full-time corporate slavery and ‘do nothing’. THere’s a good middle ground, where you can still be goal oriented but also just enjoy supporting others with your skills / experience.
Writing software. It’s fun and addictive to create stuff and unlike physical projects you can get started without waiting for parts etc.
Although building physical stuff and doing DIY is also good.
A small update on my side, about 7 months after the original post..
I founded a GmbH in the meantime, doing AI consulting and product development for Swiss companies. So far it’s just me. I’ve already been working in AI for the last 4 years in my corporate job, so the field itself wasn’t new. Doing it on my own was a very different story. Honestly the transition was much harder than I expected. Lots of self doubt, identity and some pretty existential questions along the way.
Now I’m starting to see some light and it begins to pay off. Customers pay me directly for what I build. Technically that was always the case as an employee too, but without the company in between it feels very different. And I get to work on what I’m genuinely passionate about, building useful things with AI.
What I didn’t fully get before: as an employee a lot happens “by itself”. Now nothing does. Everything has to be earned, mostly by trying, failing and trying again. It’s still hard, but the freedom and self-determination make up for it. I “need” to take full responsibility for whatever happens, and somehow that feels good.
The FI part helped more than I expected. It gives me the runway to pivot a few times and figure out where the things I’m really passionate about overlap with what is actually valuable for others. I get to choose who I work with and on what, and I can say no to work I don’t care about. Without that cushion I’m pretty sure I’d have gone back to a job during one of the doubt phases.
The social side is also slowly changing. Through the work I’m meeting more people who are just as passionate about building things, and my network is shifting. So that “tribe” question from the original post is partly solving itself, just not the way I expected (not via FIRE meetups ).
So my conclusion so far: I still have doubts quite often, but it’s worth it.
For those of you who already stopped or are planning to (@firefrei, @JMH, @Haemocaro): did you end up “working” on something again, and was it what you expected?
@Ilpiccone i may not have been clear enough on my side but my divorce in 2023 significantly set me back on my individual FIRE planning. So I can’t compare yet, and congrats on you getting there and making some big adjustments! 
For me: things have improved a lot since and my «daily» spending is way down but I’m forced to focus on FI and no longer RE for the most part (still possible but less likely). To help, I shifted gears at work to allow myself a longer development plan that I hadn’t originally intended so that will allow me a final « promotion » opportunity early enough to potentially reduce working percentage rather than pulling the plug completely. This is intentionally to help me avoid some of the social gaps that others have expressed so I’m definitely grateful for this insight which has been integrated into my current ambitions.