We both decided to quit!
After working two full-time jobs for the last 15 years in China’s largest cities, and developing four passive income streams at the same time, both my wife and were really, really tired. We were exhausted of racing faster and faster to make more and more money in the shortest possible time.
Working two-full time jobs in a big city while taking care of our very special baby boy and a newborn daughter was making us too miserable both physically and mentally.
It was time for a big change!
That is why we have decided to turn our lives around to make living more enjoyable for the whole family.
SHE: My wife got laid off from her job
My wife was given a chance to resign from her company as there were many lay-offs in the technology industry back in 2022. Because she was still in the breastfeeding period (the highly protected period by the Chinese labor law), she received quite generous severance payment.
After ending her corporate career, she has been looking after our two small children being a full-time stay-home mom. We made this decision because our son YangYang, who was born with a very serious untreatable genetic disease, needs ongoing palliative care, while our daughter AnAn, who is our second child, is still very young.
All in all, we are very happy that we can afford to have my wife to stay at home.
HE: I left my job
I fell in love with the idea of staying at home with all three of them.
To make it happen, I also left my full-time teaching job.
Being able to spend time at home with your kids when they are so small is fantastic! This is a precious time both for our children to have two parents around, and for us as well as parents.
Good times like this will never return! You know what I mean – we always think in the present that the past was so much better.
We downgraded our careers to upgrade our life quality
After leaving our jobs, we decided to come back to Zhanjiang in 2023 where we have our home in southern China. We have an apartment in Zhanjiang which is in fact my wife’s hometown. Zhanjiang is located in the southernmost part of Mainland China on the way to the Hainan Island. This tropical region to China is like Hawaii to the US. The weather here is warm during winters, food is fresh and delicious, and our home is really comfortable.
Both my wife and I managed to test early retirement in our mid-thirties as both her and myself left our jobs at the same time. So, we were living entirely on passive income between 01.01.2023 and 01.07.2023.
There is no better thing than the feeling of comfort of your own home when you wake up in the morning and go to sleep in the evening. Therefore, leaving our jobs to retire early and staying at home with our kids was a great update to quality of life for our family. We were loving it!
Our trial early retirement ended in the middle of 2023 when my new full-time job started at the end of July.
There is more good news – We are finally financially independent!
There is more good news!
Starting from 2020, we have been financially independent as a family. This means that our annual passive income entirely covers our annual spending. Well, as long as we do not spend more than what our passive income amount is for the certain year.
Our aim for the future is to focus less on growing earnings aggressively and minimizing spending at all cost to maximize saving.
Instead, we want to improve quality of our lives by living slower and working more on our own projects.
