Quitting the Rat Race

A Lot of Research on IM and Online Businesses

2011-10-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

Well I have been a little quiet just lately as I have been focusing on learning as much as I can on online businesses.

From Internet Marketing to Online Stores I have researched as much as possible. I never realised how much I had to learn.

From mistakes on signing up for no-good courses to finding (at last) a decent course that explained everything in detail, step by step.

This is my Quit the Rat Race learning process. My Pension Plan that the Government won't pay. My passport to leaving the smoke and moving to another country.

Yes there is a lot to learn, a lot of work to do (fitting it in around a 12 hour, 5 day working week) and some weeks I get to the weekend and I am physically and mentally drained. It is pretty hard as you get older!

But I am determined to get there, wish me luck!

Waiting for inspiration

2011-04-23T03:07:00.000-07:00

Well here we are again then. Sitting in our trailer in the South-west of France at Easter and on a few days holiday. Back home our son is taking care of the cat and doing some work on our little house.

Yesterday it was 33 C here and a beautiful blue sky. Today it is a bit overcast but there is peace and quiet. That is if you don't mind the cockerel crowing, the chickens clucking; crickets doing what crickets do, birds tweeting and the cuckoo cuckoo-ing.

I love it!

We do have wi-fi here which is why I am sitting at my laptop waiting for inspiration. What inspiration you may ask? Well I'm still trying to find my way out of the rat race and the inspiration of how to actually do it has not come yet.

In this past year I have continued to commute, the work has got more stressful with one person going off sick and one person in a building close to ours actually jumping off the roof! (Last I heard they did actually survive - just!)

How do you make your dream a reality?

I have tried all types of online methods of earning an income (most seem to be a bit of a con) but they have all cost me money and earned me nothing. But there has to be a way.

I don't wish for much. I just wish to be able to live in Spain and have enough money to get by on. My husband reaches 65 next March so we will have one pension but it is only a State one so not enough for two of us to live on.

I really do not want to wait another 6 years before I can retire. I still want to be fit and healthy enough to enjoy retirement and I am quite happy to supplement the pension with any type of earning online as long as it is legal and does not con anyone.

But what to do?

I have also been undergoing training on creating websites but trying to fit everything in with a 12 hour stressful working day is proving a bit difficult.

But for now I will sit here in the countryside and listen to nature which I love.

There just has to be a way!

Live for Today

2010-11-24T05:45:00.000-08:00

Last Easter while holidaying in France in our trailer we got chatting to several ‘full-timers’. One insisted that you should not put off doing something because you never know what will happen tomorrow.

Now last night on the commute back home we got into what has become quite the norm – a queue. We sat for a while and then slowly edged forward. I could see the flashing blue light and saw a fire engine and ambulance heading up the motorway on the other side of the road. I guess they were trying to get up to the next exit so that they could return down our side of the road.

Apparently the ambulance could not get down the road because of the volume of traffic and the fact that some idiots had blocked the hard shoulder so the police started to let some of the traffic slowly go passed the accident.

I happened to be sitting on the offside and had full view of the fast land and as we approached the accident I could see a couple of vans and a car stopped in the fast lane. Well another case of vehicles hitting one another up the backside – or so I thought.

As we passed the vehicles I could not help but notice something under the middle vehicle. I have to admit to feeling quite sick. Just visible was the wheel of a motorbike. The remainder of the bike was underneath the van.

I do hope that whoever had been on that bike was thrown clear, although I saw no sign of anyone. But the fact remains that in the blink of an eye life can change forever.

Which brings me back to my first paragraph.

Just how long do you go on planning and working and living with the future in mind? What if there is no future, have you missed your chance of doing what you really want to do?

I don’t know if I have the courage to grab life and enjoy the moment – but it has given me something to think about, very very seriously! Maybe quitting the rat race should come sooner than I had planned.

Why Do We Do It?

2010-11-15T12:58:00.000-08:00

Commute, work at a job that we don't like and wish our lives away by longing for the weekends is what I'm talking about!

Well we are stuck in a viscous circle that's why.

Personally I've worked for the vast majority of my life in jobs where I've done it 'for love'. That is I've had jobs with friends and worked for a smaller than normal wage because I was happy in the work I was doing. Then 6 years ago I got moved to the head office in London. Never had I ever dreamed that I would work in London nor had I ever had a desire to do so. Now 6 years on I have fallen into the trap of living according to my means. What that means is that the extra money earned by commuting has contributed to the housekeeping so much that we have gradually taken on more than we would normally do. I won't lie, the extra cash has enabled us to put in central heating that we never had; we have put in double glazing and a new conservatory (all by ourselves) and been able to replace items that had reached the end of its lifespan.

