How To Retire 6 Months Every Year
(Page 2 of 22)
May/June 1970
By Irv Thomas
This is not a theoretical concept. I have lived through the breaking of these addictions, and although some of it hurt, I have learned how to keep my balance. I can pass many of the creative tricks on to you. There are withdrawal pains to be sure, but be consoled - they are only temporary and there are many ways of easing them.
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HOW I GOT THERE
My own way out of the morass was forced upon me. The costs of resettling, getting a job and just the barest of living essentials drove my pocket cash into the ground in no time at all. I had isolated myself completely and intended to stay that way, so there was no answer but to dig in hard and just hang on.
I laid out what I called a 'bare bones' three month plan for myself, and just counted the days, knowing that if I stuck with it, I'd be okay. My monthly allowance was:
The rest of my $400 cash on hand went to bills I had left back in California, and toward paying for a job referral. This was a prudent investment since it enabled me to get my first paycheck before I was reduced to begging in the streets.
I did live through it. I'll spare the details, for they are incorporated in the rest of the article, but I should say here that a good portion of my idle time was spent planning the luxurious life I was going to live after the ordeal was over: How I was going to get a brand new VW bus and outlandishly outfit it as a live-in camper.
But a very strange thing happened before the three months were up: I realized that I was no longer hurting; I no longer had withdrawal pains. I had actually adapted to this spartan schedule and felt almost as fully provided for as back in the days when I used to have trouble keeping my monthly expenses within an $850 per month net income!
At first this was merely curious - an interesting little insight into the intricacies of the human mind. Then the real implications slowly began to dawn on me. Two hundred and fifty per month is $3000 per year, which equates to about 4.5 working months at the salary I was earning. Wow! True, it didn't provide for a few occasional extra expenses like doctor bills, a new suit, and perhaps something set aside for real emergencies - but how little more that would require! I began to see the real nature of what I had achieved - a kind of independence that all my remaining years in the system would never have been able to buy.
Some interesting relationships can be seen from this graph. Relatively small increments in monthly income will release each month up to about six, but beyond that point the required increase for each free month becomes more prohibitive as you go up. This is an automatic guard against ambition creeping into the picture. Ambition is simply not worth it.
Also, strange as it seems, the less you are earning, the easier it is to gain free time! At $300/month, each $25 you knock off your living expenses gives you a free month, while ar $600/month it takes a $50 reduction to gain another free month.
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