About The Joy of Not Working

The Joy of Not Working by Ernie Zelinski is all about learning to live every part of your life — employment, unemployment, retirement living, and leisure time alike — to the fullest. You too can join the thousands of converts and learn to thrive at both work and play. Illustrated by eye-opening exercises, thought-provoking diagrams, and lively cartoons and retirement quotes, The Joy of Not Working will guide you to enjoy life like never before.

The Joy of Not Working is an international bestseller that has sold over 225,000 copies and has been published in 17 languages.

Top 10 Reasons to Read The Joy of Not Working

1. You are more independent and more creative than most people.
2. You were born a lover of life and not a workaholic.
3. You don't want the cheese; you just want to get out of the trap.
4. You like books that are reader friendly with lots of cartoons, quotations, and exercises.
5. You like books that make you smile and challenge traditional ways of living and thinking and have a lot of retirement quotes and retirement sayings in them.
6. You agree with the words of Bertrand Russell: "To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the best product of civilization."
7. You are receptive to the concept that we can achieve more if we relax, enjoy life more, forget about what the majority in society thinks is important, and focus on the things that really matter.
8. Your parents and co-workers will not approve of your adopting this book as your lifestyle Bible.
9. You know a good deal when you see one — if a book has been published in 17 languages in 20 different countries and has sold over 225,000 copies, it must have great value.
10. You know something important that the hard workers of this world don't know: the secret to a happy and fulfilling life is to work smart and not hard.

One of several free retirement gifts (in PDF format) on the Downloadable Free E-Books Webpage at the Real Success Resource Center, The E-book version of of The Joy of Not Working contains the Table of Contents, the Preface, and Chapter 1.

The Joy of Not Working is mentioned on the Reader's Comments on Steve Weber's Plug Your Book.

Six Money Quotes

Although money can’t buy happiness, sooner or later you will likely want a measure of financial freedom that adds to your feeling of overall freedom and the feeling of prosperity that comes with it. What will help you acquire a great measure of financial freedom is the golden touch with money. Mastery of money is not something with which we are born. Like creativity, it is something we can learn.

Six Retirement Quotes and Retirement Sayings on How to Spend Your Money Wisely in Retirement

Better a good dinner than a fine coat.
— French proverb

The money you enjoy spending frivolously to enhance your retirement is money well spent.
— from How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free: The World's Best Retirement Book

Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut.
— Daniel S. Greenberg

Don't buy expensive socks if you can never find them.
— Unknown wise person

It's a wise man who lives with money in the bank; it's a fool who dies that way.
— French proverb

Retirement is like a long vacation in Las Vegas. The goal is to enjoy it the fullest, but not so fully that you run out of money.
— Jonathan Clements


Note: These Money and Retirement Quotes are Adapted from The Retirement Quotes Café Website and Retirement Quotes and Retirement Sayings at The Joy of Not Working by Ernie J. Zelinski

General Retirement Planning Wisdom

Retirement Planning Wisdom — Preparation Is Key

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."

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Fun Ideas for Retirees

The item below was sent to me by George Fulmore, a San Francisco Bay resident who has reviewed many retirement books and loves my The Joy of Not Working, calling it the best retirement book ever written. (I disagree with George. I agree with the BarnesandNoble.com reviewer who called How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free the World's Best Retirement Book.)

Fun Ideas for Retirees

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting.

Well, for example, the other day I went downtown and into a shop. I was only there for about 5 minutes, and when I came out there was a cop writing out a parking ticket.I said to him, "Come on, man, how about giving a retired person a break?" He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him a "Nazi." He glared at me and wrote another ticket for having worn tires.

So I called him a "doughnut-eating Gestapo." He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he wrote a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more I abused him the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, I didn't care. I came downtown on the bus, and the car that he was putting the tickets on had a bumper sticker that said "Guliani in '08."

I try to have a little fun each day now that I'm retired. It's important to my health.

The Retirement Quotes Cafe Website

The Retiring Life

The Retiring Life

• 51% of retirees say retirement is better than expected.
• 26% of retirees say it is about the same.
• 19% of retirees say it is worse than expected.

Source: Retirement Confidence Survey

Latest Bio about Ernie Zelinski - Early Retirement Expert

Ernie Zelinski's books have now sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. Ernie has negotiated 94 book deals with publishers in 25 different countries.

He is presently transforming his projects The 777 Best Things Ever Said about Money (Japanese rights sold) and Life's Secret Handbook for Having Great Friends (French and Spanish rights sold) into Creative Free E-Books to be used as viral marketing tools for his other successful books.

Creative Free E-Books from The Real Success Resource Center:

• Free E-Book (in PDF Format) — 1001 Best Things Ever Said about Work (and the Workplace)
• Free E-book (in PDF Format) — 17 Chapters from 101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting
• Free E-book (in PDF Format) — Sample Chapter from Real Success Without a Real Job
  

Retirement Gifts from The Retirement Quotes Café:

• Retirement Gift #1 — Over Half of How to Retire Happy, Wild, & Free
• Retirement Gift #2 — The 237 Best Things Ever Said about Retirement
• Retirement Gift #3 — Sample Chapter from The Joy of Not Working

Major Retirement Planning Tip:

"Only seventeen more years of misery at my job," you may be thinking, "and I get to experience Pension Heaven." You may be right. There is no doubt that retirement can be the best time of our lives. The good news is that many more people enjoy retirement than those who don't.

Unfortunately, retirement often gets a bad rap from many media people and other individuals who themselves have not been able to successfully cope with their retirement plan. Fortunately, however, people who can't cope with retirement are in the minority.

