#i got it in a bulk order of pull outs from various magazines and it has no magazine written on it from what I can see? lmk if you know

[bishonenspit]

Patalliro Animator Original illustration by Kin'ichiro Suzuki (1983)

[zosogoddess]

Key Keys to earning a Fortune With Classified Ads

Are you all set to earn cash - great deals of it? Can you spare a little time as well as just a few bucks? If you are prepared to meet your desires and realize your objectives, mail order classified ads are your ticket to success. You have exactly what it takes - now. Classifieds are the most effective dollar-for-dollar return in advertising, and you can gain a high earnings on your item financial investment. Classified ads are the most convenient to compose, the most convenient to area, as well as set you back the least. They call for only a straightforward follow-up, and generate hundreds of bucks of sales. People read free classified new york for a function. They typically aren't disturbed - as in the majority of advertising and marketing - and also are particularly trying to find products, solutions and also info that attract them. As well-placed classified ads will certainly bring hundreds - thousand - of replies month after month, every year. You don't need to have a special history to earn cash with mail order classifieds. Any type of beginner could recognize a consistent 2nd revenue or develop a steady, permanent organisation through classified ads. Yet you need to be persistent. You should WANT TO GENERATE INCOME, and also agree to persevere. If you do, you will discover that achieving success is simple - simply comply with the actions, individually, climbing the ladder to the top. WHAT SHOULD I SELL? Take a look at the classified ads in the magazines and also papers you review. They are filled with offers for services, items as well as details. And they sound excellent. The ads show interest about the materials being provided. THE 2-STEP APPROACH The proven technique of offering mail order things of information is called the two-step method. Essentially, you place a short classified ad in the back of a magazine or paper. The advertisement does not mention cost, but informs the visitor to write for free details. Once you have an inquiry, you then send out details concerning what you have to provide, and see those orders pile in. Basically, a mail order classified ad buys a name and prospective business. It might simply break even with the real orders put. The real money comes from subsequent sales. WHY NOT CHARGE IN THE CLASSIFIED? You'll obtain much more reactions from an advertisement absolutely free info than you will for products - at any kind of cost. As well as, given that you desire a POSSIBLE CUSTOMER, you'll have a lot more questions for products you want to offer later on. Charging a small fee to cover postage or the price of the inquiry will certainly never ever make you recover cost - people won't be troubled. And a little charge doesn't always extract non-buyers. If you find your classified is pulling people who typically aren't interested in your deal, you could transform the promotion to be a lot more particular about what you truly have for sale. IN WHICH TO LOCATION CLASSIFIEDS The very best advice in placing classifieds is to follow the leader. Locate where various other items in your group are being marketed and do the exact same. The mail order company is not a location to be genuine various - particularly as a newbie. Although your item needs to have an allure various than the others. Remain with the pack as well as market in the same publications. Look for repeat organisation. You could examine back issues of publications at your collection or get some duplicates of the publications you might market in. If a specific ad has shown up time and again, you could bet it's a champion. WHAT IS TESTING? One of the most important aspect in mail order marketing is to test. Not only do you should find out if your item will certainly sell, however you need to figure out exactly what the best cost is. Testing is the name of the game - and this is where you need willpower. Don't obtain inhibited. GIVE IT A TRY. Because of the inexpensive of putting classifieds, it's worth it to keep it going. YOU TIN PROFIT. TYPES OF ADS There are three sorts of classified ads - qualified, partly certified, as well as blind. KEYING THE ADDRESS How do you identify exactly what query action came from which ad? You code the business name or street address so you can establish what advertisement drew the reaction. This is called keying the address, as well as it is among one of the most important tips in mail order classified advertising and marketing. WRITING CLASSIFIEDS Writing your own copy for a classified ad is easy. There are so couple of words you have to make use of that you don't need to bother with being a writer or an expert in marketing. You are your very own specialist in offering your product. CONSERVE LOAN PLACING ADS The majority of classified ads are billed a specific fee per word, so you want to keep your words vital and precise. As soon as you have written your advertisement, take a better check out it. Can you remove added words without altering the meaning? REPLYING TO INQUIRIES When you start getting feedbacks from the classified ads, you need to send out your sales literature immediately, most definitely within one week. The goal is to convert the questions right into a sale and also convert the sale into PURE EARNINGS. THE REACTION PACKAGE A typical mail order package - called a conversion - includes a personal letter, a brochure, an order form, and a return envelope. Just how sophisticated you wan making your conversion depends on just how effective your product seems to be marketing and what does it cost? money you wish to invest. HOW TO PREPARE SALES LITERARY WORKS The sales letter promotes you along with your item. It is a personal appeal to a potential buyer. You desire the individual to feel unique and also have a factor not only to look through the remainder of the literature, yet TO PURCHASE YOUR PRODUCT. ORDER FORMS If you have just a one-page sales pitch, you need to provide area for an order form. It should be well-defined by a line or populated line around it, and should be large enough for someone to write in the details. If you prepare to send out a total packet with sales letter and brochure, print up different order forms. PRINTING A BROCHURE Preparing a brochure or sales brochure is not as tough as it may appear. It does not need to be a glossy, four-color fancy pamphlet. You can send out even a one-page summary of the product and also a charm for buying. MAILING You could get a mass price permit at the post office if you send a minimum of 2 hundred identical items at once. They have to be presorted for location. The bulk rate expense is lower, yet it takes much longer for the mail to be delivered. KEEPING DOCUMENTS It is extremely essential to keep accurate records in mail order. It is just through these document sheets that you can determine which advertisement pulls the most effective, which advertising and marketing lead is one of the most luring, and just how well your product is selling. Excellent records are the follow up of excellent screening. WAYS TO COMPUTE PROFIT Overall the quantity of cash money sales. That is your gross profit. Deduct the cost of the product. Deduct the expense of the item. Deduct the cost of mailing. Deduct the price of conversion as well as the price of the advertisement. That is your net earnings, the one that counts.Just stay with it, as well as you could SEE THAT EARNINGS GROW larger and bigger each ad, each conversion, each sale. INCREASING As Well As GROWING RICHER For many years, good buyers acquire lot of times your preliminary financial investment in classified advertisement room. A very first purchaser shows a 2nd sale; after that, you have a regular customer who might purchase for several years. ADDITIONAL CHARMS When you get rolling with your mail order company, you can attempt any type of number of incentives to solicit orders. You could use a free present - or complimentary anything - certifications, discount coupons, remarkable rewards. CONTENTMENT ASSURED Not only should you publish a warranty in all your ads as well as sales literature, but you have to recognize it. Never ever send inferior goods; never ever gamble on malfunctioning mailers or guess reduced on postage. Provide a total item. MAKING EVEN MORE FROM A WINNER You've got an effective product. The conversion for orders is high, refunds are low, and also the draw form the classified advertisement is fantastic. How can you make more cash - even if you believe you've saturated your market? YOU As Well As THE LAW You do not require an unique government or state allow to operate a mail order service. The product you sell need to be genuine nevertheless, and you could not be deceitful or misleading in claims or marketing.

[gallery0022]

Cleveland Locavore

Wednesday, December 9, 2020 - Update 

Cleveland Locavore Domain Name, free to a good home...

www.ClevelandLocavore.com

Monday, February 17, 2014

Urban Organics / SweetPeet

Hello All,

I found this lively thread that Maurice started in November, 2010.

I have fond memories of meaningful conversations with all of you about sustainability and local food from local farmers.

Since November, 2010 I made several changes in my life, as I am sure many of us have. Annette and I sold Morgan Farm Stay, my relationship with Urban Organics was paused.

Although both were tremendous success stories on many levels, the good fight is often made more challenging by a different form of sustainability, economic sustainability. It was Robert Kennedy Jr. who made it clear to me, at an annual EcoWatch event, environmental and economic sustainability MUST go hand in hand.

My whole life has been about selling a service, photography. Of course I have certainly had my challenges continuing to keep this profession "sustainable" due to the changes in the industry. If you don't believe me just ask Karl Skalak, or George Remmington.

The past three years I have focussed on getting my Photography house in order.

Just last week, Mark Bishop, the founder of Urban Organics, contacted me to see if I could help him again with his social networking and PR needs.

Well I have to say, I can't help myself, I am happy to be back, I never really left of course...

I am proud of what I have done for Urban Organics, writing and designing the web site...

http://www.urbanorganicsohio.com/

Urban Organics hopes to sell more of its flagship product, Sweet Peet, in bulk and bags. There are many newcomers to the organic mulch market, but nothing beats Sweet Peet! Sweet Peet is a great way to charge up any community garden, school garden, corporate garden, rooftop garden etc...

I am hoping to write a few stories based on testimonials from happy customers, which there are many. If anyone can help me with media contact information, at Cleveland Magazine, Edible Cleveland, or similar local media contacts, I would appreciate it.

Also please put me on your E-Blast lists, I want to know what you are up to!

All The Best,

Dan Morgan

rex@straightshooter.com

http://clevelandlocavore.com/

10:54 am est

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Cleveland Plain Dealer Article Published...

Dan Morgan on Vermicomposting

5:09 pm edt

Friday, May 10, 2013

Vermicomposting Story For The Plain Dealer

Hi Judy,   (Judy Stringer -PD's rental section of the Sunday paper)

Vermicomposting is a great way to create a soil amendment that is 10 times better for the garden than traditional back yard composting without red wiggler worms. A backyard compost pile that has to be turned regularly, while a vermicomposting bin, a "worm farm" does not. The worms do all the hard work.

Why best for renters?

Clean, compact, self contained and what is the best advantage for renters, LOW MAINTENANCE. The bin can be left undisturbed for weeks at a time, or can be "fed" every day. General maintenance can vary widely if you just follow a few simple rules, very important rules.

The right worms are the key! Red wigglers or the formal name Eisenia Fetida, are a very specific type of worm needed. The worms are expensive, and widely available for sale on the internet. The best way to start a worm farm, is look for a local sustainable gardening blog community,   https://www.facebook.com/localfoodcleveland   is a good one on Facebook.  Ask around, and you will find someone who wants to share their worms, and you will suddenly have someone to help you get started as well. Vermicomposters LOVE to share ideas and even recipes.

The simplest way to make your worm farm is to find 2 identical plastic bins. drill holes in the bottom of one of them, the one that will go inside the other. The holes are for drainage when the soil gets too moist. Proper drainage and soil moisture is CRITICAL for the whole process to work without becoming a horrible experience. The other most important factor to make a renter's worm farm a clean success, DO NOT PUT FRUIT SCRAPS in the bin. Most vermicomposting web sites will encourage all organic material including fruit and veggies but believe me, not a good idea!

Recap:

Two things that will ruin the experience,

1) Soil that is kept too moist,resulting in a stinky bin!  These anaerobic conditions can also kill the worms (by drowning)

2) Fruit will attract / breed fruit flies, something nobody wants in their apartment (especially a landlord)

The finished product, after separating the worms from it, can be added to indoor plants or outdoor gardens. The best thing to too with the final product is to make a "teabag" from an old t shirt and bunch the t-shirt around a garden hose to make compost tea, right into a watering can. This tea can be sprinkled right on top of gardens, acting as both a fertilizer and insecticide, NATURALLY. There is no reason to use synthetic fertilizers or insecticides in any garden, or lawn for that matter.

Got unsightly weeds in your garden? PULL THEM.

