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Retirement Secrets for the Retired and Soon-to-Be-Retired

Posted May 21, 2008 * Comments(0)
 

Retirement Living Image

Preparation for retirement living requires mental and spiritual planning more than most people realize. A long-term plan to achieve retirement goals has to be set if the retiree wants a meaningful and productive retirement. The degree to which the retiree plans beforehand how she is going to spend the bulk of her free time will determine how much fulfillment she experiences in retirement.

Gerontologist Ken Dychtwald, author of Age Power and arguably the foremost expert on aging and retirement in the United States, had this to say about the impact of poor planning: “The good news is that people are experiencing retirements that are long, fulfilling and exciting. The bad news is that many retirees will never experience their full potential during this life phase because of inadequate planning.”

I received the following letter from Dick Phillips of Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, after he read The Joy of Not Working. You will notice that Mr. Philips hasn’t left having a happy retirement to chance.

    Dear Mr. Zelinski:

    My wife Sandy and I were on an Air Canada flight to Vancouver this summer to commence a “Life of Riley” retirement holiday in your lovely country when a fellow female passenger introduced me to your book The Joy of Not Working.

    I later obtained a copy at Duthie’s Bookstore and read it when I returned home. (Riley did not allow time for reading on holidays.) I am fifty-four years of age and have worked since I was fifteen years old: first, as a fitter and turner apprentice, then as a seagoing-ships engineer before joining the County Police for a thirty-year career. Your book gives much sound advice, some I have been following for years. I have enjoyed developing interests outside work while still working. When I retired last November, I enjoyed the freedom to parcel up my time and develop interests which include hiking, cycling, old car restoration, model engineering, painting and D. I. Y. projects. You are right that a positive attitude to life in retirement is essential.

    In your book, you write about a fellow officer named Rich who, like me, retired in an enviable position but found life difficult. I hope he has now read your book, and he is developing that inner self that makes all things possible. Meanwhile, I am looking forward to next year, when I join a team building a large, wooden sailing ship for disabled people, and later finding time to revisit Canada.

    Regards to Riley,

    Dick Phillips

Above all, Mr. Philips emphasizes the importance of having to develop many interests outside of work when we are still working. He shows us that retirement can be highly rewarding if we plan ahead. Of course, developing new interests and setting new goals can still enhance our retirement years if we haven’t developed many interests in our working years. It may just be more difficult doing it this way. Some psychologists say that it’s hard to develop new interests at 65 after being interested in nothing but work and material things for over 40 years.

Strong interests in such things as music, travel, people, languages, music, and books are important. Ideally, these interests should be shaped and developed long before your retirement date so that you know which activities you truly enjoy. Generally speaking, leisure activities that fulfill you during your working years are likely to fulfill you in retirement.

Real success at handling leisure will result in a happy retirement and truly enjoying the advantages of retirement. Indeed, retirement planning secrets aren’t all that secret.

    Retirement Planning Tips 

    • Establish a good work/life balance many years before you retire and zealously maintain it — refrain from working on weekends.
    • Maintain optimum health while you are working.
    • Be open to learning new things at work and in your personal life.
    • Have a major life purpose other than your work so that you have a purpose when you take early retirement.
    • Develop close friendships removed from your workplace. Maintain — i.e. don’t neglect — your true friends so that they are still around when you retire.
    • Learn how to handle freedom. A good way is to become self-employed for at least a year or two before retirement.
    • Accept that money will buy style and comfort, but it won’t buy you happiness.
    • Spend a lot of time alone while learning how to enjoy solitude.
    • Indulge in regular strenuous exercise so that you will be physically fit and able to enjoy retirement activities.
    • Take all your paid vacation time so that you learn how to be more leisurely.
    • Travel a lot. People who don’t get to enjoy travel before retirement seldom develop a liking for it after retirement.
    • Don’t allow your identity to be tied to your job.
    • Find many ways to connect with the world.
    • Take an unexpected day off work, and ensure that you loaf it all away to experience what it’s like to be a member of the leisure class.
    • Take a pre-retirement course that deals with the personal issues and not only the financial issues.

Above all, don’t put off being happy until you retire. People who have tried this realize that they have waited too long. The ability to be happy before you retire — regardless of your financial circumstances — is the key to having a happy retirement.

According to a TD Waterhouse study only 15 percent of indiviudals are “completely living out their retirement dreams.” Lack of planning appears to be one reason for this.

Surprisingly, the best part of retirement is simple pleasures, say the retirees. Spending time with family and engaging in hobbies also are satisfying as is volunteering.