"Retirement works out quite well for people," states Joel Savishinsky, a professor at Ithaca College. Savishinsky, author of Breaking the Watch, adds, "It is not the kind of trauma it has often been pictured in the past."

To be sure, most retired Americans who have implemented their retirement plans are enjoying themselves according to a survey by financial services firm AIG SunAmerica. Similarly, based on a recent survey conducted by Trimark Investment Management, most retired Canadians have no regrets about being retired. The Canadian retirees taking part in the survey claimed that a drop in stress and an increase in intellectual stimulation since they left the workplace are two big advantages of being retired.

A drop in stress and an increase in intellectual stimulation aren't the only advantages that people around the world get to experience when they retire. "Retirement has been very enjoyable for me," declares Pat O'Brien, 65, of East Haddam, Connecticut. "When it snows, I don't have to worry about getting on I-95 to go to work."

Mr. Yong Khin Chong, 56, of Singapore states that more time with his two grandchildren is the biggest perk of retirement. Indeed, after two years of retirement, he claimed that he still didn't have sufficient time to do the things that he would like to do. His retired wife, Madam Ku Lee Nor, also 56, added, ''I don't feel bored at all. It's only now that we have time to travel, read, do gardening, and exercise more regularly.''

The ability to make many choices is another benefit of leaving the work world. "You're free to rediscover who you really are," states retiree Lynn Nelson Paretta, a volunteer with a community service center in Springfield, Virginia. "You're free to go back and build on those aspects you perhaps did not have a chance to express when you were in the working world."

Bill Kalmar of Lake Orion, Michigan shares his love of retirement: "I am thoroughly enjoying retirement! The best part is observing my neighbors drive off to work in the morning knowing that that their day will be filled with jerks, brainless and endless meetings, jerks, vendor lunches where you hold your breath just waiting for the sales pitch until you regurgitate your pasta, more jerks and the eventual company reorganization of the section that was just reorganized last month!"

Clearly, retirement can be the best time of your life. Always keep in mind that you are not retiring from life, just a job. The key to a happy retirement is to make retirement the beginning of life, not the end!

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The 437 Best Things Ever Said about Retirement by Ernie J. Zelinski

Your Retirement Years

"Never think oldish thoughts," stated James A. Farley. "It's oldish thoughts that make a person old." Indeed, thinking young can help you to stay busily and happily involved in your so-called retirement years. Being productive well into your later years will enhance your self-esteem plus give you intellectual stimulation and social interaction. It is also a way to enrich the lives of others while enriching your own life at the same time.

Retirement Planning Tip - Rethink Your Retirement Plan for a Slower Life on the Coast

New retirement research released not so long ago from Queensland's Griffith University in Australia suggests that a move to the coast may not help retirees realize their dreams or retirement plan. Research team leader Michael Davies says city dwellers, adjusting to life after work, can find it difficult to relocate to a quieter place on the coast.

Dr Davies claims that people do not understand the shock that can come from leaving a busy work schedule and a network of friends to move to the beach. "Generally when you're looking at a transition like retirement you need to think a bit about what that change will mean for you," Dr Davies said.

"I guess for those who don't think long and hard about how they want to retire to maximise their opportunities and to maximise their lifestyle and well being, then I think there can be some problems."

Retirement Quotes and Retirement Sayings on Where to Life in Retirement

Retirement Planning for Japanese Housewives Made Just a Little Easier

The last year or two heralded the start of an era that Japanese housewives were dreading due to the lack of variety in the retirement plans of Japanese men according to the Australian. "The first wave of post-war baby boomers turns 60 next year and a huge generation of salarymen will be retiring. Women who have grown used to serenity of days without their noisy, smoking, hobby-obsessed husbands are now desperate for ways to maintain tranquility."

So Yamaha designed a wooden box that will help Japanese housewives with their retirement plans insofar as how to deal with their husbands when the husbands retire. No doubt retirement planning is important for housewives who don’t want their husbands in their hair all the time. The box can sit in a corner of the average-sized lounge and contain a husband or relative. MyRoom is 27 square feet, completely soundproofed, and can hold a desk, audio system or hobbyist workbench.

The Best Country to Take Early Retirement

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.

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.
— from the best-selling book How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free by Ernie Zelinski

Note: Adapted from the Free E-Book The 237 Best Things Ever Said about Retirement by Ernie Zelinski available on the Creative Free E-Books Webpage at the Real Success Resource Center.

Two Retirement Quotes

And here are the two retirement quotes for the day to help you with your retirement planning:

I have made enough faces.
— Greta Garbo (refusing to perform again)

By the age of 65, most of us have accomplished whatever work-related goals we are going to reach. If you haven't done it by then, chances are you aren't going to do it. Take the retirement, take the pension, take the Social Security, and sail off into the sunset.
— Sue Lasky

From The 237 Best Things Ever Said about Retirement by Ernie Zelinski

Five Great Reasons in Support of Taking Early Retirement

Retirement planning for a meaningful life after your work ends should start as early as possible. "Preparation for old age should begin not later than one's teens," declared Arthur E. Morgan.

If you are presently contemplating early retirement, it's important to spend many pre-retirement days thinking about what you want to do when you walk out of your workplace for the last time.

Here are 5 more reminders why retirement can be the best time of your life.

1. It’s easier to be spontaneous.
2. You don’t have to work through lunch hour.
3. You don’t have to take tedious business trips involving being away from home, overbooked flights, and being alone.
4. Life is less predictable from nine to five.
5. You can take a nap when the urge hits.
   

Again, retirement can be the best time of your life. Always keep in mind that you are not retiring from life, just a job. The key is to make retirement the beginning of life, not the end!

Retirement Quotes in Support of Early Retirement