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Why Wait Till Retirement To Retire

This article has been submitted by a GrownUps member. GrownUps accepts no liability for its content and the views and information contained within are not necessarily those of the GrownUps website.

Two years ago I made the huge decision to retire from the regular workforce at 50yrs of age and hit the road in a motorhome.

With nothing in savings and a small online business, I hit the road with my husband and have never looked back.

Many reasons were the catalyst to my decision - I wanted "out of the rat race", I wanted time freedom to see my grandchildren and children whenever I liked, my body was packing up and I needed to see NZ while I was still physically able, I still needed work but I wanted something I could do that was my own business and where I could feel happy in what I was doing by making a difference.Incredibly, the hardest part of the entire process was parting with all my photos of my children growing up and special times with friends over the years. Parting with the material possessions was actually enormous fun and very therapuetic. After all, we didn't want to put anything in storage and there was no room in our 12m Mercedes bus. I loved minimising and getting down to total basics. It's surprising how much we collect over our lifetime that we don't actually need. When it came to my photos..... with five children I decided to buy 5 large albums and sort through all the pics and put them into the relevant album for each child and write a story around them all. This took nearly a year but the kids were absolutely thrilled with their Xmas present that year.I would say to anyone who is in their 40's and above, who is putting their lifetime dream on hold UNTIL they retire, to wait no longer. Making the decision is the hardest part. Once the decision is made, it's amazing how the universe creates opportunities to put your decision into action.

Don't put anything off till tomorrow because you may well not be well enough to do it tomorrow.

My body is packing a sad already and I'm often grateful that we made the choice when we did to hit the road, because quite honestly by 65 I am certain I'll not physically be able to live this way.You can check out some of our travels at http://www.freedomkiwis.zoomshare.com and you can check out my blog at http://ultim8living.com/freedomkiwis Enjoy!

Submitted 1st Nov 2011 by GrownUps Member: freedomkiwis

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