My wife Annette and I are apartment renters in Lakewood (the Carlyle) and we have an Adopt A Spot garden at the entrance to Lakewood Park, part of Keep Lakewood Beautiful's Adopt A Spot program, with over 40 volunteer maintained gardens on publicly owned property around Lakewood.

http://www.onelakewood.com/Boards_Commissions/KeepLakewoodBeautiful.aspx

Let me know anything else you need.

Dan

10:41 am edt

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Morgan Farm Stay Sale...???

Hello Friends, and Family,

Here is an update of our day to day efforts to sell our farm to some, while continuing to make it a "once in a lifetime" vacation experience for others.

Since early May we have had some great guests this season. Sophie Brun came to the United States from France a few years ago. She and her family settled into a posh northern suburb of Detroit, Royal Oak. Spotting our vacation rental property listing on HomeAway.com, she was reminded of the farm stays she visited in Europe.

Sophie and her family had a great Easter dinner at our farm, feasting on Buckeye Chicken eggs, Berkshire grass fed ham, and cookies baked in a wood burning stove across the street by Edna, our Amish neighbor.

In late May we had guests staying at the farm who made reservations over a year ago. They have a daughter who is graduated from Oberlin College and wanted a very special family get together at this important time.

The rest of the summer has been mostly filled in with various guests, as usual. July, which always fully books, had grandparents coming from Germany to meet a new grandchild at the farm.

On a regular basis we have had a varied crew of family, friends and neighbors working together to clean up the gardens and plant some new flowers, veggies and herbs. The grass, well it kept on growing, and growing, and growing.

We have several educational components in place form the past few years. The Blue Orchard Mason Bee Box has almost half it's holes housing eggs ready to burst out and begin the process joining an army of beneficial mason bees, pollinating nearby flower, veggie and herb gardens. Amy Roskilly, with the Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District, hooked us up last year with a rain garden kit, containing several types of beautiful plants that thrive in a wet spot while filtering storm water runoff before reaching the stream nearby.

Our composting, both vermicomposting and traditional "back yard" composting operations are thriving and our rain barrels are very useful in areas our garden hose does not reach, particularly our companion garden, way out away from the main house. This year the companion garden will contain a few new plants. Comfrey is a great new addition, if I can manage to keep it from taking over the entire garden. Also this year I am cutting back on the heirloom tomatoes and adding some nice herbs.

In May we had a great deal of interest from a few interested buyers, one young man from California wants to take over the entire business, turnkey, keeping our furnishings, decor, web site and photos to promote. The only problem is, he is having some trouble getting financing. Sure the rates are great right now but banks are hesitant to lend. At the end of June we took our first nice vacation since moving back to Ohio in 2005. We of course worried about the Farm Stay rentals we had booked, but friends and family again came to our rescue.

On our second day in Europe, in Montpellier France, we got word from our realtor Teresa. She had an interested buyer making an offer. We spent a few hours on the iPad countering and the sale price was agreed on. After several anxious weeks awaiting financing approval for our buyers, it looks like the end of an era.

We have a closing date scheduled for this upcoming week. Our fingers are still crossed, because ya never know...

This has indeed been a great journey for Annette and I.

Au revoir for now, Thanks for all of your help and support over the past 7 years!

Dan and Annette Morgan

Dan Morgan

Straight Shooter

646-621-6434

www.AboutDanMorgan.com

10:22 pm edt

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Here is an update of our day to day efforts to sell our farm to some, while continuing to make it a "once in a lifetime" vacation experience for others.

We have had a great deal of interest from a few interested buyers, one young man from California wants to take over the entire business, turnkey, keeping our furnishings, decor, web site and photos to promote. The only problem is, he is having some trouble getting financing. Sure the rates are great right now but banks are hesitant to lend.

And so we keep on going, and going and going, while the grass keeps growing and growing and growing! This has indeed been a great journey for Annette and I. This summer we have made arrangements to visit the south France region and Spain, a nice little rest from all the political rhetoric and bickering here in the states.

Au revoir for now!

Dan and Annette Morgan

8:07 am edt

Thursday, April 26, 2012

2012 Season at Morgan Farm Stay

Check out our revamped web page with more about the farm, area attractions and recent stories "In The News"

Click Here, www.MorganFarmStay.com

3:11 pm edt

Sunday, February 27, 2011

 Thank You Chris Hodgson -Dim and Den Sum for your support  Now booking 2011spring summer fall season!

Our Farm Stay...

www.MorganFarmStay.com

Find Your Perfect Farm Vacation at www.FarmStayUS.com

11:05 pm est

Saturday, November 20, 2010

New Logo

Been a long time since I posted here. Now that the holidays and winter are coming I have decided to get back on my Cleveland Locavore horse. Check out the logo.

I am designing a great reusable bag that will help get this brand rolling. Cleveland local food advicates in many product and service areas are welcome to participate in this unique program. Come and have a seat at the table!

7:40 am est

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Local Farm Superstars

E4S held a great event Last Night

Click Here

Eight NEO Farmers told thier stories, pretty great. Common thread...Hard work that NEEDS to be supported by more and more of us at summer and winter farmers markets and CSAs

2010.03.01

Hello, I have found myself increasingly interested by how our food is produced since 2005. Annette, my wife, and I retuned to Ohio from NY and bought a farm in Ashland County. It did not take long to notice the backwards attitudes of most of today's farmers, urban planners, educators and politicians. During the Nixon administration, Earl Butz, Ray Crock and others had a seemingly harmless, goal in mind, produce and distribute the most amount of food for the least amount of money.

It has taken us a complete generation to figure out that this model just does not work, for so many reasons. The broken farming system effects everyone in profound ways, all connected. From healthcare to the economy, the way we produce and distribute food must change, and change dramaticly, NOW. Small scale farmers and farmers markets are the tip of the melting iceburg that will save the planet!

From Wikipedia...

The locavore movement is a movement in the United States and elsewhere that spawned as interest in sustainability and eco-consciousness become more prevalent.[1] Those who are interested in eating food that is locally produced, not moved long distances to market, are called "locavores." The word "locavore" was the word of the year for 2007 in the Oxford American Dictionary.[2] This word was the creation of Jessica Prentice of the San Francisco Bay Area at the time of World Environment Day, 2005.[3] It is rendered "localvore" by some, depending on regional differences, usually.[4][5] The food may be grown in home gardens or grown by local commercial groups interested in keeping the environment as clean as possible and selling food close to where it is grown. Some people consider food grown within a 100-mile radius of their location local, while others have other definitions. In general the local food is thought by those in the movement to taste better than food that is shipped long distances.[1]

Farmers' markets play a role in efforts to eat what is local.[6] Preserving food for those seasons when it is not available fresh from a local source is one approach some locavores include in their strategies. Living in a mild climate can make eating locally grown products very different from living where the winter is severe or where no rain falls during certain parts of the year.[7] Those in the movement generally seek to keep use of fossil fuels to a minimum, thereby releasing less carbon dioxide into the air and preventing greater global warming. Keeping energy use down and using food grown in heated greenhouses locally would be in conflict with each other, so there are decisions to be made by those seeking to follow this lifestyle. Many approaches can be developed, and they vary by locale.[8] Such foods as spices, chocolate, or coffee pose a challenge for some, so there are a variety of ways of adhering to the locavore ethic.[9]

Join me in promoting this just cause, starting right here in Northeast Ohio!, where we have already been recognized internationally for our efforts! Click here for Sustain Lane ranking

 Dan  Morgan, Cleveland Locavore Rex@StraightShooter.com

[standbyprompto]

OMF, WORK IT, PROMPTO! Thank you so much, @iwonn-arts

Laissez les bon temps rouler~

In #ffxvwriters (on tumblr and Discord) we can get pretty silly in the #nsfw-chatter channel. Squeeing over the characters of FFXV, headcanons, bits of rp, and of course all sorts of support you didn’t even know you needed is abound. A few weeks back, I brought up the idea of the FFXV cast going to Mardi Gras and my headcanon of the Krewe of Lucis was born. I love being Louisiainian during this time of year. Since today is Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), here’s my quick and dirty explanation of what the time of year is and my very first public headcanon.

So, remember the Twelve Days of Christmas? Did you know that actually STARTS on Christmas, and leads up to a holiday in some faiths known as Epiphany? This was the day that the three wise men actually reached the baby Jesus. Thus begins the season of Carnival, which ends with Mardi Gras. There’s also some truth to a lot of pagan rituals being embedded into the season. But this season leads up to the Catholic season of Lent, in where Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. Humans without divine intervention of course cannot survive this, so Catholics give up something important to them for this time period to show their devotion.

But during the Carnival season… hehe. That’s when you let all that stuff you plan to give up go wild. It’s freedom from the seven deadly sins that you plan to repent for during the Lenten season. All that fun stuff, all that food, all those wild ways… Bring it to Carnival. Afraid God or your boss will see you? Wear a costume and a mask. Hide who you are and do it anyway. You have until midnight on Mardi Gras to get it out. On the morning of Ash Wednesday, you better get your ass to the church to begin your repenting.

Mardi Gras has become, for the most part, a time of celebration, parades, balls/masquerades, music, food (king cakes are the bomb!) and just letting loose. It is not for the rich, it is not for the poor, it is for all classes, creeds, ages, races, and religions. Most of the celebrations are not as wild as the debauchery you see from the media, but man, is it fun. Parades are what I’d like to focus on for my headcanon. Anyone and everyone can create a Krewe and hold a parade (going through proper channels, of course.) Each Krewe has their own rules and ways of celebrating. Generally, parades have floats, bands, vehicles, etc. just like any other parade. The music played is usually more zydeco/jazz styled. Look up “Mardi Gras Mambo” or “Professor Longhair” or “Josephine Par Se Ma Femme” on youtube for a better idea. Float riders traditionally throw things like dubloons, cups, and of course…

…BEADS. They are the prize you go to parades for. Those cheap, plastic, beads that you’ll do anything for. Traditionally in the colors of purple (justice), green (wealth), and gold (royalty) but also found in all colors and all manners of decoration. Float riders will tease you sometimes with prizes until you scream, “Throw me something, Mister!” And we’ve all heard the rumors of women flashing for beads, as well.

Which is why I commissioned that art of Prompto being adorably cheeky and lifting his shirt for some beads. Thanks again so much, @iwonn-arts

Okay, history lesson over, guys. Time for the headcanon! AU where everyone’s here, and everyone’s ok with each other mostly.

It’s a nighttime parade on the streets of Insomnia. The sidewalks are lined with people of all ages, decked out in their silly hats, feathered boas, sequined vests, and swathed in beads. It’s an unruly bunch, but everyone is smiling and laughing and it’s a great time. There’s an electric happiness in the air, as if anything could happen this night and it’d be okay. Kids are climbing streetlamps to get a better view. Vendors can’t keep the alcohol coming fast enough. When people move around, they don’t walk; they strut in time to the zydeco blaring from the speakers of shops nearby. Beads hang from shop windows, balconies, trees, streetlamps. There’s a real sense of freedom about.

The crowd cheers collectively when the parade begins.

·       It’s lead by the Kingsglaive on motorcycles, flanked by a second line that started -hours- ago. Nyx has picked up a few random kids to ride with him and keeps scaring the shit out of them and their parents by popping wheelies and doing donuts.

·       The Hammerhead float is next. It’s a giant mock-up of the Regalia in metallic gold. Cid seems content in the driver’s seat to just yell at the crowd, telling them to be quiet and stand up straight. Cindy is having a blast with Holly, and they’re tossing out plushies of Noctis in various outfits that he can wear in the game. Their beads are special, as they are decorated with wrenches and hammers and cars. Takka is throwing dubloons that offer 20% off at his diner.

