The Company We Keep: Friendship, Community and Belonging

Introduction

For most of our adult lives, work quietly organises our friendships for us. It places us in the same building as dozens of other people, gives us shared problems to solve and shared grievances to laugh about, and supplies a daily rhythm of small encounters: the chat by the kettle, the Friday lunch, the colleague who notices when we seem low. Few of us choose these relationships deliberately. They simply happen, because work puts us in each other’s way.

When work ends, especially when it ends years earlier than it does for our friends, that scaffolding falls away. This is one of the most discussed worries about early retirement, and it is a fair one. Yet it is also one of its greatest opportunities. For perhaps the first time since school, early retirees can choose their company. They can build friendships around shared passions instead of shared employers, give time to their neighbourhoods, join or create communities, and deepen the relationships that a busy working life kept on the back burner.

This chapter explores the science of social connection, which has become one of the most robust findings in health research, and what happens to our social networks when we leave work. It then turns to people who retired early and describe how they built new circles: a couple whose charity became a community of hundreds, a blogger who set out on a deliberate campaign to make friends, a retiree who became part-owner of a gathering place for people like him, and a former lawyer who offers a frank warning about loneliness. The message running through all of them is simple but demanding. Belonging rarely arrives by accident after work ends. It has to be built, and early retirement gives you the time to build it well.

What the research tells us

Relationships as a matter of life and death

In 2010, Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues published a meta-analysis that changed how many health researchers think about friendship. Pooling 148 studies involving 308,849 participants, they found that people with stronger social relationships had a 50% greater likelihood of survival over the study periods than those with weaker relationships. The finding was consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death and length of follow-up, and the association was strongest for complex measures of social integration. The authors concluded that the influence of social relationships on mortality risk is comparable with well-established risk factors (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010).

A follow-up meta-analysis looked specifically at isolation and loneliness. After adjusting for possible confounding factors, social isolation was associated with a 29% increased likelihood of death, loneliness with 26%, and living alone with 32%. Objective isolation and the subjective feeling of loneliness were similarly harmful. Strikingly for readers of this book, social deficits were more predictive of death in samples whose average age was under 65 (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015). In other words, connection matters not only in late old age but also in the midlife years when early retirees are making their transition.

Public health authorities have taken notice. In 2023 the US Surgeon General issued an advisory describing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. It reported that approximately half of US adults say they experience loneliness, and stated that lacking social connection can increase the risk of premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. It also linked poor social connection with a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke, as well as with anxiety, depression and dementia (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023). In 2025 the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Connection estimated that one in six people worldwide is affected by loneliness, that loneliness is linked to around 871,000 deaths each year, and that up to one in three older people experience social isolation (World Health Organization, 2025).

These figures come mainly from observational studies, and the precise comparisons with smoking should be read as broad illustrations rather than exact equivalences. But the direction of the evidence is remarkably consistent: human beings are built for connection, and our bodies keep score when we lack it.

The world’s longest study of happiness

The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938 with 268 Harvard undergraduates and was later joined by a comparison group of men who grew up in inner-city Boston; wives have since been included. Over more than eight decades, it has tracked participants’ health, careers and relationships in extraordinary detail (Mineo, 2017; Waldinger and Schulz, 2023).

Its current director, the psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, summarises the headline finding in plain terms: “The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health” (Mineo, 2017). Researchers found that participants’ satisfaction with their relationships at 50 was a better predictor of their health in later life than their cholesterol levels, and that “the people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80” (Mineo, 2017). In The Good Life, Waldinger and his co-director Marc Schulz (2023) draw on the study to argue that relationships, like our bodies, need ongoing attention and care; as Waldinger put it in an earlier talk, the hard work of tending to family and friends “never ends” (Waldinger, 2015).

For retirement specifically, Waldinger’s most quoted observation is the one that opens this chapter: those who were happiest in retirement were the people who had actively worked to replace workmates with new playmates (Waldinger, 2015). The word “actively” matters. Nothing in the study suggests that good relationships in retirement simply appear. They are cultivated.