Retirement Quotes and Retirement Sayings — Advice on How to Retire Happy

Stay busy [when you retire]. If you are going to sit on the couch and watch TV, you are going to die.
— Bill Chavanne

Preparation for old age should begin not later than one’s teens. A life which is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.
— Arthur E. Morgan

Don’t act your age [in retirement]. Act like the inner young person you have always been.
— J. A. West

Retirement Quotes and Retirement Sayings — Advice on Whether to Take Early Retirement

Before deciding to take early retirement from your job, stay home a week and watch daytime television.
— Unknown wise person

We have no porch, no rocking chair — and no time. My biggest need is a calendar because there are so many things to do. Now I encourage people to retire — the younger the better.
— Maurice Musholt

Everyone who does not work has a scheme that does.
— Munder’s Law

More Retirement Quotes and Retirement Sayings — Advice on How to Retire Happy
Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
More Retirement Quotes and Retirement Sayings — Advice on Whether to Take Early Retirement

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
— Walter Gagehot

When is the right age to retire? When you dread going to work.
— Mary Bright

NOTE; For more retirement quotes see:

The 237 Best Things Ever Said about Retirement by Ezines Author Ernie Zelinski

and

Importance of Money in Retirement (Quotes and Sayings) by Vipbooks Author Ernie Zelinski 

Note: The above letter along with many other retirement letters from retired people about how they are enjoying retirement have been included in the 21st Century Edition of Author Ernie Zelinski,’s international bestseller The Joy of Not Working: A Book for the Retired, Unemployed and Overworked (over 225,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages).

Ernie Zelinski’s Books under the Vipbooks and Ten Speed Press Author imprints have now sold over 500,000 copies worldwide.

    Top 10 Reasons to Buy and Read How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free

    1. You are ready to claim your freedom from corporate life.

    2. You want to follow your retirement dreams instead of someone else’s.

    3. As a spiritually and highly evolved human being you know that how to enjoy life to its fullest is much more important for creating an active, satisfying, and happy retirement than how much money you have saved.

    4. Many retirement columnists and retirement seminar presenters have ranted and raved about this book. For instance, retirement columnist Nancy Paradis of the St. Petersburg Times in Florida advises, “Get this book if you look forward to a retirement with ‘zing.’ ”

    5. With it’s great title and the inspirational subtile, this book makes the perfect gift for the soon-to-be retired friend or for the person retiring at the office.

    6. You agree that “Retirement is the beginning of life, not the end.”

    7. You have put money in proper perspective so that you don’t need a million dollars to retire.

    8. You want to generate great purpose in your entire retirement life with meaningful, creative pursuits.

    9. You like finding extremely useful information about retirement such as The Get-a-Life Tree that you won’t find in any other book, but which is acclaimed by people who have read How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free.

    10. Above all, you want to make your retirement years the best years of your life.

From The Strebel Planning Group, New York
“With a focus on the non-financial aspects of
retirement, How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free explores the myriad choices and decisions we’re all confronted with in living out our lives. Such as, pondering the pros and cons of remaining at your present job; changing jobs or changing careers; taking an early retirement; delaying retirement; never retiring; or semi-retiring. Clearly, from Mr. Zelinski’s point of view, staying in a less than satisfying job for the sake of some distant future payoff is enormously risky to the health and well being of your life. A mistake like that cannot be fixed since you cannot go back in time to change your decisions.”

Retirement Gift Book

OVER 90,000 Copies SOLD
PUBLISHED IN 7 FOREIGN LANGUAGES

Purchase How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free on Amazon.com before you submit your retirement letter with this direct link:

How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free on Amazon.com

Purchase How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free on Amazon.com before you submit your retirement letter with this direct link:

Vipbooks by Ernie Zelinski on The Library Thing

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Magical Mother’s Day Reminder #2 - Mother’s Day Flowers, Mother’s Day Cards, and Other Mother’s Day Gifts Are Not the True Essence of Mother’s Day

Posted May 9, 2008 * Comments(0)

Anna May Jarvis - Mothers Day Image

Photo of Anna May Jarvis - Founder of Mother’s Day

As much as I loved my mother Violet Zelinski, it will come as a surprise to some people that over the years I didn’t buy her Mother’s Day flowers, Mother’s Day cards, or Mother’s Day candy for Mother’s Day. I did buy her dinner, however, and spent quality time with her every Mother’s Day. Perhaps you should do likewise every Mother’s Day. 

Truth be known, you don’t have to feel guilty about not buying Mother’s Day gifts, Mother’s Day flowers, or Mother’s Day cards to help your mother celebrate Mother’s Day. Not buying your mother cards, flowers, or candy to help her celebrate this special event is not about being stingy and saving yourself a few bucks, however. There is a much better reason. We have to go back to the origins of Mother’s Day to place this in proper perspective.

Anna May Jarvis was just two weeks shy of forty-two, working for a life insurance company in Philadelphia, when her mother (Mrs. Anna Reese Jarvis) died on May 9, 1905. It was the second Sunday of the month. The next year Anna May Jarvis made her life goal to see her mother and motherhood honored annually throughout the world. Jarvis felt children often neglected to appreciate their mother enough while she was still alive. She hoped Mother’s Day would increase respect for parents and strengthen family bonds.