·       Iris and Talcott man the Lestallum float, which is designed in honor of the power plant. It glows the same way the meteor does. People can see moogle plushies lining the edge of the float and they are screaming for Iris to throw them one, but she’s looking for something that really is special in the crowd before she throws one. Talcott is throwing beads decorated with cactuars and throwing plushie cactuars to anyone who strikes the cactuar pose.

·       Though the crowd seems to be confused as to why they would cheer on the Empire’s float (mocked up as a freighter), the sight of Ravus dressed fashionably in Mardi Gras colors seems to ease their nerves. His magitek arm has been decorated with glittering sequins. Joining him on this float is Loqi, and they keep fighting over who’s box of beads this is to throw. Eventually Ravus just resorts to throwing oracle ascension coins.

·       On the back of a ginormous rainbow frog, Sania, Vyv, and Dave wave to the crowd. Dave is showing off one of his hidden talents, wailing away on his trombone. Vyv is throwing dubloons advertising his magazine, and Sania is tossing pamphlets explaining the importance of frogs and the ecosystem.

·       Aranea doesn’t ride in a float. She just jumps through the parade as she sees fit.

·       There’s teams of dancing chocobos led by Wiz.

·       Regis, Cor, and Clarus ride on a float decorated with the weapons of the past kings. They seem the most drunk of all of the float riders, but they also seem to be having the best time. They troll people with fake throws of their beads, decorated with skulls and weapons, and dubloons explaining history of each of the 13 kings represented. Cries from parade goes of “Throw me something, Mister!” get retorts of, “No, you throw ME something, Mister!” and raucous laughter as if it were beyond funny.

·       Then of course, at the end of the parade, is the King’s float. It is the most decorated float, depicting scenes from the Cosmogony. Titan holds up the entire float. Shiva and Ifrit hold onto one another in a flashy lit display on one side, while Bahamut and Leviathan wage battle on the other. The back of the float shows Ramuh standing above all the rest, hand raised, flickering bolt in hand. From this float parade-goers can receive stuffed chocobs, beads with the Lucis insignia on them, and fake rings.

      + Lady Lunafreya is dressed in a ballgown. Purple, green, and gold feathers stick out from her hair. Umbra and Pryna flank her, both wearing sequined top hats in the same colors. She’s mostly just waving to the people and offering words of peace.  

      + Gladio is handling the bulk of the tossing items while yelling at the rest of the group to stop being lazy. He’s shirtless, but he let Luna paint his eagle with glitter paint in purple. He’s got as many feather boas about his neck as he does beads. He’s seeing a lot more from the ladies and gents in order to get beads than anyone else. He’s not complaining, but he’s glad Iggy isn’t actually on the float to see it.

      + Ignis is walking beside the float, dressed in a deep purple suit. He’s donned a pair of glittery green glasses that are slightly oversized to show he can be a good sport. He’s passing out mini-king cakes that he’s spent the last few days making whilst everyone else was partying. He may or may not be slightly miffed over this. “I’ve come up with a new way to murder them in their sleep!” he keeps laughing to the parade-goers.

      + Prompto is also walking beside the float, as this is his first parade. He’s a bit lot tipsy and his face hurts a little bit from all the smiling he’s been doing. The fun just hasn’t stopped! He’s waving to the people, making sure that Ignis doesn’t get too mobbed for the cakes, and belting out his own music as he struts along. One cheeky parade-goer yells to him, “Show me something, Mister!” and he obliges, grinning like a fool, blushing like mad, and lifting his shirt to show his goods. He’s the one shouting the new phrase he’s learned. “Laissez les bon temps rouler, y’all!” which translates into “Let the good times roll, everyone.”

      + Ardyn sits at the foot of the raised dais where the throne is. He’s dressed in motley harlequin, in green, and purple. He wasn’t allowed to wear gold. He wears a sparkling fedora that he keeps tipping from time to time. He doesn’t move unless the throne ends up empty.

      + On the throne sits Noctis Lucis Caelum, the king of the Krewe. He’s dressed in a black suit (because he’s Noct), but he’s wearing a crushed velvet purple cloak and a flashy gold crown with green jewels. He’s leaning on the arm of the throne, his head resting on his hand, and despite the noise, he seems to be catnapping. One foot is draped over the side of the throne and the other rests on Ardyn’s shoulder. When the float comes to a stop, for whatever reason, Noct will rise from his throne and look to the people. He pulls beads from the armiger as he flashes a winning smile, knowing that behind him Ardyn is creeping into his seat. When he turns, the crowd hushes and waits. “Off my chair, Jester. The king sits there.” The crowd erupts in cheers as Noct and Ardyn put on a mock fight, in which Noct always wins and places Ardyn back at his feet as a footstool. He then closes his eyes and goes back to napping.  

[lindafrancois]

Want to Get Bigger? Avoid These 9 Mistakes Skinny Guys Make Trying to Bulk Up!

If you’re here because you want to go from skinny to muscular, you’ve come to the right place!

I know exactly how you feel because I was once a very thin guy struggling to put on muscle.

We’ll talk about the mistakes I made so you can avoid them, then we’ll offer a step-by-step guide so you can start growing big and strong.

These are the 9 key mistakes skinny guys make (click each to skip right to that):

Not eating enough (What to eat to grow big)

Setting unrealistic expectations (How fast can I grow muscle?)

Not having a solid plan (How to go from skinny to muscular)

Not doing enough (How to grow muscle)

Going too quickly and getting injured (Being safe)

Not following a sustainable strategy (Consistency)

Not making it a priority (Remember your training)

Sweating the small stuff (Keep it simple)

Not recovering enough (Get sleep)

How I put on 25 Pounds of Mass

After today, we’ll make sure you don’t do any of these errors.

We help clients just like you get bigger in our really popular 1-on-1 Online Training Program! I’ve been been trying to get bigger since I was 16, and I started training with an online coach in 2015.

It has been the biggest boost for me in the world, packing on a ton of size without being miserable! 

Make no mistake about it, this stuff isn’t easy. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading about it on the internet!

If you want to learn more about the program, simply click on the button below!

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1. Not Eating Enough (What to Eat to Grow Big)

If you’re not getting bigger, you are not eating enough.

This one solution will account for 95% of most skinny men and women who are looking to get bigger.

When I started lifting weights, I spent 5-6 days a week in the gym following a bodybuilder workout routine from various fitness magazines.

Over the next 6 years, I put on maybe five pounds total, even though it felt as though I was eating a lot.

Turns out, I was eating 500-1000 less calories per day than I needed to stimulate muscle growth.

It wasn’t until after college that I simplified my workouts (lots of barbell lifts), doubled the amount of calories I consumed, and I was able to put on about 18 pounds in 30 days.

This is back in 2006:

I didn’t put the weight on a necessarily healthy or sustainable way, but after 6 years of struggle, this experience solidified the connection between diet and getting bigger.

It finally made sense.

If you don’t eat enough calories, you won’t get any bigger.

So if you are not getting bigger and more buff, then you are not eating enough.

It’s science.

If you’re trying to gain weight: when in doubt, eat.

Some of my favorite techniques are in my “How to Bulk Up Fast” article.

YOUR GOAL: Add 200-300 more calories per day until your stomach gets used to it, and see how the scale changes.

What should you be eating? Depending on how skinny you are, you can get away with eating junk food as long as you’re getting enough protein and calories.

Liquid calories are your friend too for squeezing in extra calories every day – here’s my favorite high calorie protein shake recipe!

Here are some high quality, high calorie foods:

Sweet potatoes, regular potatoes and yams.

Rice or quinoa of any variety.

Oats, instant or steel cut.

Peanut butter, almond butter.

Walnuts, almonds, brazil nuts, cashews.

Cheese, milk, eggs.

Eat lots of high calorie foods, get plenty of protein, and don’t forget the veggies!

I know how overwhelming this stuff can be, which is why we have a Coaching Program that kicks ass.

We also have a printable “Get Bigger” shopping list and Bulk Up Cheat sheet when you join our email list in the yellow box below.

Download our free skinny guy’s guide to putting on muscle!

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2. Setting unrealistic expectations (How Fast Can I Grow Muscle?)

We live in a world of instant gratification.

People have unrealistic expectations thanks to marketing when it comes to weight loss (“Lose 30 pounds in 30 days!”).

Unsurprisingly, people also have unrealistic expectations when it comes to NATURALLY building muscle as well. Which is why we get served ads like this:

“Scientists don’t want you to learn this trick to pack on 40 pounds of muscle!”

These ads are designed to sell supplements, not make you bigger or get you results.

Most supplements are garbage.

The only supplements I recommend taking: protein and creatine.

We cover this extensively in our “how do I build muscle fast?” article:

Under optimal conditions, you’ll most likely be able to put on 1-2 pounds of muscle per month.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t make tremendous strength gains – you’re just not going to build 50 pounds of muscle in 6 weeks.

So start by having proper expectations: don’t try to Put on 50 pounds by the week or month. It’s time to think in terms of days and years to make your progress permanent:

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and muscle isn’t built in a matter of days either. It’s going to take months of sustained effort, and it’s going to take consistency and patience.

But you can get there.

If you struggle with not seeing results, and you want a Yoda in your pocket (that sounds weird…) to help you bulk up fast, our online coaching program fits that exact scenario

Work with our coaches to get bigger, quickly and safely. Learn more here:

3. Not having a solid plan (How to Go from Skinny to Muscular)

If you want to go from skinny to buff, you need a plan.

A plan that is balanced, and provides you with big movements that stimulate growth all over your body.

If you just wander into the gym without a strategy, you’re going to struggle to get bigger.

Then you’re gonna have a bad time.

It’s better to pick a basic plan and stick with it for months and months and months, than jump around from week to week chasing the newest shiny object.

As we lay out in our Strength 101 series…

Get freaking strong at the following movements, eat enough, and you will get bigger:

Squats

Deadlifts

Overhead Presses

Rows

Pull-ups (weighted)

Dips (weighted)

What plan to follow?

No idea where to start? Read our free Strength 101 series, and pick a workout program from our Beginner Strength Training Workouts.

Work with our coaching staff! We’ll build a program and offer nutrition guidance so that you actually start to see results right away.

Pick one of the 6 levels of workouts in our Beginner’s Gym Guide article to get you comfortable and in a routine.

If you’re not ready for barbell workouts, start with bodyweight training!

Other great barbell-based programs are Stronglifts 5×5, Wendler’s 5/3/1 program, and Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength program.

I started with basic barbell training, then moved into more of a hybrid barbell/bodyweight program (thanks to my Online Coach).

Which should you pick?

Honestly, any of them will work – you just need to start, and stick with it for months at a time, focusing on getting stronger with each movement.

You can also download our Strength 101 Guide when you sign up in the box below:

Download our comprehensive guide STRENGTH TRAINING 101!

Everything you need to know about getting strong.

Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.

How to find the right gym and train properly in one.

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4. Not Doing Enough (How to Grow Muscle)

If you are trying to get bigger, you might not be doing a tough enough workout in the gym or in the park to stimulate muscle growth.

No matter what, you need to be doing heavier weight, or doing more repetitions in order to challenge your body, breakdown muscle fiber, and force your body to rebuild stronger.

This is called “progressive overload,” and it’s the only way you’re going to build size in the right places.

To answer your first question, you can get bigger doing just bodyweight exercises.