What happens to our networks when we stop working?

A careful Finnish study helps separate myth from reality. Kauppi et al. (2021) followed 2,319 people from the Finnish Retirement and Aging study (84% of them women, average age 63) with annual surveys before and after retirement, mapping their social networks as a set of circles: an inner circle of the closest people, a middle circle and an outer circle of more peripheral ties. Before retirement, participants had on average 21.6 people in their networks. During the retirement transition the outer circle shrank slightly, by about two-thirds of a person on average, but it did not continue shrinking after retirement. Importantly, the inner and middle circles, where our closest relationships sit, did not decrease. The pattern did not differ by gender, occupation, marital status, health or mental health (Kauppi et al., 2021).

This is reassuring. Retirement tends to prune the looser, work-based acquaintances, not the core relationships. But those looser ties are not trivial: they are often the source of everyday conversation, new information and a sense of being part of the wider world. The task for early retirees is therefore twofold: protect the inner circle and consciously replenish the outer one.

Groups, identity and a longer life

Some of the most compelling retirement research comes from the “social identity” approach, which argues that belonging to groups, and feeling part of them, is itself good for health. Using a nationally representative cohort study of older adults in England, Steffens et al. (2016) compared 424 people who retired with a matched group of 424 who did not. Among retirees who had belonged to two social groups before retiring, the risk of death over the following six years was 2% if they kept both groups, 5% if they lost one and 12% if they lost both. For every group membership lost in the year after retirement, quality of life six years later was about 10% lower. The authors noted that the effect of group memberships on mortality was comparable to that of physical exercise, and that these effects were specific to people going through the retirement transition (Steffens et al., 2016).

A larger cross-cultural study of 10,513 retirees from 51 countries in the World Values Survey found that belonging to multiple groups positively predicted retirees’ health and wellbeing in both Western and non-Western settings, although the association was weaker in more collectivist countries (Lam et al., 2018). Groups, it seems, are a portable resource. A choir, a walking club, a faith community, a volunteer team or an online forum that meets in person can each provide some of the identity and structure that a workplace once did.

Men’s sheds and the value of working side by side

Men, in particular, are often said to find it harder to build friendships after work, partly because many male friendships are formed “shoulder to shoulder” around shared tasks rather than “face to face” in conversation. The Men’s Sheds movement, which began in Australia and has spread to the UK and elsewhere, offers community workshops where people (mostly, but not only, older men) make and mend things together.

The evidence base is growing but still modest. An early narrative review by Wilson and Cordier (2013) found five reports and 19 articles, mostly descriptive surveys or small qualitative studies, and concluded that the health benefits had not yet been adequately measured. A later scoping review of 16 peer-reviewed articles by Kelly et al. (2019) found some evidence of mental health and social wellbeing benefits, much less evidence on physical health, and a lack of reliable, systematic evidence on causal pathways. On the ground, the picture is warmer. Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University who interviewed 20 men attending sheds in Cheshire, along with ten family members, found that the sheds led to new friendships, which the men described as camaraderie, and a sense of belonging; the men said they felt able to open up about their health because they had other men to talk to while they worked on projects together (Fisher, 2018).

The wider lesson applies well beyond sheds. For many people, the easiest route to friendship is not a social event with nothing to do, but a shared purpose with something to make, fix, grow or give.

The FIRE movement’s own communities

It is striking how much the financial independence movement has invested in building community. What began largely online, in blogs and forums, has become a network of in-person gatherings. CampFI, for example, is a four-day, three-night event where people interested in financial independence gather for, in its organisers’ words, “insight, inspiration, and incredible lifelong friendships”. Its founder, Stephen Baughier, held the first CampFI in Florida in January 2017; by 2025 events were scheduled across the United States and in Spain (Fiology, n.d.). In Longmont, Colorado, the blogger Pete Adeney renovated a run-down building on the town’s main street into a coworking space and gathering place for his readers, known as MMM HQ (Jensen, 2019). Local meetups, retreats and conferences serve a similar purpose around the world.