But with the extra income came the extra 'credit limit' that the credit cards were quite happy to increase (without being asked for it) and gradually the items on 'credit' became more.

Now I'll make no excuses we have done it to ourselves - even though a lot of items were nothing more than anyone else already had - there were still those things that could only be had now that the total income had increased.

Now I am left at the age of almost 57 wondering how on earth I am going to get out of this trap. For that is how it feels and I know there are a lot of people who feel the same. I work, at a job that I am not particularly happy in, because I just don't know how I can survive without the wage that it brings in.

I feel tired and stressed and I hate the journey to and from the City.

How does one get away from the rat race? I don't know - I'm still trying to find out. I spend my evenings and weekends on my laptop doing course work in site design but I do feel that it is probably too late in life now to change my career. After all it is not a career that I am after now, it is a chance to enjoy the rest of my life. To relax, to look within, to find out what this thing called life is really all about.

Just how I do all that I do not know but I continue to search. There has to be an exit sign somewhere!

I'm a Survivor not a Winge-r

2010-09-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

I looked again at my posts and it looks like I am complaining and wingeing all the time.

So I would like to clarify that I am not a winger (as in winge - idyosyncrasy of the English language!) but I am a survivor. Always have been, always will be. I am just stating my intentions.

Plan of Action

2010-09-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

Well we all have to have a plan, don't we?

My hubby is due to retire in 18 months time. He has promised that he won't do it until I can retire too but that means another 7 years to go!

Now I don't know about you but I just cannot imagine working for someone else for another 7 years. After 40 years of working for others I have just about had enough of it all. Besides I would like to enjoy some quality time with my husband for as long as we have got left together and not spend all of our lives working!

We still have another 4 years left on the mortgage to pay - so I have a lot of thinking and investigating to do because my plan is to retire when he is due to retire. That gives me 18 months in which to come up with some plan of action that will earn us a living to bridge the gap between my husband retiring and me still having to wait another 5 years or more before I can get my pension.

Talking of such, have you seen how much pension you get!!! My cat could just about live on that...

Something has to be done.

More Desperate than Ever

2010-08-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

Well I haven't blogged for a few days because my cat was killed on Tuesday and I've been feeling pretty down.

He was my buddy, my comedian and I miss him terribly. I'm not the only one - my hubby feels the same.

Well never have I wanted to leave this country and the rat race more than I do now. I've had enough of the way this country is going. It is not the same as it used to be and there are far too many uncaring people.

I know you will say that I'm grieving (you can grieve over lost pets as well as humans!) and I appreciate that I am, but it has only intensified the way I was already feeling before this happened.

I have not felt like focusing much on my website; blogs or website design but I am starting to ease my way back. I do know for sure that some how the way forward will open its way to me. I am watching for it and will find it.

There just has to be a way!

PS. Ironically I wrote my first post at approximately 1pm last Tuesday. By 7pm my cat had been run over and killed by a boy racer! How life changes in a matter of hours...

Quitting the rat race - part one

2010-08-10T01:10:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a few years since I first started thinking about quitting the rat race - but let me give a bit of background on me first.

I am in my 50's, I am female, I have worked for 40 years, have been married; divorced and married again, had financial problems and recovered from them and all in all I've worked hard all my life - so far.

About 12 years ago I was made redundant from a job that offered no reduncancy money and so I did some temp work while I wondered where to go to next. As it turned out I got another local job where I stayed for a further 2 years before that branch was closed down by the head office - which was based in London.

Thoughts of working for myself had already begun to find their way into my mind and I tried to do some writing in my spare time. Many rejections from publishers proved to me that a writer I was not! However circumstances changed and I was moved from the local office before it closed to the head office in London.

Eight years later I am still in London. Not at the same company - the owner decided to retire and sold us to another company - and for the past year I have been trying to create for myself my escape from the Rat Race by various means.

Now if you haven't got bored by now I'll continue with the main theme of this blog "Quitting the Rat Race". As so often you find when you search for ideas to quit the rat race you find thousands of "how I quit the rat race" stories with offers of selling you their methods of making millions. Now my blog is different. I am still working hard - for someone else - but I am going to log all steps that I take until I manage to succeed and hopefully some of the ideas I have may help you to find your way out too.

With the retirement age increasing and it looking as though we will all be destined to work until we drop I hope that I can not only succeed but help others to succeed as well. After all life is not all about work - life should be fun too!