Take one look at gymnasts – these dudes have built their muscle through years of intense bodyweight training like handstands and muscle-ups on the gymnastic rings:

However, you must be scaling these exercises constantly to make them increasingly more difficult, which many people struggle to do.

Just doing more regular push-ups, bodyweight squats and pull-ups is a good way to get conditioned, but after a certain point, it most likely won’t produce muscle growth without increasing the challenge.

That’s when you need to progressively overload your muscles with a more difficult movement.

I detail this during my “stay in shape while traveling” post, in which I packed on a few pounds of muscle while ONLY doing bodyweight exercises.

I started by doing just pull-ups and dips.

Now I’m up to doing pull-ups with 60 pounds on a weight belt, and dips with 70 pounds on a weight belt.

I used to just do push-ups and pull-ups, now it’s parallette gymnastic complexes:

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Steve Kamb (@stevekamb) on Jan 7, 2015 at 10:37am PST

And muscle-ups on gymnastic rings:

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Steve Kamb (@stevekamb) on Dec 15, 2014 at 1:43pm PST

So, YES it can be done!

You just need a solid plan that allows you to consistently push your muscles further.

Looking for a plan to gymnastics mastery? Outside of our coaching program, we’ve got a Rings and Handstands course that we’ve recently released.

You’ll get 20 different levels to work through, so exercises will continue to get harder (and you’ll get bigger and stronger).

Learn how to do handstands and get your first muscle up with our Rings & Handstands Course!

5. Going Too Quickly and Getting Injured (Being Safe)

In the age of instant gratification, we always want more, now now now.

Over the past decade, I followed a terrible cycle of setbacks and injury:

Try to get bigger. Eat lots of food, and put on some weight.

Ramp up my workouts too quickly.

Sustain some sort of injury from trying to do too much.

Take a month off to recover.

Start back at #1.

Repeat the process.

Have patience.

Start out with easy weight, and get a teeny tiny bit better every single day.

In fact, it wasn’t until I stopped chasing fast goals and instead focused on tiny habits that I went from Steve Rogers to Captain America.

Back when I started deadlifting again, I kept thinking “I can do more! I can go heavier!” – but I patiently forced myself to go just a tiny bit further than the week prior.

Live to train another day, and just focus on the process:

“Hit the gym 3-4 times per week, get a tiny bit stronger. Then go home and eat!”

As bodybuilder Lee Haney says, “Exercise to stimulate, not to annihilate.”

Getting yourself to slow down and put faith in the process is really difficult. It’s why everybody fails at diets, and why nobody can get results that stick.

They try to do TOO much, TOO soon, and keep falling back to square one.

If you are tired of falling back to square one and want somebody to help you make sustainable, permanent progress towards bulking up, check out our coaching program!

No more frustration or confusion, just results. Learn how we can help you bulk up in our Online Coaching Program!

6. Not Following a Sustainable Strategy (Consistency)

Just like losing a bunch of weight by running on a treadmill and starving oneself is not sustainable in the long term, neither is making yourself miserable for a month just to pack on some size.

As soon as you go back to “eating like normal” and “exercising like normal,” you’ll lose all of your gains!

For me, I’ve found sustained success by doing the following:

Eating roughly the same meals every single day

Getting enough sleep by going to bed at the same time each night.

Training 4 days a week for about an hour

As a result, I’ve been able to make consistent progress for the past 4 years, and my new “normal” is progress and strength improvements!

What I’m trying to say is to be honest with yourself.

If you can’t work out six days a week for the next year, DON’T train that way!

Start with twice a week, doing a basic weight training program, and dump the extra time you would have spent training into eating more or getting more sleep.

If you can train three days a week, that should be plenty to make you bigger: muscles are made in the kitchen, after all!

Remember, if you’re not getting bigger, you’re not eating enough!

Eat more.

It might take you 6+ months longer than if you went all-in and did nothing but eat and lift all day every day, but you’ll actually KEEP the progress you’ve made rather than giving it all back.

I referenced this video above, but I’m putting it here too to make sure you don’t miss it. It’s better to ask “What can I sustainably do TODAY that gets me closer to my goal?” and build your system around that!

This was a brutal lesson I couldn’t learn until I hired an online personal trainer who helped me get my mindset right, and put the right systems in place!

Hack the Matrix and learn to bulk like the Hulk in our Online Coaching Program!

7. Not Making It a Priority (Remember Your Training)

After telling myself “I want to get big and strong,” I realized that for much of the past decade, it wasn’t really a priority.

I put work, messing around on the internet, video games, and going out and drinking ahead of my training on my list of priorities.

Since 2014, I’ve made it a point to see what I could accomplish if I made getting bigger and stronger a priority in my life.

Most importantly, I started taking this seriously and hired an online trainer that I’ve been working with for 5+ years.

It’s what allowed me to deadlift 420 pounds at a bodyweight at 172 pounds:

Here’s what I did to prioritize my transformation and training:

I ate extra meals even when I wasn’t hungry.

I rearranged my training schedule so work would NEVER be an excuse.

I said “no” more often to staying out really late and drinking.

I programmed my workouts into my calendar.

I had my coach keep me accountable.

I scheduled Saturday morning workouts so I wouldn’t go out drinking on Friday.

I made fitness a priority.

Is this goal of going from skinny to buff truly a priority for you? If it’s not, you’re going to give up when you’re tired, or not hungry, or don’t want to exercise.

As we talk about in our “how to get in shape” article, you need to have a BIG WHY: the reason you’re doing this!

I wanted to get bigger so I could be more confident when going on dates.

What about you? Why are you here?

Write down your reason, stick it on your bathroom mirror or laptop, and use it as a reminder.

Because this isn’t going to be easy!

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

And if you want to GET bigger permanently, you need to do things differently, consistently, and permanently.

Never forget why you are doing this! 

I did this journey alone for a decade before I finally got some help in staying accountable and keeping me on track.

If you’re looking for somebody to keep you accountable, tell you exactly what to do in the gym, and tell you how many calories you should eat, we can help there too.

No more guesswork. Let our Coaching Program tell you exactly what to do!

8. Sweating the Small Stuff (Keep It Simple)

Bicep curls! Forearm curls! Calf raises!

“Should I target all three heads of the triceps muscle?”

“I see the big guy over there doing 8 types of bicep exercises – should I do what he’s doing?”

“Does chest day need to be bench, incline bench, decline bench, cable chest flys, dumbbell flys?”

“How many sets and reps should I do? Should I do 6 sets of 8 reps or 5 sets of 5 reps?”

Forget all of that stuff!

If you want to get bigger, focus on getting stronger in one of the few big, basic movements.

Once you have a solid foundation, then we can start targeting specific isolated muscle groups like the bodybuilders do.

Always start your workout with the basics of strength training (noticing a theme here?):

Squats

Deadlifts

Bench Press

Overhead Presses

Rows

Pull-ups (weighted)

Dips (weighted)

“But where’s my bicep curls, tricep extensions, ab work, etc.!?!?!”

ALL of those muscles get worked incredibly well with the above exercises, so don’t worry about isolating.

Instead, just get strong.

When you can lift heavy things or complete intense bodyweight exercises, your body needs to adapt.

If you want to do things like bicep curls or triceps extensions, great.

Just do them AFTER doing the big important workouts.

As long as you are eating enough to fuel your recovery and following the Bulk Up Like the Hulk Axioms, you’ll be good to go! (Covered in the free download when you join our email list in the box below!)

Download our free skinny guy’s guide to putting on muscle!

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9. Not Recovering Enough (Get Sleep)

I used to pride myself on not needing a lot of sleep.

I also used to be dumb, apparently.

Since putting a focus on getting bigger and stronger, I’ve had to considerably up my sleep time.

When you strength train, your muscles break down and need to rebuilt over the next 24-48 hours.

Sleep is a key part of this process.

Without it, your body can’t recover, and you can’t grow.

I find I am exhausted the day of really heavy max deadlifts, so I prioritize more sleep on those days!

Muscles aren’t made in the gym, they’re made while you’re resting.

So make sleep a priority! 

How I Put on 25 Pounds – My Last 18 Months

I’m really proud of what I’ve been able to pull off over the past few years, and I’m excited to see what the next 18 months bring.

Here are two recent photos to highlight how I’ve transformed in 6 months:

Photo on the left: 171 pounds

Photo on the right: 194 pounds

The best part is that it was all done in a healthy, sustainable, natural way.

Since then, I’ve actually worked on leaning out too (while getting much stronger).

This was all done under the supervision of my Online Personal Trainer and Coach, Anthony

If you are somebody who wants to get bigger, and go from skinny to buff, make sure you don’t make the 9 mistakes I used to make!

And if you want results, here are 3 options we offer:

1) If you’re tired of the guesswork and just to be told exactly what to do, consider checking out our 1-on-1 online coaching program! We create custom programs and nutritional guidelines for people like you struggling to put on size.

No more guesswork. Just results. Build muscle and build confidence in our Nerd Fitness Coaching Program!

2) Join the Nerd Fitness Academy! This is our online self-paced course and community. Join 50,000 members, get 8 levels of workouts, boss battles, a 10-level nutrition system, and even level up as you complete quests!

Join our self-paced online course, the Nerd Fitness Academy. 1 Payment, Lifetime Access:

3) Join the Rebellion! We have a free newsletter that we send out twice per week with new content helping you build muscle and level up your life.

Sign up the box below and I’ll send you a bunch of free guides!

Download our free skinny guy’s guide to putting on muscle!

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I’d love to hear from you in the comments below:

What are your biggest struggles when it comes to bulking up?

Have you had success as a skinny dude or lady and made great progress?

Have you struggled your whole life with being skinny and still can’t seem to crack the code?

Let me know how I can help!

-Steve (former Steve Rogers, current Captain America)

PS: Check out these other articles in our “Build Muscle Fast” Series:

13 Tips for Guaranteed Weight Gain.

Ultimate Skinny Guy’s Guide to Bulking Up Fast.

How to Build Muscle Quickly.

Strength 101: How to Get Strong.

How to Find a Good Trainer.

All photo sources can be found right here: [1]

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Pickle Jar, Lego Chopping Bacon, Strong Arm, Pencil and Paper, Army Push-Ups, X-Ray, Plan B, Deadlifting, Ladybug, Sleeping cat,

Want to Get Bigger? Avoid These 9 Mistakes Skinny Guys Make Trying to Bulk Up! published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

[themoneybuff-blog]

What early retirement was like in 1957 (according to Life magazine)

143 Shares Sometimes I hit the jackpot in my quest to find old material about retirement and early retirement. Last week, for instance, I was reading Early Retirement Dude's history of the financial independence movement when he mentioned a Life magazine photo essay about early retirement from February 1957. Say what? Within minutes, I was reading the article via Google Books. Within an hour, I had ordered not just that issue of Life but three others with retirement articles. Within days, the magazines were on my doorstep. I'm telling you: We live in the future!