These communities matter for a particular reason. One of the loneliest aspects of early retirement can be the sense of being different from everyone you know, of having free weekday mornings when friends are at work, or of fielding sceptical questions about your choices. Spending time with others who have made similar decisions offers not only friendship but recognition.

Lives enriched: real stories

Fritz Gilbert — from corporate career to the “Fido family”

Fritz Gilbert and his wife Jackie retired in June 2018, when he was 55, and moved from the city to a cabin in the North Georgia mountains (Gilbert, n.d.). He had spent 33 years in corporate America. Retirement did not begin smoothly for Jackie: her mother, whom she had cared for through years of Alzheimer’s disease, died three months after Fritz retired, and their daughter lived more than 2,000 miles away. Though she was enjoying pottery, volunteering and fitness, the couple came to realise that she had lost a significant purpose in her life (Gilbert, 2019).

After watching an episode of an online video series about a volunteer who built fences so that dogs no longer had to live on chains, Jackie decided to do the same for low-income families in their area. The response took them by surprise. People offered their help without being asked: one volunteered to write grant applications, another built the first doghouse. “The community recognized the need for this charity in our area, and the flood of volunteers has been overwhelming,” Fritz wrote (Gilbert, 2019).

Five years later, the charity, Freedom for Fido, had become the heart of their social life. In a 2024 podcast interview, Fritz described a couple of hundred volunteers and a fence build every week, and said that they had built “this whole community of generous people” which had “just become this huge network of really good friends. We call it the Fido family.” He described spontaneous gatherings arranged by a group text and a local brewery meet-up that had become “a great core friendship” (Boldin, 2024). The story captures a pattern that researchers would recognise: a group built around shared purpose, which in turn becomes a source of identity and friendship.

Tanja Hester — “Operation Friend Zone”

Tanja Hester and her husband Mark Bunge retired at the end of 2017, at 38 and 41, and live in North Lake Tahoe, California (Hester, n.d.). A few months into retirement, Hester wrote candidly about the social side of leaving work. She argued that making new friends is a central part of early retirement planning, because unless your friends retire at the same time, you will have free time while almost everyone you know is at work. Losing the built-in social interaction of a job, she wrote, makes it important “not to go into a cave of solitude” (Hester, 2018).

On 1 January of their first year of retirement, the couple launched what she called “Operation Friend Zone”. Hester set three strategies: get to know casual acquaintances better, join groups and meetups linked to her interests, and summon the courage to invite people they met while out skiing or hiking on “friend dates”. The results were mixed and honestly reported. Deepening acquaintanceships went “decently well”; a podcasting meetup proved fruitful; several writing meetups ended with her sitting alone in a café, unable to find the group. And she noticed an unexpected side effect: in the rush to make new friends, they had neglected their existing ones. “Even in early retirement, you do not have endless time,” she concluded, resolving to focus for a while on the friends they already had (Hester, 2018).

Hester’s account is valuable precisely because it is not a fairy tale. It shows early retirement as the chance to become a more intentional friend, including the awkwardness and trial and error that involves.

Carl Jensen — buying a stake in belonging

Carl Jensen, a former software developer who writes the blog 1500 Days to Freedom, left work in April 2017 at 43 (Jensen, 2025). He joined MMM HQ, the coworking space created by his friend and neighbour Pete Adeney in Longmont, Colorado, and found that it “improved my life”: going there each morning to write helped him focus, and, as he put it, “It’s also good to talk to other humans.” When Adeney sought investors to expand the building, Jensen and his wife Mindy became partners. Among his reasons he listed “investing in community”, including plans to lend the space to local organisations that needed somewhere to meet, and he summed up his philosophy: “Meaningful work that you do on your own terms and according to your own rules is what life is all about. When you get to do it with friends, it’s even better” (Jensen, 2019).

