Series Binge: Severance – Retire by 40

Hey Everyone! I am back from Spring Break in North Carolina. We visited my brother and his family in Cary, a suburb of Raleigh. Wow, that town is incredible. The houses were huge. The streets were wide. The parks were clean and empty of tents and screamers. The strip malls were abundant. The people looked nice, fit, and middle class. I was impressed.

Portland feels way too dense and gritty after a week in the idyllic suburb. Life just seems more comfortable there. My niece and nephew will have a privileged Americana childhood. Good for them! I guess we’re getting too old for city living. Mrs. RB40 and I are ready for boring.  

We visited the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh. It was great and free! The kids had fun running around and learning about dinosaurs and nature. We also visited the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. This one was quite expensive. We spent about $200 for the tickets and lunch. (3 adults and 3 kids.) The kids had a lot of fun, so it was worth it. The butterfly garden was amazing. The dinosaur trail was underwhelming, though. Our son is a teenager so he is aging out of these parks. We probably won’t go back to this one.  

Alright, we got home very late on Saturday so this will be a short one.  

Severance

Have you seen Severance, a science fiction series on Apple TV+? I borrowed Season 1 from the library and binge-watched it before Spring Break. This show is a hellish take on work.

On the show, Lumon (a fictional company) invented a technology to create a distinct personality apart from your regular one. They use the technology to separate work from life. To work for Lumon, a worker undergoes the “severance” procedure. After that, they have no memories of the outside world while at the office and have no recollection of their job after they leave the office. So there are 2 distinct personalities in the same body. One spends all their time at work (“innie”) and the other live a normal life outside (“outie”) with no knowledge of what they do at the office. This doesn’t sound too bad at first. But think about it more, and you’ll see why it’s terrible.

The viewers follow the struggle of one new and several experienced workers. The new worker woke up in a conference room with no memory of who or where she was. She didn’t want to work at Lumon, but couldn’t quit because her “outie” didn’t allow it. The experienced workers showed the newbie how to do the job. They worked on a small section of some bigger project that is unrevealed. They also have to deal with their dissatisfaction of being stuck at work with zero knowledge of the outside world.

This is so dystopian. The innies are basically slaves to the outies. The outies receive all the benefits with no downsides. The outies also have all the power. But you’re the same person. You’re enslaving a part of yourself. As a mostly retired person, I love my life. I don’t have to be stuck at work, deal with office politics, or stress out about a project. The benefit of life without work is awesome. However, I would never subject a part of myself to being an innie.

I wouldn’t be able to handle it if I woke up as an innie and was stuck at work 100% of the time. I would go crazy in that situation. There would be no incentive to work. Why would my innie do anything? It’d turn violent, for sure.

Work should be an integral part of life. You take the goods and the bads. If the bads are too much to handle, move on to a different job. Creating a separate persona for work is a terrible idea.

Anyway, check out Severance if you haven’t seen it. Season 2 is on Apple TV, but I’ll wait until it comes out on DVD. Would you consider working for Lumon? What if they pay $2 million/year? You can’t quit, though…

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Joe started Retire by 40 in 2010 to figure out how to retire early. After 16 years of investing and saving, he achieved financial independence and retired at 38.

Passive income is the key to early retirement. This year, Joe is investing in commercial real estate with CrowdStreet. They have many projects across the USA so check them out!

Joe also highly recommends Personal Capital for DIY investors. They have many useful tools that will help you reach financial independence.