I had intended to scan the entire ten-page photo essay for you, but that proved impossible. My scanner only handles 8-1/2 x 11 paper. (What about legal size?) I took the magazines down to the nearest copy shop, but their scanner can't handle Life magazines either. (They're roughly 11 x 14!) So, I've opted to transcribe the bulk of the text for you, and I've included a few photos from the Google archive of this article. Note: I hate Lifes copy editing. I've taken the liberty of formatting things to match my personal sensibility. Long live the Oxford comma! And paragraph breaks. Also, you should be able to click on any of these images to view a larger version. To many young men, retirement is a goal they cannot hope to reach until they are too used up to enjoy it. To many aging work horses, it is a prospect of boredom bred of too much spare time. Between the two extremes, a few men in their 40s and 50s are pushing into a new frontier of retirement retreat from punishing jobs to a life where they still work but no longer under high pressure. Joel Brecheen, now 45, was a building-products salesman making $10,000 a year [equivalent to $91,000 in 2018] but finding himself always out of pocket for time. In 1952, with $13,000 in savings [$119,000 today], he quit, got married, and bought an orange grove near Phoenix. He remodeled a house, built five rentable apartments, tennis courts, and a swimming pool and settled into the family life he wanted to lead, teaching youngsters how to swim and play tennis and improving his property. He had special qualifications that pulled him past the critical point where many who try retirement give up and return to the beaten track. He was an expert do-it-yourselfer and a qualified athletic instructor. Still, he found decompression from high-pressure life hard to take. I'd be plastering one of the apartments, he says, and I'd suddenly think that I ought to be on my way somewhere. From his property and teaching, Brecheen today nets $8000 per year [$73,000 today].

Holy cats! This dude retired with barely more than a year's salary saved. That's ballsy. As you read these anecdotes, keep in mind they're from February 1957. A young adult reading this might have been born in 1930 or 1935. They would have reached traditional retirement age in 1995 or 2000, and they'd likely be nearing ninety now (if they're fortunate enough to still be alive). To put it another way: Warren Buffett was born in 1930. He would have been 26 years old when this issue was published. Odds are good that he read it. Odds are also good that he thought, Man, I'd like to retire early! A romantic retreat to part-time jobs Arthur and Kathryn Lynch had romantic ideas about retirement: They wanted to get away from it all. They also had advantages $30,000 [$274,000 today], no children, and technical knowledge picked up on jobs as research chemists. Four years ago when Arthur Lynch, at 45, was making more money $15,000 a year [$137,000 today] than ever before, they left Pittsburgh to settle on St. John in the Virgin Islands. There, $12,000 went into a house [$110,000 today], and Mr. Lynch put his training to use on the island's power equipment. Both Lynches like manual labor and hire themselves out as handymen. Working part time in a place they love, they net a livable $4000 a year [$36,500 today].

This guy is a little more prepared than the first fellow. He at least has two times his annual salary saved even if he put a big chunk of that into a house. And what about his wife? If she's a research chemist too, how much does she make? If this article were written today, we'd get stats on both partners in this marriage. Aside from the subtle sexism, I feel like these stories could have been written today. When I think about the folks I know who are pursuing early retirement, their lives and thoughts and passions look very similar to those profiled in this piece. I know people who want to retire early so that they can move to some remote country for a romantic retreat. I know folks who want to escape high-pressure jobs in order to pursue something more prosaic. Like the Wertzes (in the excerpt below), Bob Clyatt retired early to focus on art. People want to retire early for a variety of reasons. But our reasons today look an awful lot like the reasons people had in 1957. Getting free to lead a very busy life In 1948, Joseph B. Wertz, a 45-year-old Washington designer under contract with the government to lay out airbase plans, had reached a high-pressure level of success where he had no time for hobbies and too little time for his newly-married wife, Jeanne. So, he gave up his busy life for a life of retirement which has turned out to be every bit as busy. Today, in a made-over stable in New Mexico, he makes pottery and furniture, paints, sculpts, photographs, and does silversmithing. After deciding to retire, the Wertzes scouted the western U.S. in a trailer, looking for the ideal spot for settling down. Facing the river in Santa Fe, they bought a stable and rebuilt it into a rambling adobe house. They live there comfortably on the $4200 annual income from investments [$38,000 today]. Some of the pottery Mr. Wertz makes is so good museums are interested in showing it. Meanwhile, he has a new interest glass blowing.

Having discovered this article and the three other Life magazines with retirement topics I'm now forced to wonder: How many other old articles are out there about early retirement? In college, I loved working on research papers. I loved going to the library, digging out the catalogs of various magazines and journals (some of which were on microfilm), then tracking down the back issues. This project feels like it calls for similar legwork. As awesome as the internet is, it's woefully lacking when it comes to pre-1990 material. Like the U.S. as a whole, the web has a strong recency bias. Do universities still keep huge volumes that index back issues of journals and magazines? I don't know. But I think it would be fun to take a day to go visit a college library to try to do some research on this subject. Finding time to be a father Allen Cook was an airline pilot whose overseas flights kept him too long from his family. He muffed two tries at retirement. Once, he moved to Florida but got cold feet when the monthly pay check was cut off abruptly. Another time, he tried dairy farming in California and wearied of the long milking chores. Such troubles are common to people who try to retire. But Cook kept trying. In 1954, he sold his farm and livestock and bought a motel in Sarasota, Fla. for use as a business and as a residence. Soon, he was able to sell the motel at a profit, buy a house, and devote himself to a business he liked a camera shop in which he had invested. Now 39, he works at the shop full-time during the tourist season but, with a manager to spell him, only half-time the rest of the year. He takes $100 a week [$913 today] out of the till for the family's living expenses and can afford to do what he prizes most: be a full-time father.

I love that the folks at Life had no qualms talking about these men being retired even though they still worked. Nowadays, there's a lot of push-back when somebody says she's retired yet continues to earn money from her labor. We bloggers jokingly talk about the Internet Retirement Police who roam the web calling out folks who don't meet their definition of retirement. I wonder if there were Magazine Retirement Police in 1957, folks who complained that the subjects of this article weren't actually retired. I suspect not. From my reading, this is a new complaint in the past twenty years. Previous generations had no qualm with folks claiming to be both retired and working. Business tied to pleasure, plus the risks For those who retire young, it is often hard to know which part is vocation and which avocation. Warren Rice, 51, Old Lyme, Conn. engineer, and Bruff Olin, 42, a Worcester, Mass. radio-station owner, both left high-pressure lives at different times to settle in Sarasota, Fla., later joined in a sign-making business. With two of us, says Olin, neither knocks his brains out. And we can do business on a beach as well as an office. Edward Dobson, 52, quit a lucrative 15-hour-a-day law and real estate business in Washingtonville, N.Y. and moved to Sarasota. He now dabbles in real estate and two palm tree nurseries and lives on $6000 a year [$55,000 today]. The scarcity of people who achieve this state of relaxed living indicates the hazards. Capital is needed to start and a period of hard labor and discouragement must be faced. Favored regions are flooded with others trying to retire. While one member of the family may adjust to the new life, others may not. Many people are stimulated by their work, feel dismally let down when they give it up. And some, in trading money for time, simply change pressures. But if it works, early retirement can produce the blissful by-product show [in these pages]. As a word of warning, look for more of these history of retirement pieces in the future. I've ordered six or seven old books on the subject, and am now keeping my eye out for more magazine articles about the topic too. 143 Shares https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-life-magazine/

[andrewdburton]

What early retirement was like in 1957 (according to Life magazine)

Sometimes I hit the jackpot in my quest to find old material about retirement and early retirement. Last week, for instance, I was reading Early Retirement Dude’s history of the financial independence movement when he mentioned a Life magazine photo essay about early retirement from February 1957. Say what?

Within minutes, I was reading the article via Google Books. Within an hour, I had ordered not just that issue of Life but three others with retirement articles. Within days, the magazines were on my doorstep. I’m telling you: We live in the future!

I had intended to scan the entire ten-page photo essay for you, but that proved impossible. My scanner only handles 8-1/2 x 11 paper. (What about legal size?) I took the magazines down to the nearest copy shop, but their scanner can’t handle Life magazines either. (They’re roughly 11 x 14!) So, I’ve opted to transcribe the bulk of the text for you, and I’ve included a few photos from the Google archive of this article.

Note: I hate Life‘s copy editing. I’ve taken the liberty of formatting things to match my personal sensibility. Long live the Oxford comma! And paragraph breaks. Also, you should be able to click on any of these images to view a larger version.

To many young men, retirement is a goal they cannot hope to reach until they are too used up to enjoy it. To many aging work horses, it is a prospect of boredom bred of too much spare time. Between the two extremes, a few men in their 40s and 50s are pushing into a new frontier of retirement — retreat from punishing jobs to a life where they still work but no longer under high pressure.

Joel Brecheen, now 45, was a building-products salesman making $10,000 a year [equivalent to $91,000 in 2018] but finding himself always out of pocket for time. In 1952, with $13,000 in savings [$119,000 today], he quit, got married, and bought an orange grove near Phoenix.

He remodeled a house, bult five rentable apartments, tennis courts, and a swimming pool and settled into the family life he wanted to lead, teaching youngsters how to swim and play tennis and improving his property. He had special qualifications that pulled him past the critical point where many who try retirement give up and return to the beaten track. He was an expert do-it-yourselfer and a qualified athletic instructor.

Still, he found decompression from high-pressure life hard to take. “I’d be plastering one of the apartments,” he says, “and I’d suddenly think that I ought to be on my way somewhere.”

From his property and teaching, Brecheen today nets $8000 per year [$73,000 today].

Holy cats! This dude retired with barely more than a year’s salary saved. That’s ballsy.

As you read these anecdotes, keep in mind they’re from February 1957. A young adult reading this might have been born in 1930 or 1935. They would have reached traditional retirement age in 1995 or 2000, and they’d likely be nearing ninety now (if they’re fortunate enough to still be alive).

To put it another way: Warren Buffett was born in 1930. He would have been 26 years old when this issue was published. Odds are good that he read it. Odds are also good that he thought, “Man, I’d like to retire early!”

A romantic retreat to part-time jobs Arthur and Kathryn Lynch had romantic ideas about retirement: They wanted to get away from it all. They also had advantages — $30,000 [$274,000 today], no children, and technical knowledge picked up on jobs as research chemists.

Four years ago when Arthur Lynch, at 45, was making more money — $15,000 a year [$137,000 today] — than ever before, they left Pittsburgh to settle on St. John in the Virgin Islands. There, $12,000 went into a house [$110,000 today], and Mr. Lynch put his training to use on the island’s power equipment.

Both Lynches like manual labor and hire themselves out as handymen. Working part time in a place they love, they net a livable $4000 a year [$36,500 today].

This guy is a little more prepared than the first fellow. He at least has two times his annual salary saved — even if he put a big chunk of that into a house. And what about his wife? If she’s a research chemist too, how much does she make? If this article were written today, we’d get stats on both partners in this marriage.

Aside from the subtle sexism, I feel like these stories could have been written today. When I think about the folks I know who are pursuing early retirement, their lives and thoughts and passions look very similar to those profiled in this piece.

I know people who want to retire early so that they can move to some remote country for a “romantic retreat”. I know folks who want to escape high-pressure jobs in order to pursue something more prosaic. Like the Wertzes (in the excerpt below), Bob Clyatt retired early to focus on art.

People want to retire early for a variety of reasons. But our reasons today look an awful lot like the reasons people had in 1957.

Getting free to lead a very busy life In 1948, Joseph B. Wertz, a 45-year-old Washington designer under contract with the government to lay out airbase plans, had reached a high-pressure level of success where he had no time for hobbies and too little time for his newly-married wife, Jeanne.

So, he gave up his busy life for a life of retirement which has turned out to be every bit as busy. Today, in a made-over stable in New Mexico, he makes pottery and furniture, paints, sculpts, photographs, and does silversmithing.