Eight years into early retirement, Jensen described a rich local network in and around Longmont, with weekly hikes and potlucks at the HQ with friends. Replying to a reader who thanked him for his writing, he added that while he was not sure how many lives he had changed, “this community has certainly changed mine” (Jensen, 2025). Six months after leaving work he had already listed “social activity” alongside family time, exercise, writing and travel as part of the “satisfying balance” of his new life (Jensen, 2017).

Anita Dhake — an honest warning about loneliness

Not every early retiree finds belonging easily, and the most useful stories include the difficulties. Anita Dhake, a former lawyer, retired in her early thirties and, when PBS NewsHour profiled her in 2018, was spending her time travelling, blogging and with friends. Asked for advice, she offered a caution: “Early retirement can be very lonely because people work and you become a little bit of an oddball without that social contact.” Her remedy was practical: have a list of things you want to do with your time, and fill your days with volunteering, socialising and activities you enjoy, which she believed could mitigate much of that loneliness (Frazee, 2018).

Dhake’s words are a gentle corrective to the more celebratory stories. Her experience is not a reason to avoid early retirement; it is a reason to plan for connection as seriously as for money.

A balanced view

The evidence that social connection matters for health and happiness is among the strongest in the behavioural sciences, but several cautions are worth keeping in mind.

First, most of the research is observational. People who are healthier, more outgoing or better off may find it easier both to stay connected and to stay well, so not all of the association between relationships and survival is necessarily causal (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). The large headline comparisons, such as the equivalence with smoking, are useful for conveying scale but are not precise measurements (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023).

Second, retirement does reduce some social ties. The Finnish data show that it is the peripheral ties that shrink (Kauppi et al., 2021), and the English data show that losing group memberships after retirement is associated with worse quality of life and higher mortality (Steffens et al., 2016). Early retirees may be more exposed than most, because their friends and peers are still working. Dhake’s warning (Frazee, 2018) and Hester’s candid account (Hester, 2018) are consistent with this.

Third, the evidence on specific interventions such as men’s sheds remains limited and largely based on small, self-reported studies (Wilson and Cordier, 2013; Kelly et al., 2019). They are promising, and people clearly value them, but we should not overclaim.

Fourth, the FIRE community itself can become an echo chamber. Spending time with like-minded people is affirming, but friendships that span ages, occupations and outlooks also enrich a life, and some early retirees may find that their closest ties are with neighbours, family or volunteers who have never heard of the movement. The Gilberts’ “Fido family” was built around dogs and fences, not finance (Boldin, 2024).

Finally, social needs differ. Some people are content with a handful of close relationships and plenty of solitude; others thrive on large networks. The research concerns averages. What matters is that your connections meet your own needs, and that you notice early if they no longer do.

Putting it into practice

• Audit your network before you leave work. Sketch your inner, middle and outer circles. Which relationships depend entirely on your workplace, and which would you like to keep?
• Keep, and add, groups. Aim to maintain the groups you already belong to through the transition and to join at least one new one soon after (Steffens et al., 2016).
• Choose shared purpose. Volunteering, a club, a shed, a community garden or a local campaign gives you a reason to show up regularly and something to do side by side.
• Be the one who invites. As Hester discovered, early retirees often have to take the initiative. Suggest the walk, host the potluck, send the group text.
• Find your people, and also look beyond them. Explore local FIRE meetups or retreats if they appeal, but seek out friendships across ages and backgrounds too.
• Protect the inner circle. Do not let the energy of new activities crowd out old friends and family (Hester, 2018).
• Check in with yourself. If you notice that days pass without meaningful conversation, treat it as seriously as a financial warning sign and act on it.

Questions for reflection

1. Which of your current friendships would continue if neither of you worked where you work now?
2. When have you felt most deeply that you belonged to a group, and what made that possible?
3. What causes, crafts or interests could become the “shared purpose” around which new friendships grow?
4. How comfortable are you with taking the initiative socially, and what small step could you practise now?
5. Who in your life would benefit from more of your time and attention, and what might you offer them?
6. How would you know if you were becoming isolated, and who could you ask to tell you?
7. What would a “Fido family” of your own look like?

References