How To Retire 6 Months Every Year
(Page 15 of 22)
May/June 1970
By Irv Thomas
If you are wise, you will mix these alternate possibilities in some equitable combination based on your own personal needs. I am quite content that I can afford any luxury I care to purchase, but I habitually measure the working cost of these luxuries against their real value to me. As a result, I work a month or two longer than I might absolutely have to in order to give my life the level of meaning that I prefer. I am willing, in other words, to work 4 days out of this year to buy a bicycle, but I am not willing to work 68 days of this and every year to pay for an automobile. It is as simple as that.
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Now we can talk about some of the fringe benefits.
We're usually inclined to measure our various consumer addictions in terms of money alone. In this article, I have so far related them to working time, but some of them ` can be related to another kind of time that I'll call active time. The cigarette habit cost me 6 days a year in working time, but virtually nothing in active time since it is not done to the exclusion of other activities. The newspaper habit - on the other hand - returns only 2 days in working time, but its dividend in active time is out of sight. If you spend only half an hour each day with the daily newspaper and 3 hours each weekend with the Sunday paper (not at all abnormal), you are putting 312 hours per year of active time into that pursuit. If we relate that to the 8-hour working day, we can say that the equivalent of 39 working days is spent reading newspapers!
It does not take long, with the concept of active time, to build a sizable vacuum in your personal life when you start dropping addictions. Newspapers, TV, movies, meal preparation time, unnecessary auto trips - there is a huge void to fill, and it has to be filled positively during the critical withdrawal period if the program is to be a success.
This is your golden opportunity to start living the way you want . . . even while you are still tied in to the rat race. All the hobbies you've never had time for; all the pursuits of youth you had to drop when you entered the system; all the activities you have only dreamed about until now become new grist for your imagination. At one and the same occurence you have both the discretionary cash and the discretionary time with which to begin reshaping your life.
If you've only recently become embedded in the system, the ideas will be quick and the choices easy. On the other hand, you may draw a total blank if you haven't enjoyed this kind of freedom in many years. Which way to move and for what? The following suggestions may help:
1. Get the course listings of the local night schools - preferably university, but adult secondary school if necessary - and find something that you just feel like taking. Perhaps in a field you have always wondered about. Don't take any course to advance your career or because you think you should.
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