Two years after her mother’s death, Anna Jarvis and her friends began a letter-writing campaign to gain the support of influential ministers, businessmen, and congressmen in declaring a national Mother’s Day holiday. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation from the U.S. Congress to establish the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day forevermore.

Ironically, the commercialization of the day she had founded in honor of motherhood - today it is the biggest business day of the year for U.S. restaurants and flower shops - was not what Anna May Jarvis had envisioned. Jarvis wanted people to spend a lot of quality time with their mothers and let their mothers know how special they were.

Sadly, Jarvis, who never married and was never a mother herself, retired from her job at the insurance company to spend her remaining thirty-four years, and her entire fortune of over $100,000, campaigning against the commercialization of Mother’s Day.

Whenever she could, Anna May Jarvis would speak out. She was known to crash florists’ conventions to express her distaste for their “profiteering” from Mother’s Day. Eventually too old to continue her campaign, she ended up deaf and blind - not to mention penniless - in a West Chester, Pennsylvania, sanitarium, where she died in November 1948 at the age of eighty-four.

“Why not give your mother Mother’s Day flowers, Mother’s Day cards, or Mother’s Day candy?” you may ask. “Flowers,” declared Jarvis, “are about half dead by the time they’re delivered.” As for candy, Jarvis advised, “Mother’s Day has nothing to do with candy. Candy is junk. You give your mother a box of candy and then go home and eat most of it yourself.”

“Then what’s wrong with Mother’s Day cards?” you may add. Jarvis felt that “a maudlin, insincere printed card or a ready-made telegram means nothing except that you’re too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone else in the world.”

Tell your mother the truth about Mother’s Day and you won’t have to spend money on Mother’s Day flowers, Mother’s Day candy, or Mother’s Day cards to help her celebrate her special event of the year. Heck, you don’t even have to buy her a copy of one of my books as a Mother’s Day gift. You should, however, make her a special gourmet dinner or take her out to a fine restaurant. Don’t cheap out!

Most important, you should spend a lot of quality time with your mother on Mother’s Day. She will appreciate this immensely. What’s more, if she were still living today, Anna May Jarvis would be so pleased that you celebrate the second Sunday of May with your mother in the essence and the true spirit of Mother’s Day!

Some Statistics Regarding Mother’s Day - Why Mothers Day Needs Rethinking

  • In the United States, there are about 82.5 million mothers. (source: US Census Bureau)
  • According to Hallmark, about 96 percnet of American consumers take part in some way in Mother’s Day.
  • Mother’s Day is one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions.
  • According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother’s Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.
  • Retailers report that Mother’s Day is the second highest gift-giving holiday in the United States (Christmas is the highest).
  • Different countries celebrate Mother’s Day on various days of the year because the day has a number of different origins.
  • In most countries, Mother’s Day is a new concept copied from western civilization.
  • Nine years after the first official Mother’s Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis - who was most instrumental in the founding of Mother’s Day - herself became a major opponent of Mother’s Day Flowers, Mother’s Day Candy, Mother’s Day Cards, and Mother’s Day Gifts.
NOTE: The above article is adapted from the chapter called Flowers, Cards, and Candy Are Not the Essence of Mother’s Day! in the book 101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting (Vipbooks, 2007) by Ernie Zelinski. The book is dedicated to Ernie’s mother Violet Zelinski (Waselyna Gordychuk) who passed away while Ernie was writing the latest edition of the book. 

Following are four photos of Ernie’s mother Violet Zelinski:

Mother's Day Image - Violet Zelinski

Mothers Day Image of Violet Zelinski

Mother's Day Violet Zelinski

Violet Zelinski 

    #1 of Top-Ten Quotes about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day 

    Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn,
    Hundreds of bees in the purple clover,
    Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn,
    But only one mother the wide world over.
    - George Cooper

    #2 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.
    - Honoré de Balzac

    #3 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all.
    - Washington Irving

    #4 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    My mother is a poem
    I’ll never be able to write,
    though everything I write
    is a poem to my mother.
    - Sharon Doubiago

    #5 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.
    - George Herbert

    #6 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    There’s nothing like a mama-hug.
    - Adabella Radici

    #7 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    Who ran to help me when I fell,
    And would some pretty story tell,
    Or kiss the place to make it well?
    My mother.
    - Ann Taylor

    #8 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    Mother - that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.
    - T. DeWitt Talmage

    #9 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
    - William Makepeace Thackeray

    #10 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    I miss thee, my Mother! Thy image is still
    The deepest impressed on my heart.
    - Eliza Cook

Also See The True Spirit of Mother’s Day and Thank Your Mother a Lot While She Is Still Alive!

Download the Free E-book of 101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting with 17 free chapters at Ernie Zelinski’s Creative Free E-Books Website.

