Saturday 23 October 2010

Nevertirees - One of the new breed of retirees

http://www.barclayswealth.com/americas/about-us/news/retirement-shunned-by-nevertiree-wealthy-says-new-global-report.htm
Some other proposed definitions:
Fortirees - people forced into retirement ... reached the arbitrary age. Have to continue working to survive or maintain an acceptable lifestyle.
Traditional retirement - what our fathers had. Now becoming the preserve of government employees
Retirement - the point at which you think you have enough money to live your chosen  lifestyle till the end of your days.

Thursday 9 September 2010

Retirement Ages

Well now we have the French getting all frothy about the increase in the retirement age. Following on the heels of the Greeks and the Spanish ... who'll be next? Weren't they intelligent enough to see that this was inevitable?

Firstly the concept of a mandatory retirement age is only really attractive to government and other similar bureaucratic institutions. For ambitious working people with a sense of worth and ambition forced retirement is an insult - and simply discrimination based on age!

Retirement should be a state of achievement not some arbitrary age of right - the right to be a non value adding consumer of resources paid for by the rest of society.

The politicians of the past certainly made a mess of things ... the ones today have no option but to get it right.

For more on this go to Successful-Retirement.com

Sunday 22 August 2010

Successful Retirement

Since stopping work at the end of May my life has been a world of mind boggling learning and writing.

My site www.successful-retirement.com is now live and crawling and I'm seeing small improvements every day!

This experience has helped me understand the meaning of Confucius's quote "if you find work you love you will never work another day in your life."

I have taken the first steps to being a 'digital nomad'.

Monday 14 June 2010

A new life

At 62 I have now left a formal job and regular salary to pursue my passion of having the life of a digital nomad.

My goal is to have the choice to live and work anywhere in the world ..... and the reward will be real freedom.

Freedom for me is not having a vote in some so called democracy but to live a sovereign, libertarian lifestyle making my own choices of how and where my contribution to society is paid.

In many of the democracies of the world it appears that government spending is just used to buy votes for the next election?

Thursday 27 May 2010

A recipe for disaster?

The irresponsibility (stupidity?) of many governments during the last 40 or so years to generate "wealth" based on credit is now coming home to roost. This will have a dire impact on your retirement unless you start actively managing the risks.

In an eye opening article in Whiskey and Gunpowder Egon von Greyerz says "We have crossed the Rubicon and events in the world economy are now likely to unfold in a totally uncontrollable fashion" . Clueless governments...will continue to prescribe the same remedy that caused the problem in the first place, namely more credit and more printed money.."

The chart below shows debt as a percentage of GDP for various OECD countries." Egon continues. "The official debts (in red) are massive and unlikely to ever be repaid in real money. Total debts (grey bars) include unfunded liabilities such as pensions and health care. Spain has the lowest total debt to GDP of 250%. Germany and the UK have around 400%, the US around 500% and Greece over 800% debt to GDP. These figures are absolutely astronomical and prove that most governments in the world will be totally incapable of repaying their debts or funding their future pension and medical care liabilities."



If these countries were businesses they would now be bankrupt.

"Never in history," Egon insists, "has the world been in a situation when virtually all industrialized countries are bankrupt. Therefore there is no precedent for what will happen in the next few years. What we can be quite certain about is that events will happen in a seemingly random pattern and that it will be impossible to forecast where the next crises will start.

Friday 7 May 2010

Another interesting South African demographic

50 million, 22 million,12.5 million and 5 million
So what do these numbers represent?
Simply the South African population is about 50 million, the number of voters is about 22 million and the employment pool is about 12.5 million.
So what is the 5 million?
The number of individual taxpayers.
Its said that "a government that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul". So we have a government voted in by the Paul's who will rob the Peters who effectively have no political power.

Is this "democracy" something that can last?

Sunday 2 May 2010

Hemorrhoids - a lighter side


If you are currently suffering from hemorrhoids you probably can't believe that anyone can see a lighter side! At this time, these embarrassing, rather disgusting, very uncomfortable and often painful swollen veins can only be all bad! When you’re suffering with indignity and discomfort, being the butt of a hemorrhoid joke is just adding insult to injury. It is said that you know you're "middle aged" when hemorrhoid jokes stop being funny.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Hemorrhoids---A-Lighter-Side&id=4174007 
If you're suffering CLICK HERE to start your treatment today

Monday 4 January 2010