After deciding to retire, the Wertzes scouted the western U.S. in a trailer, looking for the ideal spot for settling down. Facing the river in Santa Fe, they bought a stable and rebuilt it into a rambling adobe house. They live there comfortably on the $4200 annual income from investments [$38,000 today].

Some of the pottery Mr. Wertz makes is so good museums are interested in showing it. Meanwhile, he has a new interest — glass blowing.

Having discovered this article — and the three other Life magazines with retirement topics — I’m now forced to wonder: How many other old articles are out there about early retirement?

In college, I loved working on research papers. I loved going to the library, digging out the catalogs of various magazines and journals (some of which were on microfilm), then tracking down the back issues. This project feels like it calls for similar legwork. As awesome as the internet is, it’s woefully lacking when it comes to pre-1990 material. Like the U.S. as a whole, the web has a strong recency bias.

Do universities still keep huge volumes that index back issues of journals and magazines? I don’t know. But I think it would be fun to take a day to go visit a college library to try to do some research on this subject.

Finding time to be a father Allen Cook was an airline pilot whose overseas flights kept him too long from his family. He muffed two tries at retirement. Once, he moved to Florida but got cold feet when the monthly pay check was cut off abruptly. Another time, he tried dairy farming in California and wearied of the long milking chores.

Such troubles are common to people who try to retire. But Cook kept trying.

In 1954, he sold his farm and livestock and bought a motel in Sarasota, Fla. for use as a business and as a residence. Soon, he was able to sell the motel at a profit, buy a house, and devote himself to a business he liked — a camera shop in which he had invested.

Now 39, he works at the shop full-time during the tourist season but, with a manager to spell him, only half-time the rest of the year. He takes $100 a week [$913 today] out of the till for the family’s living expenses and can afford to do what he prizes most: be a full-time father.

I love that the folks at Life had no qualms talking about these men being retired even though they still worked. Nowadays, there’s a lot of push-back when somebody says she’s retired yet continues to earn money from her labor.

We bloggers jokingly talk about the Internet Retirement Police who roam the web calling out folks who don’t meet their definition of retirement. I wonder if there were Magazine Retirement Police in 1957, folks who complained that the subjects of this article weren’t actually retired.

I suspect not. From my reading, this is a new complaint in the past twenty years. Previous generations had no qualm with folks claiming to be both retired and working.

Business tied to pleasure, plus the risks For those who retire young, it is often hard to know which part is vocation and which avocation.

Warren Rice, 51, Old Lyme, Conn. engineer, and Bruff Olin, 42, a Worcester, Mass. radio-station owner, both left high-pressure lives at different times to settle in Sarasota, Fla., later joined in a sign-making business.

“With two of us,” says Olin, “neither knocks his brains out. And we can do business on a beach as well as an office.”

Edward Dobson, 52, quit a lucrative 15-hour-a-day law and real estate business in Washingtonville, N.Y. and moved to Sarasota. He now dabbles in real estate and two palm tree nurseries and lives on $6000 a year [$55,000 today].

The scarcity of people who achieve this state of relaxed living indicates the hazards. Capital is needed to start and a period of hard labor and discouragement must be faced. Favored regions are flooded with others trying to retire. While one member of the family may adjust to the new life, others may not. Many people are stimulated by their work, feel dismally let down when they give it up. And some, in trading money for time, simply change pressures.

But if it works, early retirement can produce the blissful by-product show [in these pages].

As a word of warning, look for more of these “history of retirement” pieces in the future. I’ve ordered six or seven old books on the subject, and am now keeping my eye out for more magazine articles about the topic too.

The post What early retirement was like in 1957 (according to Life magazine) appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-life-magazine/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[parallelkernel]

Secret Keys to Making a Ton Of Money With Classified Ads

Are you ready making money - lots of it? Can you spare a little time and also just a few dollars? If you are prepared to fulfill your dreams and also realize your objectives, mail order classified ads are your ticket to success. You have just what it takes - right now. Classifieds are the very best dollar-for-dollar return in advertising, and also you could make a high profit on your product financial investment. Classified ads are the easiest to write, the easiest to location, and also set you back the least. They need just an easy follow-up, as well as generate thousands of dollars of sales. People read classified ads for an objective. They aren't interrupted - as in a lot of advertising and marketing - and are particularly seeking items, solutions as well as info that attract them. As well-placed classified ads will certainly bring hundreds - thousand - of replies month after month, time after time. You don't need to have a special background to earn money with mail order classifieds. Any kind of newbie can realize a stable second income or create a stable, full-time service with classified ads. However you have to be persistent. You need to WISH TO MAKE MONEY, and want to persevere. If you do, you will certainly locate that succeeding is very easy - just comply with the actions, one at a time, rising to the top. WHAT SHOULD I MARKET? Take a look at the classified ads in the publications and also tabloids you read. They are loaded with offers for solutions, products as well as info. And also they appear excellent. The ads show interest about the materials being used. THE 2-STEP STRATEGY The proven technique of marketing mail order products of information is called the two-step strategy. Primarily, you position a short classified advertisement in the rear of a magazine or tabloid. The advertisement does not point out cost, yet informs the visitor to create totally free information. As soon as you have an inquiry, you after that send out info worrying what you have to supply, and enjoy those orders pile in. Basically, a mail order classified advertisement gets a name as well as possible service. It might just break even with the real orders put. The real cash comes from subsequent sales. WHY NOT CHARGE IN THE CLASSIFIED? You'll get much more feedbacks from an advertisement totally free details compared to you will certainly for products - at any type of rate. And also, considering that you desire a POSSIBLE BUYER, you'll have more questions for products you wish to offer later. Charging a tiny cost to cover postage or the cost of the questions will certainly never make you recover cost - individuals will not be troubled. And also a small charge does not necessarily weed out non-buyers. If you find your classified is pulling individuals that typically aren't curious about your deal, you could alter the promotion to be much more details as to exactly what you truly have for sale. IN WHICH TO LOCATION CLASSIFIEDS The most effective recommendations in placing classifieds is to follow the leader. Locate where other goods in your classification are being marketed and do the same. The mail order company is not a place to be genuine various - especially as a novice. Although your product has to have an appeal different compared to the others. Remain with the pack and also advertise in the very same magazines. Seek repeat company. You could evaluate back issues of publications at your collection or purchase some copies of the magazines you may market in. If a certain advertisement has actually shown up repeatedly, you can bet it's a victor. WHAT IS SCREENING? The most crucial element in mail order marketing is to examination. Not just do you have to figure out if your item will offer, yet you have to find out what the very best rate is. Checking is nitty-gritty - and this is where you need determination. Do not obtain dissuaded. GIVE IT A TRY. Because of the low cost of positioning classifieds, it's worth it to keep it going. YOU TIN EARNINGS. SORTS OF ADS There are 3 kinds of post free classified ads in los angeles - qualified, partly qualified, and blind. KEYING THE ADDRESS Exactly how do you identify just what inquiry action originated from which ad? You code the company name or road address so you could establish just what advertisement pulled the reaction. This is called keying the address, as well as it is among one of the most vital suggestions in mail order classified advertising. WRITING CLASSIFIEDS Creating your own copy for a classified advertisement is very easy. There are so couple of words you need to utilize that you do not have to bother with being a writer or an expert in advertising. You are your own expert in offering your product. CONSERVE CASH PLACING ADS The majority of classified ads are billed a specific fee per word, so you want to keep your words important and also accurate. Once you have actually composed your ad, take a more detailed look at it. Can you remove added words without altering the definition? REACTING TO INQUIRIES When you start obtaining actions from the classified ads, you should send out your sales literature right away, definitely within one week. The objective is to transform the questions into a sale and convert the sale into PURE REVENUE. THE RESPONSE PACKAGE A normal mail order bundle - called a conversion - contains a personal letter, a sales brochure, an order form, and also a return envelope. How sophisticated you wan making your conversion relies on exactly how successful your product appears to be marketing and what does it cost? money you wish to invest. HOW TO PREPARE SALES LITERATURE The sales letter promotes you along with your product. It is a personal appeal to a prospective buyer. You desire the individual to feel unique as well as have a factor not just to browse the remainder of the literature, but TO PURCHASE YOUR ITEM. ORDER FORMS If you have only a one-page sales pitch, you should provide area for an order form. It ought to be well-defined by a line or populated line around it, and should be large sufficient for someone to write in the information. If you intend to send out a total packet with sales letter and sales brochure, print up different order forms. PRINTING A PAMPHLET Preparing a sales brochure or sales brochure is not as difficult as it could appear. It doesn't need to be a glossy, four-color elegant pamphlet. You could send even a one-page description of the item and a charm for buying. MAILING You can get a mass rate allow at the post office if you send at the very least 2 hundred identical items at a time. They need to be presorted for destination. The bulk rate cost is reduced, yet it takes a lot longer for the mail to be provided. KEEPING DOCUMENTS It is incredibly vital to keep exact records in mail order. It is only through these document sheets that you could identify which ad draws the very best, which advertising lead is the most attracting, and exactly how well your item is selling. Great documents are the follow up of great testing. HOW TO DETERMINE REVENUE Complete the amount of money sales. That is your gross profit. Subtract the expense of the product. Subtract the expense of the product. Subtract the cost of mailing. Deduct the expense of conversion and also the expense of the ad. That is your internet earnings, the one that counts.Just stay with it, and also you can WATCH THAT PROFIT GROW larger and larger each ad, each conversion, each sale. EXPANDING AND ALSO EXPANDING RICHER For many years, great buyers purchase sometimes your preliminary investment in classified advertisement space. A very first buyer indicates a second sale; afterwards, you have a regular customer who could acquire for several years. ADDED APPEALS As soon as you get rolling with your mail order company, you can try any type of variety of rewards to get orders. You could supply a free gift - or free anything - certificates, promo codes, wonderful rewards. CONTENTMENT ENSURED Not just must you publish a guarantee in all your ads and also sales literary works, yet you should recognize it. Never ever send out substandard goods; never ever gamble on damaged mailers or guess lower on postage. Supply a full product. MAKING EVEN MORE FROM A VICTOR You've got an effective item. The conversion for orders is high, refunds are reduced, as well as the draw create the classified advertisement is fantastic. Just how can you make even more money - even if you assume you've saturated your market? YOU AND THE LEGISLATION You do not require an unique federal or state allow to operate a mail order business. The material you offer should be legit nevertheless, and also you could not be misleading or misleading in claims or marketing.