Mothers Day Gift Image

Purchase 101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting (Vipbooks) at:

or:

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Magical Mothers Day Reminder - Thank Your Mother a Lot While She Is Still Alive!

Posted May 9, 2008 * Comments(0)
Regardless of their age, the large majority of mothers care for their children in a thousand little ways that their children tend to take for granted. Unfortunately, most of us don’t realize how much our mothers mean to us until they are no longer around. We may thank them on Mother’s Day with a card and some Mother’s Day flowers and that is about all. Of course, there are many people who truly appreciate their mothers and express their gratitude for them.   

Given that my mother Violet Zelinski passed away while I was writing 101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting (Vipbooks, 2007), from which this article is excerpted, allow me to share how I never got to express my love and appreciation for her as much as I would have liked. On the first Sunday of February 2007 I was contemplating whether I should go to a musical performance at our local jazz club. I gave consideration to the fact that on the previous Sunday I had not visited my mother, which I had done virtually every Sunday for almost twenty years. Thus, I decided to skip the musical performance.

I picked up some items from a local supermarket deli and headed over to my mother’s apartment. This particular Sunday my sister, Elaine, and her husband, Lorne, also showed up and we had an enjoyable dinner together. Later I noticed that my mother was wheezing after she climbed a flight of stairs. She also complained about how her legs had gotten really stiff lately.

Even so, I would later find out that my mother told others that she had a great day, because my sister, my brother-in-law, and I had visited her. What’s more, earlier in the day, just as my mother was about to call my brother, Kenny, she received a call from him. The call was special to my mother because my brother lives outside the city and only visted her once or twice a year.

As it turned out, this was the last Sunday dinner that I enjoyed with my mother. You can imagine how fortunate I felt that I had skipped the musical performance. Two days later I called my mother to ask her how she was doing. She complained of severe headaches that wouldn’t respond to Tylenol. Later in the evening my sister and her husband drove my mother to the hospital. The doctors decided to keep her for two or three days because of her low oxygen level but they didn’t think it was anything serious.

On Wednesday afternoon when I visited my mother at the hospital, I was stunned to find out that the doctors had diagnosed her with acute leukemia. The head doctor indicated that she could live for several months if they gave her blood transfusions and chemo drugs along with morphine. Needless to say, I left the hospital in somewhat of a daze.

That evening I decided that I would visit my mother at least once every day until she passed away. I also decided to get a nice black book in which I would write down all the special things that I wanted to thank her for. I was also going to encourage other people to write in the black book all the things that they liked about my mother.

As fate would have it, the next day my mother took a turn for the worse. The doctor phoned early in the morning and indicated she had only a few days left with her likely losing mental capabilities in a day or two. Soon after I got to the hospital, I decided that I should bring my mother’s best friend, Mary Leshchyshyn, to see my mother one last time while she still had her mental capabilities. After I brought Mary to the hospital, she and my mother were able to spend half an hour together while the rest of us went for coffee.

When we got back to my mother’s hospital room, I noticed that my mother had gotten worse and was gasping for oxygen. At this point I felt that she might not last more than a day. So I immediately thanked my mother for two or three important things that she had done for me. She responded - as she struggled for oxygen - by thanking me specifically for having come over every Sunday. (At this point I truly realized how much my weekly visits meant to her.) I also told my mother that the reason that I had never married was that I had never met a wonderful woman like her.

Shortly after, my mother’s best friend, Mary, stated that my mother looked really tired and that she should go home to let my mother rest. My mother was able to say a few more words to Mary including “Don’t get what I got.” Mary’s last words to my mother were “See you later.” I would find out soon after from my sister that my mother whispered, “Oh no, you won’t.” But Mary didn’t hear these words.

Sadly, while I was driving Mary back to her apartment, my mother passed away. My sister, Elaine, and her husband, Lorne; my cousin, Jerry, and his wife, Lil; and the hospital chaplain, Blaine Allan, were there with her and said a prayer while she passed away. Surprisingly, my mother at eighty-five had her mental capabilities and even a great memory right until her last minutes, given that she was giving instructions to my sister about the funeral, including the dress she wanted to be wearing and how she wanted her head tilted just a bit in the coffin instead of straight up.

Later that morning, when my sister arrived, my mother told her, “I’m done.” My sister responded, “What are you talking about?” My mother replied, “I lost the stone from my family ring. It’s gone so that means that I am gone too.” My mother was so sweet and so strong during her last hours. Even the hospital staff talked about the deep affection they had developed for her during her short stay in the hospital.

As hard as my mother’s death was on me, there was something remarkably spiritual about it. There were also a few things for which I had to feel grateful. My mother did not have to suffer for a long time like so many people do in their later years. I was thankful that Elaine, Lorne, Jerry, Lil, and Blaine were there with her to say a prayer when she passed away. I also felt relieved that%u2008I had brought Mary to the hospital so that she and my mother got to spend half an hour together before my mother left us rather unexpectedly that day.

