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How To Retire Without Money
By Bob Belmont
CHAPTER 1 WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER RETIREMENT
Page 3 of 7
At 65 Jim
Average gets his Social Security money and they sell their
house and move down to Southern California to retire.
However, the amount of Social Security money coming in hardly
pays for living on the simplest standard. They get by only
because one of the children is able to send them a few dollars
each month.
These may
sound bitter, the above accounts, but they aren't far off the
beam. In one case you have a success and in the other you have
an average life.
For my money,
neither of them are worth the living. If I had to make a
choice I'd probably choose to be Sam Lucky rather than Jim
Average, but neither of them has lived a full life. And as far
as retirement is concerned, both of them wound up retired at
the age of sixty-five in circumstances which neither can
enjoy.
Actually, it
can be a great deal tougher than even the life of Jim Average
which we've painted above. At least he reached the age of
sixty-five, which a good many people never do, the pace of
modern life being what it is. And at least Jim was able to get
jobs until he was 55, a good many find themselves on the scrap
heap long before this.
And I didn't
even deal with the fact that while both Jim and Sally were
working, trying to make ends meet, their kids were out on the
streets probably taking their master's degree in juvenile
delinquency. Nor did we mention that in the life of Sam Lucky
he had a fine chance of becoming an alcoholic along the way in
view of the pressures upon him. Or that Mrs. Lucky, in spite
of her psychiatric visits, had a strong chance of winding up
in a mental institute under the tensions of her frustrated
life.
We haven't
dealt, either, with the probability that after the age of
thirty or so there was no longer any real love between Sam and
Lois nor Jim and Sally. You don't lead the kind of existence
they did and still retain the affection with which you started
marriage.
Never in the
history of any nation has there been such a large percentage
of a people in mental institutions. Never has there been such
a degree of juvenile delinquency. Never have there been so
many divorces. Never has there been such insecurity in the
hearts of a people, and our suicide rate is second highest in
the world.
We Americans,
as a people, by no means "have it made."
This book is
devoted to those who rebel against being a Sam or Lois Lucky
or a Jim or Sally Average.
It's devoted to the man or woman of whatever age, from 21 and
up, who has no money but does have a burning desire to get off
the modern treadmill.
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CHAPTER 1 WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER RETIREMENT
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