[darkconfetti]

Trick Keys making a Lot Of Money With Classified Ads

Are you prepared to earn loan - lots of it? Can you save a little time and just a couple of bucks? If you are prepared to meet your dreams as well as realize your goals, mail order classified ads are your ticket to success. You have exactly what it takes - right now. Classifieds are the very best dollar-for-dollar return in advertising and marketing, as well as you could make a high profit on your product investment. Classified ads are the simplest to compose, the most convenient to location, and also set you back the least. They need only an easy follow-up, as well as generate hundreds of bucks of sales. People review post free classified ads in los angeles for an objective. They typically aren't interrupted - as in most advertising - as well as are particularly searching for products, solutions and also details that interest them. As well-placed classified ads will certainly bring hundreds - thousand - of replies month after month, time after time. You don't need to have a special background to make money with mail order classifieds. Any kind of novice could realize a steady second earnings or create a steady, full-time company through classified ads. But you need to be consistent. You need to WANT TO GENERATE INCOME, and also agree to stay with it. If you do, you will certainly locate that succeeding is simple - simply adhere to the actions, individually, rising to the top. WHAT SHOULD I SELL? Have a look at the classified ads in the publications and also tabloids you check out. They are filled with offers for services, products and also details. And also they appear great. The ads show excitement concerning the products being provided. THE 2-STEP TECHNIQUE The proven method of selling mail order products of details is called the two-step approach. Essentially, you put a short classified ad in the rear of a publication or paper. The advertisement does not state cost, however tells the reader to write for free details. As soon as you have an inquiry, you after that send out details worrying exactly what you have to offer, and also view those orders pile in. Basically, a mail order classified ad buys a name and also possible service. It could just break even with the real orders placed. The real cash originates from succeeding sales. WHY NOT CHARGE IN THE CLASSIFIED? You'll obtain even more actions from an advertisement for free info than you will certainly for goods - at any kind of cost. And also, given that you desire a PROSPECTIVE BUYER, you'll have more questions for materials you intend to offer later on. Charging a tiny charge to cover postage or the price of the query will never ever make you break even - people won't be troubled. And a little fee doesn't necessarily remove non-buyers. If you find your classified is drawing people that aren't curious about your offer, you can alter the ad to be extra specific as to exactly what you actually have for sale. IN WHICH TO LOCATION CLASSIFIEDS The very best advice in position classifieds is to follow the leader. Find where other products in your group are being offered and do the same. The mail order organisation is not a location to be genuine various - specifically as a newbie. Although your item must have a charm various than the others. Remain with the pack as well as advertise in the same magazines. Seek repeat organisation. You can evaluate back problems of publications at your library or get some duplicates of the publications you might promote in. If a particular ad has actually shown up repeatedly, you can wager it's a victor. WHAT IS SCREENING? The most vital element in mail order marketing is to test. Not only do you should discover if your product will sell, but you need to learn exactly what the best rate is. Examining is nitty-gritty - and this is where you need perseverance. Don't get prevented. GIVE IT A TRY. Because of the low cost of positioning classifieds, it deserves it to maintain it going. YOU TIN PROFIT. SORTS OF ADS There are 3 kinds of classified ads - certified, partly qualified, as well as blind. KEYING THE ADDRESS How do you identify just what inquiry reaction came from which advertisement? You code the business name or street address so you could determine what advertisement pulled the action. This is called keying the address, and it's one of one of the most crucial pointers in mail order classified advertising. WRITING CLASSIFIEDS Composing your very own copy for a classified ad is easy. There are so couple of words you need to use that you don't have to worry about being an author or a professional in marketing. You are your own professional in selling your item. SAVE CASH POSITIONING ADS A lot of classified ads are billed a specific charge per word, so you intend to keep your words vital and accurate. As soon as you have actually created your ad, take a more detailed consider it. Can you eliminate added words without changing the meaning? RESPONDING TO INQUIRIES Once you begin getting actions from the classified ads, you need to send your sales literary works right away, definitely within one week. The goal is to convert the questions right into a sale as well as convert the sale into PURE EARNINGS. THE FEEDBACK PLAN A common mail order plan - called a conversion - includes a personal letter, a brochure, an order form, and a return envelope. How fancy you wan to make your conversion depends on exactly how successful your product seems to be marketing and just how much cash you intend to spend. THE BEST WAYS TO PREPARE SALES LITERATURE The sales letter promotes you in addition to your item. It is a personal appeal to a possible purchaser. You want the individual to feel special and have a reason not only to look through the rest of the literary works, however TO GET YOUR ITEM. ORDER FORMS If you have just a one-page sales pitch, you need to provide space for an order form. It must be distinct by a line or dotted line around it, and also must be large sufficient for someone to write in the information. If you intend to send a complete package with sales letter as well as pamphlet, print up different order forms. PRINTING A PAMPHLET Preparing a brochure or sales catalog is not as hard as it might seem. It does not need to be a glossy, four-color elegant brochure. You can send also a one-page summary of the item and an allure for ordering. MAILING You can acquire a bulk rate allow at the post office if you send out at least two hundred similar items each time. They must be presorted for destination. The mass rate cost is lower, however it takes a lot longer for the mail to be delivered. MAINTAINING RECORDS It is exceptionally vital to maintain precise documents in mail order. It is only via these document sheets that you can establish which ad draws the best, which advertising and marketing lead is one of the most attracting, and how well your product is offering. Great records are the follow up of excellent testing. THE BEST WAYS TO CALCULATE PROFIT Complete the amount of money sales. That is your gross profit. Deduct the price of the product. Subtract the price of the item. Deduct the expense of mailing. Deduct the price of conversion as well as the expense of the advertisement. That is your web revenue, the one that counts.Just stay with it, as well as you could ENJOY THAT EARNINGS GROW bigger and also bigger each advertisement, each conversion, each sale. EXPANDING As Well As GROWING RICHER Throughout the years, great buyers acquire many times your initial investment in classified ad room. A very first buyer indicates a second sale; then, you have a regular customer that may acquire for years. ADDITIONAL APPEALS When you obtain rolling with your mail order organisation, you can attempt any type of variety of motivations to obtain orders. You can supply a totally free present - or cost-free anything - certificates, vouchers, remarkable prizes. CONTENTMENT ENSURED Not just must you publish an assurance in all your ads and sales literature, however you have to recognize it. Never ever send inferior goods; never ever gamble on damaged mailers or think lower on postage. Provide a complete product. MAKING EVEN MORE FROM A VICTOR You've got an effective item. The conversion for orders is high, reimbursements are reduced, as well as the draw develop the classified advertisement is fantastic. Just how can you make even more loan - even if you think you've filled your market? YOU AND THE REGULATION You do not require a special government or state allow to run a mail order company. The product you market have to be legitimate however, and you could not be deceptive or misleading in claims or advertising and marketing.

[lindafrancois]

Want to Get Bigger? Avoid These 9 Mistakes Skinny Guys Make Trying to Bulk Up!

If you’re here because you want to go from skinny to muscular, you’ve come to the right place!

I know exactly how you feel because I was once a very thin guy struggling to put on muscle.

We’ll talk about the mistakes I made so you can avoid them, then we’ll offer a step-by-step guide so you can start growing big and strong.

These are the 9 key mistakes skinny guys make (click each to skip right to that):

Not eating enough (What to eat to grow big)

Setting unrealistic expectations (How fast can I grow muscle?)

Not having a solid plan (How to go from skinny to muscular)

Not doing enough (How to grow muscle)

Going too quickly and getting injured (Being safe)

Not following a sustainable strategy (Consistency)

Not making it a priority (Remember your training)

Sweating the small stuff (Keep it simple)

Not recovering enough (Get sleep)

How I put on 25 Pounds of Mass

After today, we’ll make sure you don’t do any of these errors.

We help clients just like you get bigger in our really popular 1-on-1 Online Training Program! I’ve been been trying to get bigger since I was 16, and I started training with an online coach in 2015.

It has been the biggest boost for me in the world, packing on a ton of size without being miserable! 

Make no mistake about it, this stuff isn’t easy. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading about it on the internet!

If you want to learn more about the program, simply click on the button below!

Let's get you from skinny to muscular PRONTO. We’re really good at this stuff. Learn more about our Coaching Program!

And don’t forget to download our Skinny Guy cheat sheet so that you can bulk like the Hulk!

Download our free skinny guy’s guide to putting on muscle!

Enter your email below to download now

The Nerd Fitness "Get Bigger" Shopping List

Bulk like the Hulk with our rules for getting bigger

  I identify as a:

Woman

Man

1. Not Eating Enough (What to Eat to Grow Big)

If you’re not getting bigger, you are not eating enough.

This one solution will account for 95% of most skinny men and women who are looking to get bigger.

When I started lifting weights, I spent 5-6 days a week in the gym following a bodybuilder workout routine from various fitness magazines.

Over the next 6 years, I put on maybe five pounds total, even though it felt as though I was eating a lot.

Turns out, I was eating 500-1000 less calories per day than I needed to stimulate muscle growth.

It wasn’t until after college that I simplified my workouts (lots of barbell lifts), doubled the amount of calories I consumed, and I was able to put on about 18 pounds in 30 days.

This is back in 2006:

I didn’t put the weight on a necessarily healthy or sustainable way, but after 6 years of struggle, this experience solidified the connection between diet and getting bigger.

It finally made sense.

If you don’t eat enough calories, you won’t get any bigger.

So if you are not getting bigger and more buff, then you are not eating enough.

It’s science.

If you’re trying to gain weight: when in doubt, eat.

Some of my favorite techniques are in my “How to Bulk Up Fast” article.

YOUR GOAL: Add 200-300 more calories per day until your stomach gets used to it, and see how the scale changes.

What should you be eating? Depending on how skinny you are, you can get away with eating junk food as long as you’re getting enough protein and calories.

Liquid calories are your friend too for squeezing in extra calories every day – here’s my favorite high calorie protein shake recipe!

Here are some high quality, high calorie foods:

Sweet potatoes, regular potatoes and yams.

Rice or quinoa of any variety.

Oats, instant or steel cut.

Peanut butter, almond butter.

Walnuts, almonds, brazil nuts, cashews.

Cheese, milk, eggs.

Eat lots of high calorie foods, get plenty of protein, and don’t forget the veggies!

I know how overwhelming this stuff can be, which is why we have a Coaching Program that kicks ass.

We also have a printable “Get Bigger” shopping list and Bulk Up Cheat sheet when you join our email list in the yellow box below.

Download our free skinny guy’s guide to putting on muscle!

Enter your email below to download now

The Nerd Fitness "Get Bigger" Shopping List

Bulk like the Hulk with our rules for getting bigger

  I identify as a:

Woman

Man

2. Setting unrealistic expectations (How Fast Can I Grow Muscle?)

We live in a world of instant gratification.

People have unrealistic expectations thanks to marketing when it comes to weight loss (“Lose 30 pounds in 30 days!”).

Unsurprisingly, people also have unrealistic expectations when it comes to NATURALLY building muscle as well. Which is why we get served ads like this:

“Scientists don’t want you to learn this trick to pack on 40 pounds of muscle!”

These ads are designed to sell supplements, not make you bigger or get you results.

Most supplements are garbage.

The only supplements I recommend taking: protein and creatine.

We cover this extensively in our “how do I build muscle fast?” article:

Under optimal conditions, you’ll most likely be able to put on 1-2 pounds of muscle per month.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t make tremendous strength gains – you’re just not going to build 50 pounds of muscle in 6 weeks.

So start by having proper expectations: don’t try to Put on 50 pounds by the week or month. It’s time to think in terms of days and years to make your progress permanent:

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and muscle isn’t built in a matter of days either. It’s going to take months of sustained effort, and it’s going to take consistency and patience.

But you can get there.

If you struggle with not seeing results, and you want a Yoda in your pocket (that sounds weird…) to help you bulk up fast, our online coaching program fits that exact scenario

Work with our coaches to get bigger, quickly and safely. Learn more here:

3. Not having a solid plan (How to Go from Skinny to Muscular)

If you want to go from skinny to buff, you need a plan.

A plan that is balanced, and provides you with big movements that stimulate growth all over your body.

If you just wander into the gym without a strategy, you’re going to struggle to get bigger.

Then you’re gonna have a bad time.

It’s better to pick a basic plan and stick with it for months and months and months, than jump around from week to week chasing the newest shiny object.

As we lay out in our Strength 101 series…

Get freaking strong at the following movements, eat enough, and you will get bigger:

Squats

Deadlifts

Overhead Presses

Rows

Pull-ups (weighted)

Dips (weighted)

What plan to follow?