After I left the hospital that fateful afternoon, I felt blessed that I was able to see my mother her last day and thank her for at least two or three special things that she had done for me. But I was also terribly saddened that I did not get to give her a hundred more reasons why she had meant so much to me. So I wrote a letter to my mother, which follows this photo of her in her twenties:

Mothers Day Image

    February 8, 2007   

    Dear Mom:

    I am so saddened that you left us rather suddenly while knowing that in many ways it was the right thing for you to do. I am sorry that I was not there when you passed on but I know that you appreciate that I brought your best friend Mary to see you one last time and I know that Mary appreciated having the chance to see you one last time. Unfortunately, while I was driving Mary back to her home, you left us but Elaine, Lorne, Lil, Jerry, and Blaine were there with you.

    I will miss you. I hope that we meet in Heaven. I know that from the way you treated me and the way you treated others - and how much they held you in great esteem and admiration - that you have an outstanding chance of entering Heaven - far greater than me, that’s for sure. But I will remember the great things that people loved about you and try to instill as many of your great qualities in myself as I can from now on. Perhaps I will get into Heaven as easily as you.

    Because you left rather suddenly, there are so many things that I wanted to thank you for but didn’t get a chance. Here are just some of the things I wanted to thank you for:

    • Thank you for having stuck by my side so many times and gotten yourself in trouble with Dad when he thought I should be doing something else with my life.
    • Thank you for lending me the money to publish my first book although, as you said when I was paying you back, you thought you would never see the money again.
    • Thank you for making a prompt decision around eight years ago to sell your house and move into the St Andrew’s Retirement Complex - I know that your living in the apartment complex rather than continuing living isolated in the house added several years to your life - and of course joy in other people’s lives.
    • Thank you for still making the great cabbage rolls this last Christmas that you made all these years even though you had been quite ill just before the holidays.
    • Thank you for having taken care of your best friend Mary by buying groceries for her when she couldn’t make it out on her own due to her low energy level.
    • Thank you for having had the ability to always be so pleasant with everyone that you met.
    • Thank you for your appreciation of other people - I can’t recall your ever having said a bad word about anyone.

    I could go on forever about the things that I would like to thank you for, but I just want to wrap it up by saying I am somewhat mystified - but nevertheless proud of you - for being able to live to the age of eighty-five in generally good health and then make a fairly rapid exit from this planet without having to suffer like so many people do. Great work, Mom!

    But I am going to miss you a great deal. Not having the regular Sunday dinners as we have for so many years and not having someone special to phone every day or two are going to be hard on me.
    I promise to think of you as I live the rest of my life. I will give much thought every day about the types of things you would have wanted me to do and how you would have liked me to treat other people. I know that this will make me a much better person and I hope that I will have as many great people mourn my paspassing from this planet as will come to mourn yours.

    Thank you, Mom

    With all my love

    Ernie

I placed this letter under my mother’s arm in the coffin when members of my close family and I visited the funeral home to pay our respects the day before the funeral. The next day, after I read a copy of the letter as the eulogy during the funeral service conducted by Father Don Bodnar, a good friend of mine commented that this is the type of letter we should all write to our mothers while they are still living.

To be sure, you should thank your mother a lot for all that she means to you while she is still alive - not only with letters but also with thoughtful comments every time you see her. Clearly, your mother deserves much more than a card, flowers, or candy once a year on Mother’s Day. Why not send her a handwritten letter at least once a month? Start today because you never know when she may lose her life suddenly.

“All that I am or ever hope to be,” remarked Abraham Lincoln, “I owe to my angel Mother.” George Washington declared, “I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual, and physical education which I received from my mother.” Jewish people have a proverb about mothers that is even more eloquent: “God could not be everywhere and therefore He made mothers.”

Here are a few words from Washington Irving to remind us a little more about how important mothers are to us: “A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.”

I was fortunate that I saw my mother fifteen to twenty minutes before she passed away and was able to at least thank her for a few things. I am also blessed that I get to dedicate this book to her and will have her name live on at least in some small spiritual way due to me - and, of course, due to the great person that she was. You may not get these same opportunities. So again, thank your mother a lot while she is still alive - and not only on Mother’s Day. Trust me - you will deeply regret it later if you don’t.

