Get out of the Rat Race Now!

I arrived in London England on Thursday morning to do some business regarding my books.

Flying Executive Class is even cooler than I thought.

Air Canada has an arrivals lounge for Executive Class passengers at Heathrow 3 where one can take a shower after a long 8.5 hour flight. Refreshing.

Perhaps an Executive Class return full-price ticket is worth $11,900 if you can afford it.

I checked my e-maill messages and there was a message with the heading "URGENT - WALL STREET JOURNAL SEEKING ERNIE ZELINSKI" sent 10 times to two of my accounts.

It was Brett Arends who writes a personal finance column for the Journal.

I e-mailed him back from the Arrivals Lounge and told him to phone me in an hour or two at my friend's place in London which he did.

As a result of a half hour telephone interview, I was quoted in an article in Fridays's Wall Street Journal at:

Get out of the Rat Race Now!

For the record, I am not as frugal as the article indicates. I did fly Executive Class to London England on my Aeroplan miles. If I had to book the trip without the miles on only 2 days notice, it would have cost $11,900.

Check out These Retirement Resources

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Retire? - Most Baby-Boomers Near Retirement Age Are Broke

Check the story at the link below to find out how little American baby-boomers near retirement age now have in assets.

Near Retirees Net Worth Has Plunged, Report Finds:

Surprisingly, the median net worth with house equity is now only around $140,000. Now this is the median and not the average.

The average is much higher given that the top quintile of the age group has a high net worth. But once we get into the bottom 3 quintiles, the picture is pretty bleak.

Remember that this $140,000 median is for households headed by a babyboomer, so if the household includes a man and woman, the median net worth is approximately $70,000 per individual.

Here is the link to the PDF of the Study from which the newspaper story was taken. The Wealth of Baby Boomers Collapses

Note the items on pages 3 and 4, particularly the item about renters in two quintiles actuallly being better off than homeowners simply because during the so-called housing boom many homeowners became much poorer whereas the renters were better off.

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Just Finished Reading The Joy of Not Working

Following is the most recent e-mail that I received about The Joy of Not Working: A Book for the Retired, Unemployed, and Overworked that was sent to me by Eric Clarke of British Columbia.

----- Original Message -----
From: Eric Clarke
To: vip-books (at) telus.net
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 3:58 PM
Subject: To ErnieZelinski - Thank you!


Dear Ernie,

I have just finished reading the The Joy of Not Working. What a truly
enjoyable and thought provoking book. As a recent retiree you have
helped me to remember what is most important in life and generously
shared your personal experiences, thoughts and some tools to help
me reconnect with those things.

I am looking forward [to retirement ]with excitement and anticipation as I begin this
journey and hope that at the end I find I have grown into a fully
developed and happy child.

Thank you.

Eric Clarke
Email - chimiera (at) shaw.ca
Tele: 573-5982

Here are the covers of some of the other Foreign Editions of The Joy of Not Working:

French Edition

Spanish Edition

Japanese Edition

Czech Edition

Greek Edition

German Edition

Turkish Edition

French Edition - Canada

Dutch Edition

Korean Edition

Italian Edition

Chinese Edition - Traditional Characters

Chinese Edition - Simplified Characters

Portuguese Edition

Polish Edition

Indonesian Edition