From my perspective, things will only improve for the better. I can feel you – after 14 years in the Rat Race I was burned out, concentrated too much on office politics, micro-managing my work and life, negative thoughts and OPP (Other people’s problems – TM) than my own wellbeing.

This will change once you drop juggling those balls. Today there is nothing much that can shatter me anymore. I take things easily, can laugh about mishaps, myself, don’t care about things like reputation, keeping up with the Joneses and other nitty-picky details. If you can start to enjoy every day then things will really look up and with a relaxed mind comes a relaxed body also. Just keep something to keep those brain juices fresh and flowing, but I’m sure there can be something found. Myself I enjoy hanging out with old and new friends much more, exploring my surrounding via motorbike or simply sitting at the beach and watching our beautiful world. Surely you can read all those books you always wanted to read, start that computer game now without any guilt, indulge in meeting new people or expanding your horizon in different ways.

It is so easy to get sucked into the whole 9 – 5 routine along with the spend spend spend mentality. If you do anything outside this ‘norm’ then you are in for some serious ridicule from your co-workers, so called friends and well meaning family members – of course they know better than you! They only have $80k in debt and they seem to be able to change their car every year. So yeah I think I will listen to them and be a good little worker bee.

Just remember – if you’re not working on your own goals you are working on someone else’s.

once again, you really give us all something to think about. I have a really big problem with Christmas for consumerist reasons: why celebrate something that hardly anyone remembers the meaning of? It’s as if Christmas has joined the consumers’ religion of shop-till-you-drop, and banks love extending pre-Xmas credit so no one can afford to eat for a couple of months afterwards. Then they say that primary schools can’t have nativity plays anymore unless it upsets kids from other religions. I don’t know. The world has gone to the dogs. You, my friend, are the wise man for getting away from all this idiocy.
Meanwhile, my company (architecture industry) just started redundancies on Friday. The credit crunch has finally reached us. All the more reason to consider future escape plans!
Warm wishes, Epic.

Fact is: the western countries are facing excruciating tax burdens for those who don’t know the tax system, ie. most people. Did you know Japan doesn’t have personal income tax?… the UK didn’t until the govt. started spending…

Kenneth

Leigh Hunt – retiring in Honduras? Wow – congratulations! That sounds like paradise to me! I have very fond memories of Roatan, this is where I made my PADI Open Water, way back in 1996 or so. The small propeller plane from San Pedro Sula to Roatan had no seats on board, basically everyone had to sit on the ground and grab on something. Completely crazy and adventurous! I still believe that the marine life around Roatan, Utila and Guanaja beats the Great Barrier reef hands down. One year after there was a hurricane flattening Placido Domingo’s house on the island, but that was probably rebuild quickly. Wahhhh, when I think about it, swinging in my hang mat at the beach there, reading Forest Gump (which I got from a book exchange in the local library there), watching the coconuts fall off the trees….you are lucky, do you know? I can’t recall the name of the place I stayed there, it was somewhere on the north-western tip of the island, with a huge pier and a bar/disco building on it, close to a up-market resort right of it. Hmmmm….have to check other boxes in my memory….

hank – that’s really common in the IT industries, even one should suspect differently. I always thought that IT people should be able to embrace change, due to the nature of their job, but somehow that’s not the case. So IT or not – if you can get the drift of seeing change as a challenge and something that drives things forwards – you are basically set for a more positive life and closer to your dreams than you might think…

Ernie – many thanks for your story and I checked back on your site. That’s truly interesting material! I had to remove the other links, as your comment was caught by my spam filter. The books Ernie mentioned can be found via his main site (see link above).

First, execelent advice.

I semi-retired when I was in my early thirties and $30,000 in the red from student loans. That’s right, my net word was minus $30,000 when I semi-retired and I didn’t have to move to a foreign country. Basically, I have lived in line with all the advice that you give.

Check out the many ways to prepare for and enjoy retirement on my 1001 Ways to Enjoy Your Retirement webpage on Squidoo where I am posting the complete book of the same name (published in French, Spanish, and Korean but not in English).

Ernie Zelinski
Author of The Joy of Not Working and How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free