    #1 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day  

    A little girl, asked where her home was, replied, “where mother is.”
    - Keith L. Brooks

    #2 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.
    - Oliver Wendell Holmes

    #3 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends - but only one mother in the whole world.
    - Kate Douglas Wiggin

    #4 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    If I was damned of body and soul,
    I know whose prayers would make me whole,
    Mother o’ mine, O mother o’mine.
    - Rudyard Kipling

    #5 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    My mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart - a heart so large that everybody’s joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation.
    - Mark Twain

    #6 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    No painter’s brush, nor poet’s pen
    In justice to her fame
    Has ever reached half high enough
    To write a mother’s name.
    - Author Unknown

    #7 Quote about Moms and Mothers for Mother’s Day

    No one in the world can take the place of your mother. Right or wrong, from her viewpoint you are always right. She may scold you for little things, but never for the big ones.
    - Harry Truman
     

 

NOTE: The above article is adapted from the chapter called Thank Your Mother a Lot While She Is Still Alive! in the book 101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting (Vipbooks)by Ernie Zelinski. The book is dedicated to Ernie’s mother Violet Zelinski (Waselyna Gordychuk) who passed away while Ernie was writing the latest edition of the book.

Following is a photo of Ernie’s mother Violet Zelinski (on right) with her best friend Mary Leshchyshyn:

Mothers Day Image of Violet Zelinski and Mary Leschyshyn

About the Author   

Ernie J. Zelinski is a leading authority on early retirement and solo-entrepreneurship. He is the author of the international bestseller How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free (Retirement Wisdom That You Won’t Get from Your Financial Advisor), which has sold over 90,000 copies sold and has been published in 7 foreign languages.

Ernie is also author of the unconventional Real Success Without a Real Job (The Career Book for People Too Smart to Work in Corporations). His latest work is 101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting.

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Unemployment Is Good for You - Sometimes, the More the Better

Posted April 16, 2008 * Comments(0)

If You Recently Got Laid Off or Fired from Your Job, Your Good Luck Has Just Begun! 

Whenever friends or acquaintances tell me that they have either got fired or quit their conventional jobs, my response is, “Congratulations.” After I said this to a friend who quit his job during an economic recession not so long ago, his face lit up, before he started laughing and remarked, “You are the only one who has said this to me. Everyone else is asking me things like ‘How could you during a recession? Jobs are so hard to come by!’ or ‘How are you going to survive?’ ”

I congratulate people who have quit or lost their jobs because I know that for people who want real success in their lives, unemployment is an opportunity for them to go on to something better. In fact, if you have been in the workforce for over twenty years and have never gotten fired and experienced unemployment, you are likely not a risk taker or all that creative.

Indeed, some of the most creative and famous people in the world have got fired. In 1978 Lee Iacocca was fired from his job as president of Ford Motor Company by Henry Ford II, who told Iacocca, “I just don’t like you.” Soon after, Iacocca became the chief of bankrupt Chrysler Corporation and made it profitable for years.

No doubt, getting fired and being faced with unemployment can be distressing, as it was for me when I got axed from my engineering position over two and a half decades ago. But it wouldn’t have been distressing at all if I had known at the time that I was destined for much greater things. Indeed, if I had known where I would be twenty-five years later — experiencing career success without a real job — I would have been profusely thanking my boss the second he fired me. What’s more, I would have had a celebration that day as expensive and as big as I had twenty-five years later in honor of my twenty-five years without a real job.

As an author and occasional professional speaker specializing in helping people be happy away from the traditional workplace, I have had an interest in good quotations about work and the workplace. It naturally follows that interesting anonymous comments about the workplace in the form of graffiti also get my attention. Thus, I put together a collection called Graffiti for the Employee’s Soul. (It’s free — just like all the other best things in life! You can download the e-book in PDF format at Creative Free E-books ) The following twelve items come from the e-book:

Workplace Graffiti to Remind You of the Typical Workplace
  • Working here is a nightmare. You want to wake up and leave but you need the sleep.
  • I owe. I owe. And off to work I go.
  • The thought of suicide has helped me get through many days at work.
  • Teamwork magically inspires our group to come up with solutions that are consistently and considerably dumber than any one of us.
  • My job is a big secret. Even I don’t know what I am doing.
  • As long as we continue to work here, happiness is just an idea.
  • Can I trade this job for what’s behind door Number 2?
  • I’m just working here till a good fast-food job opens up.
  • Like to meet new people? Like a change? Like excitement? Like a new job? Then screw up
    just one more time!
  • Around here, “progress” is everything getting worse at a slower rate than it used to.
  • I just took a self-improvement course and discovered I no longer need to punish, deceive, or compromise myself — unless I want to keep my job.
  • My work cubicle is just a padded cell without a door. I want my freedom and I want it now.

If you have just been fired from your job and are considering another job like it, the above comments may motivate you to consider something different that will lead to real career fulfillment. Whenever you catch yourself yearning for the benefits that your old job provided, it’s best to look at the other side of the coin. It’s like reminiscing about an old love affair. We tend to remember the good things much more so than the bad ones. So when you feel a little dejected because you miss the routine of your old job, consider all the things that you didn’t like about the job.

