How To Exit The Rat Race 

I haven’t done a post on finances for a while, so I took a look about during a particularly uninteresting television program today and was pleasantly surprised to find this article on cashing out of the rat race early. NO, IT’S NOTyour imagination: You’re working too hard.

Bucking the trend in most developed nations, the American workweek has been growing longer. We put in an average of 1,815 hours a year — longer hours than even the Japanese, who have a word, karoshi, for people who die from overwork.

The extra labor often translates into bigger salaries and more-secure retirements, but it also pours fuel on a fire as old as work itself: the dream of cashing out early. While there’s no way to quantify how many of us are eyeing the exits, evidence suggests that more people are taking the idea seriously.

Books about early retirement are steady sellers, and virtual communities of would-be escape artists thrive on the web. Fortunately, it doesn’t take an enormous nest egg to fund a life-changing move. We interviewed financial experts and early retirees to find out how to get out while you’re young. Credit SmartMoney with the article.

I have a theory. In the face of the facts that credit has tightened to a size 0 and that in order for people to buy property they need to be prepared to put 20 percent down on property (according to my friends in the real estate industry), and given the fact that my girlfriend and I have several money making gigs between us and still couldn’t afford a decent house in our town (Denver), and then add the fact that property values are shrinking and my homeowner friends are beginning to panic, I’m starting to think that the true American Dream is not to own property. In fact, the true American Dream is to NOT have to work.

With that in mind, I read the above article with interest. I would suggest that if you are beginning to think that perhaps getting out of the corporate world and into quality of life is not all that bad of an idea, instead of waiting for some unknown wealthy uncle to die and leave you everything, take a look at the article. I found it quite interesting. I’m betting that you will as well.