This is a scary topic for anyone close to retirement. The best-laid plans for retirement can go up in smoke if divorce becomes a reality.

Why am I talking about divorce? It’s happened to a couple of friends close to retirement in the last few weeks, and it’s tough to watch.  Both are in their late 50s, early 60s and it basically has destroyed all plans they had for retirement. Right as they can see the finish line in their careers.

Both divorces were started by the spouse that had already retired.

It’s tough because I imagine myself in their shoes. I can’t fathom going through all the hard emotions over the one to two years it takes to get divorced. On top of that, you have to reset your life. Very little of whatever you had planned remains. Worse, you may not even have a starting point or plan until the divorce is finalized. You are unanchored and drifting. 

I think it’s even tougher if you’re going through this the close to your retirement age. It’s mind-boggling when I really think about it.

Divorce is happening enough to people in my age bracket that they have a name for it: the Grey Tsunami. In the last few decades, divorce rates have been increasing for people in their 50s, 60s, and beyond. The statistics are scary, and they are getting worse.

• People 50+ make up 36% of all divorces
• The rate of divorce in this group has tripled since 1990

A Theory on Why Later-Life Divorces are Rising

I have a theory on why people near the end of their careers or retired are divorcing. Your whole life is being upended already as you become or will soon be empty nesters. Add in giving up your career and the only thing left is yourself and your spouse.

I think the amount of self-reflection ramps up as you contemplate these last big life changes. You have time to think, and you don’t like who you have become.

In general, people are reflecting more on their lives than they used to. Divorce was just not a big thing for my parents’ generation. They stuck it out, even if they were miserable. The expectation was that you stayed together. Life was hard enough without going through a divorce, and when it didn’t seem like an option, they learned to make it work.

COVID came along and forced people to stay home. Coming out of COVID, we saw lots of people quitting their jobs and, overall, just changing their lives. The theory is that COVID paused our lives, caused us to slow down, and forced us to spend time with our own thoughts. During COVID, our day-to-day distraction or busyness was gone. Self-reflection had space.

With time for more self-reflection, people start examining where they are in life versus where they expected to be. They didn’t like the answer.

Throw never-ending growth in social media into everyone’s life during lockdown, and not only did we have time to look at our own life, we had time to compare our life to what we perceived other people’s lives to be like. What a perfect storm to create life changes! Not only were we testing our own expectations, we were watching more and more people and how good their life seemed or how they were “fixing it.”

Forced Self-Reflection + Increased Social Media Due to Isolation = Decisions for Change.

When life is busy, it is so easy to lose yourself in the daily grind. Any small problem in your life comes up and fades away as new distractions emerge. With forced isolation, the small problems become a focal point, and nothing comes along to replace them. Retirement in some ways is more isolating to what you are used to.

Why It’s Worse for the FIRE Community

Okay, I get it—what does this have to do with FIRE people?

I think it’s worse for the FIRE crowd. There are no statistics, but I suspect divorce happens more to people in the FIRE community than it does for the general population. Examples of divorce in the FIRE world include Mr. Money Mustache, Fates on Fire, JD Roth from Get Rich Slowly, Dr. Doom from Living a FI, and Brad from Choose FI.

Why do I think this happens?

Because the FIRE crowd, I think, does more self-reflection then the average person. We have already decided we don’t like something in our life—most often, our career. We are on the path to make changes. In many cases, we are running away from something we don’t like. We are more focussed than most on changing our lives. We are goal oriented. We will improve what we see as a bad situation.

FIRE will give us space. Not quite COVID space with everyone locked down, but more space than average. The earlier a FIRE person retires, the more time they have in life. The more time you have, the more self-reflection happens, which, as we saw with COVID, means more life changes.

When a couple achieves FIRE, they are typically in a different state of life than when they met. When you meet, you are figuring out how to pay the bills, how to advance in your job, and how to transition from young and carefree to married with kids. It is a fight you are in together. It has lots of distractions.

In FIRE, you are casting off from shore. There is no set path in front of you. The wind will take you wherever it wants. It’s the adventure that we think we have been missing in life. Work got in the way; now it’s time to write the next story. Are we both in the same boat for this next journey?

If a couple has diverged in their lives, there is very little to pull you back together, as there are no more common battles to fight. The common threads become fewer and fewer. With greater time comes greater reflection. All of a sudden, it’s easy to find faults in each other. The grass looks greener just over there.

If one spouse FIREs before the other, it adds a different stress. One is still fighting the known fight. The other is exploring, playing, and discovering. Divergence is guaranteed in a way. If there are cracks in your marriage, it is very easy for the FIREd spouse to start seeing big crevices.

As I see my friends go through this, it scares me. As I look at Padme and our journey, it scares me. I know if we diverge too far, it could happen to us. I need to bring us back together to make us stronger.

The best investment you can ever make is staying close to your spouse. Those that play together, stay together. When you grow together, your love remains strong. But if you drift apart in interests, be careful of too much divergence.

The biggest drawdown risk to your retirement portfolio isn’t the market—it’s the spouse you forgot to invest in.

Invest wisely. Compound. Grow. Write your next chapter. Together.