The reality is that many hugely successful people have been fired at one time or another — sometimes several times — and gone on to better things. Most of these people admit that getting the ax placed them on a fast track toward career fulfillment. Indeed, it was the best thing that ever happened to them. For some, losing a job was the incentive they needed to open their own shop so that they didn’t need to work at a job they hate ever again.

Years after working at an occupation that he hated, Leonard Lee, owner of Ottawa-based Lee Valley Tools and Algrove Publishing, told a reporter with The Globe and Mail, “No amount of money is worth doing a job you hate. It rots your soul. It destroys you.” So why do so many work at a job they hate if it destroys their souls? Who knows? Perhaps they don’t value their souls.

Many people do value their souls, however, and are not willing to sell out to the corporate world ever again once they get fired. Instead, they pass up even the most prestigious and high-paid positions, often for much less prestigious unreal jobs and lower pay, so that they can avoid working for a corporation.

Getting fired along with unemployment, as I found out, is the universe’s way of telling you that you were in the wrong job in the first place. It is also the universe’s way of testing you to see whether you can take advantage of the adversity that comes with unemployment and create some opportunity out of it, such as starting your own business. Put another way, unemployment is an opportunity to develop real character and true wealth.

If you are up to the universe’s challenge, miracles will come your way. Money isn’t as important as you may think it is. Many multimillion dollar businesses were started on kitchen tables. Passion, purpose, and dedication will take you places where money won’t.

The reality is that great corporate jobs are hard to come by in today’s world anyway. “The traditional admonition of one generation to the next, ‘get a job,’ has been replaced with a more complex mandate: ‘Go out and create a job for yourself,’ ” George Gendron, editor of Inc. magazine, recently told Publisher’s Weekly.

Being fired is an opportunity to create a job for yourself instead of finding another corporation that has a ready-made job for you, from which you can be just as easily fired some time in the future. A corporation can take away your job and your job title but it can’t take away your talent and creativity. By firing you, the corporation may be doing you a great favor inasmuch as you now have an opportunity to fully utilize your creativity and talent.

Getting fired is a great opportunity to rethink where you are, what your priorities are, what’s important to you, and whether or not you are in the right career. Getting another corporate job may only result in treating the symptoms — damage control, in other words. It has been my experience that the best way to fully utilize one’s creativity and talent is to shun a real job and create one’s own unreal job. If you can be successful at an unconventional job that involves self-employment, you won’t get fired ever again because you are the boss. Above all, getting fired is a great opportunity to pursue the unreal job that you have dreamed about pursuing for some time.

So again, don’t look at unemployment as all that bad of a thing. Your good luck may have just begun, particularly if you decide to make the great escape from the corporate world to pursue something totally unrelated to the field in which you were. You may feel that you have touched bottom, when, in fact, you are already headed upward. In the words of motivational speaker Zig Ziglar, “See you at the top.”

Note: This article is adapted from the book: Real Success Without a Real Job: The Career Book for People Too Smart to Work in Corporations by Ernie Zelinski

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Purchase this book at: Real Success Without a Real Job on Amazon.com 

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Planning for an Early Retirement - Get Real!

Posted April 16, 2008 * Comments(0)
Here are some important facts to consider if you are planning an early retirement:  

1. Roughly half of all working Americans don’t participate in a retirement plan or don’t have an employer-sponsored plan in which to participate.

2. A huge number of adult Americans - by one estimate 150 million of a potential 200 million - aren’t saving for retirement in any meaningful way, if at all.

3. Dave Ramsey, a personal-finance expert and talk-radio host, cited a recent poll in which 80 percent of Americans said they believed their standard of living would go up at retirement.

4. “Our culture today tells us that we deserve to have everything we want because we can charge it,” Dave Ramsey says. “Previous generations thought you could only have something if you could pay for it. Their lifestyles were much simpler, and retirement was a time to simplify even more.”

5. Many Americans are counting on Social Security has helped lower cases of poverty among the elderly in the USA, but it stands on unstable financial ground.

6. The average total income for those 65 and older in America is $25,610, and the median is a meager $16,770, according to EBRI Notes, a publication of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. That means retirees are living on roughly one-third of their pre-retirement incomes. And that’s a far cry from the 70% to 80% that income replacement experts suggest Americans need to maintain their pre-retirement standards of living.

Five Retirement Sayings and Retirement Quotes about Earning Money to Help Your Retirement Planning
Money will appear when you are doing the right thing in your life.
- Michael Phillips  

I believe that the power to make money is a gift from God.
- John D. Rockefeller

Rise early. Work late. Strike oil.
- J. Paul Getty

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau

It’s no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want is to make a lot of money.
- Everett Sloane in the movie Citizen Kane

To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
- George Bernard Shaw

Other Retirement Resources
Retirement Letters on Squidoo by Ernie Zelinski  

The Retirement Letters Cafe by Ernie Zelinski

Retirement Quotes Cafe Blog by Ernie Zelinski

For your sample retirement speech you way want to check out:

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The Dynamic Retirement Plan for Pessimists and High Achievers

Posted January 3, 2008 * Comments(0)
Clearly, retirement can be a challenging life transition, either financially or personally. Many people have lots of time on their hands, but way too little money. Others have lots of money, but don’t know what to do with their time.
In this regard, Samuel Johnson declared, “Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.” Read more »

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Retirement Planning Tip - Spend Many Pre-Retirement Days Thinking about What You Want to Do

Posted December 28, 2007 * Comments(0)
Although retiree Pat O’Brien of East Haddam, Connecticut occasionally misses the stimulation of work, she is as active as she could be. Eighteen months after O’Brien retired from her proofreading job for a law firm in Stamford, Connecticut, she told a U.S. News Reporter, “The biggest surprise is I just don’t know where the time goes.”
Regardless of the bad press that retirement often gets, many people such as Pat O’Brien don’t have trouble filling their days when they retire. O’Brien, 65, is joined in retirement by her husband, Jim, 70. She is active in the local historical society, a church group, a women’s exercise club, and the American Legion. “It’s been very enjoyable for me,” stated Pat.
According to the survey conducted by AIG SunAmerica, the people most likely to enjoy retirement are those who have planned for it. This is borne out by the fact that 78 percent of people who prepare for retirement both financially and psychologically view it as “a whole new life” or a “continuation of life as it was.”
If you are not presently retired, it’s important to spend many preretirement days thinking about what you want to do when you walk out of your workplace for the last time. All too often, people put off things too long. As 71-year-old Florida retiree Howard Salzmann stated, “If you didn’t learn how to live before you reach 65, it’s very difficult to teach you how to live afterwards.”
#1 Quote of First Top-Ten List of Retirement Quotes
Retire from work, but not from life.
— M. K. Soni
#2 Quote of First Top-Ten List of Retirement Quotes
The key to retirement is to find joy in the little things.
— Susan Miller
#3 Quote of First Top-Ten List of Retirement Quotes
The best time to start thinking about your retirement is before your boss does.
— Unknown wise person
#4 Quote of First Top-Ten List of Retirement Quotes
I never stopped doing anything [when I retired], I stopped getting paid for it.
— Bill Chavanne
#5 Quote of First Top-Ten List of Retirement Quotes
Retirement is the beginning of life, not the end.
— from the international bestseller How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free
#6 Quote of First Top-Ten List of Retirement Quotes
The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.
— Abe Lemons
#7 Quote of First Top-Ten List of Retirement Quotes
There is life after retirement, and it is BETTER.
— Catherine Pulsifer.
#8 Quote of First Top-Ten List of Retirement Quotes
I never stopped doing anything [when I retired], I stopped getting paid for it.
— Bill Chavanne
#9 Quote of First Top-Ten List of Retirement Quotes
Hang in there, retirement is only thirty years away!
— Workplace graffiti
#10 Quote of First Top-Ten List of Retirement Quotes
The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.
— Abe Lemons
 
Note: The above retirement quotes and retirement sayings are adapted from:

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The Best Country in Which to Take Early Retirement

Posted December 18, 2007 * Comments(0)
Have you wondered which country is the best one for taking early retirement? The most generous country has to be Brazil, where the average resident retires at 49, and many people retire with benefits of 100 percent or more of their salary.
What makes Brazil’s government pension plan so generous is that it is based on the notion of “time served” with no minimum age for retirement. (Brazil along with Iran and Iraq are the only three countries in the world that don’t have a minimum retirement age for collecting a government pension.) Thus, two-thirds of Brazilian civil servants retire younger than 55 and 14 percent retire before they turn 45.
If you satisfy certain conditions, however, you can retire much earlier than 49 with a generous life-time government pension. Take, for example, a farmhand who recently hung up his work clothes at the age of 33. Having satisfied government auditors that he had started working at 3 years old, he will receive a nice pension until he dies, even if he gets another job and retires again.
All told, the great benefit for work-detesting Brazilians who take early retirement is that their retirements can last much longer than their careers. Moreover, they collect a nice pension to help them live in style.
What will I do with myself when I retire? When I quit my job, I do not want to quit living. Can I possibly be of use when retirement day comes, or will I just be taking up space?
— J. A. West
I’m not in retirement. I just don’t want to work so much, and I don’t get that many offers any more.
— Max von Sydow
He who laughs last at the boss’s jokes probably isn’t far from retirement.
— Unknown wise person
When I retire I’m going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.
— Richard Milhouse Nixon
Don’t wait for retirement to be happy and really start living. Invariably, people who try this find out that they have waited much too long.
Note: Adapted from the Free E-Book The 237 Best Things Ever Said about Retirement by Ernie J. Zelinski available on the Creative Free E-Books Webpage at the Real Success Resource Center.

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