No idea where to start? Read our free Strength 101 series, and pick a workout program from our Beginner Strength Training Workouts.

Work with our coaching staff! We’ll build a program and offer nutrition guidance so that you actually start to see results right away.

Pick one of the 6 levels of workouts in our Beginner’s Gym Guide article to get you comfortable and in a routine.

If you’re not ready for barbell workouts, start with bodyweight training!

Other great barbell-based programs are Stronglifts 5×5, Wendler’s 5/3/1 program, and Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength program.

I started with basic barbell training, then moved into more of a hybrid barbell/bodyweight program (thanks to my Online Coach).

Which should you pick?

Honestly, any of them will work – you just need to start, and stick with it for months at a time, focusing on getting stronger with each movement.

You can also download our Strength 101 Guide when you sign up in the box below:

Download our comprehensive guide STRENGTH TRAINING 101!

Everything you need to know about getting strong.

Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.

How to find the right gym and train properly in one.

I identify as a:

Woman

Man

4. Not Doing Enough (How to Grow Muscle)

If you are trying to get bigger, you might not be doing a tough enough workout in the gym or in the park to stimulate muscle growth.

No matter what, you need to be doing heavier weight, or doing more repetitions in order to challenge your body, breakdown muscle fiber, and force your body to rebuild stronger.

This is called “progressive overload,” and it’s the only way you’re going to build size in the right places.

To answer your first question, you can get bigger doing just bodyweight exercises.

Take one look at gymnasts – these dudes have built their muscle through years of intense bodyweight training like handstands and muscle-ups on the gymnastic rings:

However, you must be scaling these exercises constantly to make them increasingly more difficult, which many people struggle to do.

Just doing more regular push-ups, bodyweight squats and pull-ups is a good way to get conditioned, but after a certain point, it most likely won’t produce muscle growth without increasing the challenge.

That’s when you need to progressively overload your muscles with a more difficult movement.

I detail this during my “stay in shape while traveling” post, in which I packed on a few pounds of muscle while ONLY doing bodyweight exercises.

I started by doing just pull-ups and dips.

Now I’m up to doing pull-ups with 60 pounds on a weight belt, and dips with 70 pounds on a weight belt.

I used to just do push-ups and pull-ups, now it’s parallette gymnastic complexes:

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Steve Kamb (@stevekamb) on Jan 7, 2015 at 10:37am PST

And muscle-ups on gymnastic rings:

  View this post on Instagram

  A post shared by Steve Kamb (@stevekamb) on Dec 15, 2014 at 1:43pm PST

So, YES it can be done!

You just need a solid plan that allows you to consistently push your muscles further.

Looking for a plan to gymnastics mastery? Outside of our coaching program, we’ve got a Rings and Handstands course that we’ve recently released.

You’ll get 20 different levels to work through, so exercises will continue to get harder (and you’ll get bigger and stronger).

Learn how to do handstands and get your first muscle up with our Rings & Handstands Course!

5. Going Too Quickly and Getting Injured (Being Safe)

In the age of instant gratification, we always want more, now now now.

Over the past decade, I followed a terrible cycle of setbacks and injury:

Try to get bigger. Eat lots of food, and put on some weight.

Ramp up my workouts too quickly.

Sustain some sort of injury from trying to do too much.

Take a month off to recover.

Start back at #1.

Repeat the process.

Have patience.

Start out with easy weight, and get a teeny tiny bit better every single day.

In fact, it wasn’t until I stopped chasing fast goals and instead focused on tiny habits that I went from Steve Rogers to Captain America.

Back when I started deadlifting again, I kept thinking “I can do more! I can go heavier!” – but I patiently forced myself to go just a tiny bit further than the week prior.

Live to train another day, and just focus on the process:

“Hit the gym 3-4 times per week, get a tiny bit stronger. Then go home and eat!”

As bodybuilder Lee Haney says, “Exercise to stimulate, not to annihilate.”

Getting yourself to slow down and put faith in the process is really difficult. It’s why everybody fails at diets, and why nobody can get results that stick.

They try to do TOO much, TOO soon, and keep falling back to square one.

If you are tired of falling back to square one and want somebody to help you make sustainable, permanent progress towards bulking up, check out our coaching program!

No more frustration or confusion, just results. Learn how we can help you bulk up in our Online Coaching Program!

6. Not Following a Sustainable Strategy (Consistency)

Just like losing a bunch of weight by running on a treadmill and starving oneself is not sustainable in the long term, neither is making yourself miserable for a month just to pack on some size.

As soon as you go back to “eating like normal” and “exercising like normal,” you’ll lose all of your gains!

For me, I’ve found sustained success by doing the following:

Eating roughly the same meals every single day

Getting enough sleep by going to bed at the same time each night.

Training 4 days a week for about an hour

As a result, I’ve been able to make consistent progress for the past 4 years, and my new “normal” is progress and strength improvements!

What I’m trying to say is to be honest with yourself.

If you can’t work out six days a week for the next year, DON’T train that way!

Start with twice a week, doing a basic weight training program, and dump the extra time you would have spent training into eating more or getting more sleep.

If you can train three days a week, that should be plenty to make you bigger: muscles are made in the kitchen, after all!

Remember, if you’re not getting bigger, you’re not eating enough!

Eat more.

It might take you 6+ months longer than if you went all-in and did nothing but eat and lift all day every day, but you’ll actually KEEP the progress you’ve made rather than giving it all back.

I referenced this video above, but I’m putting it here too to make sure you don’t miss it. It’s better to ask “What can I sustainably do TODAY that gets me closer to my goal?” and build your system around that!

This was a brutal lesson I couldn’t learn until I hired an online personal trainer who helped me get my mindset right, and put the right systems in place!

Hack the Matrix and learn to bulk like the Hulk in our Online Coaching Program!

7. Not Making It a Priority (Remember Your Training)

After telling myself “I want to get big and strong,” I realized that for much of the past decade, it wasn’t really a priority.

I put work, messing around on the internet, video games, and going out and drinking ahead of my training on my list of priorities.

Since 2014, I’ve made it a point to see what I could accomplish if I made getting bigger and stronger a priority in my life.

Most importantly, I started taking this seriously and hired an online trainer that I’ve been working with for 5+ years.

It’s what allowed me to deadlift 420 pounds at a bodyweight at 172 pounds:

Here’s what I did to prioritize my transformation and training:

I ate extra meals even when I wasn’t hungry.

I rearranged my training schedule so work would NEVER be an excuse.

I said “no” more often to staying out really late and drinking.

I programmed my workouts into my calendar.

I had my coach keep me accountable.

I scheduled Saturday morning workouts so I wouldn’t go out drinking on Friday.

I made fitness a priority.

Is this goal of going from skinny to buff truly a priority for you? If it’s not, you’re going to give up when you’re tired, or not hungry, or don’t want to exercise.

As we talk about in our “how to get in shape” article, you need to have a BIG WHY: the reason you’re doing this!

I wanted to get bigger so I could be more confident when going on dates.

What about you? Why are you here?

Write down your reason, stick it on your bathroom mirror or laptop, and use it as a reminder.

Because this isn’t going to be easy!

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

And if you want to GET bigger permanently, you need to do things differently, consistently, and permanently.

Never forget why you are doing this! 

I did this journey alone for a decade before I finally got some help in staying accountable and keeping me on track.

If you’re looking for somebody to keep you accountable, tell you exactly what to do in the gym, and tell you how many calories you should eat, we can help there too.

No more guesswork. Let our Coaching Program tell you exactly what to do!

8. Sweating the Small Stuff (Keep It Simple)

Bicep curls! Forearm curls! Calf raises!

“Should I target all three heads of the triceps muscle?”

“I see the big guy over there doing 8 types of bicep exercises – should I do what he’s doing?”

“Does chest day need to be bench, incline bench, decline bench, cable chest flys, dumbbell flys?”

“How many sets and reps should I do? Should I do 6 sets of 8 reps or 5 sets of 5 reps?”

Forget all of that stuff!

If you want to get bigger, focus on getting stronger in one of the few big, basic movements.

Once you have a solid foundation, then we can start targeting specific isolated muscle groups like the bodybuilders do.

Always start your workout with the basics of strength training (noticing a theme here?):

Squats

Deadlifts

Bench Press

Overhead Presses

Rows

Pull-ups (weighted)

Dips (weighted)

“But where’s my bicep curls, tricep extensions, ab work, etc.!?!?!”

ALL of those muscles get worked incredibly well with the above exercises, so don’t worry about isolating.

Instead, just get strong.

When you can lift heavy things or complete intense bodyweight exercises, your body needs to adapt.

If you want to do things like bicep curls or triceps extensions, great.

Just do them AFTER doing the big important workouts.

As long as you are eating enough to fuel your recovery and following the Bulk Up Like the Hulk Axioms, you’ll be good to go! (Covered in the free download when you join our email list in the box below!)

Download our free skinny guy’s guide to putting on muscle!

Enter your email below to download now

The Nerd Fitness "Get Bigger" Shopping List

Bulk like the Hulk with our rules for getting bigger

  I identify as a:

Woman

Man

9. Not Recovering Enough (Get Sleep)

I used to pride myself on not needing a lot of sleep.

I also used to be dumb, apparently.

Since putting a focus on getting bigger and stronger, I’ve had to considerably up my sleep time.

When you strength train, your muscles break down and need to rebuilt over the next 24-48 hours.

Sleep is a key part of this process.

Without it, your body can’t recover, and you can’t grow.

I find I am exhausted the day of really heavy max deadlifts, so I prioritize more sleep on those days!

Muscles aren’t made in the gym, they’re made while you’re resting.

So make sleep a priority! 

How I Put on 25 Pounds – My Last 18 Months

I’m really proud of what I’ve been able to pull off over the past few years, and I’m excited to see what the next 18 months bring.

Here are two recent photos to highlight how I’ve transformed in 6 months:

Photo on the left: 171 pounds

Photo on the right: 194 pounds

The best part is that it was all done in a healthy, sustainable, natural way.

Since then, I’ve actually worked on leaning out too (while getting much stronger).

This was all done under the supervision of my Online Personal Trainer and Coach, Anthony

If you are somebody who wants to get bigger, and go from skinny to buff, make sure you don’t make the 9 mistakes I used to make!

And if you want results, here are 3 options we offer:

1) If you’re tired of the guesswork and just to be told exactly what to do, consider checking out our 1-on-1 online coaching program! We create custom programs and nutritional guidelines for people like you struggling to put on size.

No more guesswork. Just results. Build muscle and build confidence in our Nerd Fitness Coaching Program!

2) Join the Nerd Fitness Academy! This is our online self-paced course and community. Join 50,000 members, get 8 levels of workouts, boss battles, a 10-level nutrition system, and even level up as you complete quests!

Join our self-paced online course, the Nerd Fitness Academy. 1 Payment, Lifetime Access:

3) Join the Rebellion! We have a free newsletter that we send out twice per week with new content helping you build muscle and level up your life.

Sign up the box below and I’ll send you a bunch of free guides!

Download our free skinny guy’s guide to putting on muscle!

Enter your email below to download now

The Nerd Fitness "Get Bigger" Shopping List

Bulk like the Hulk with our rules for getting bigger

  I identify as a:

Woman

Man

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below:

What are your biggest struggles when it comes to bulking up?

Have you had success as a skinny dude or lady and made great progress?

Have you struggled your whole life with being skinny and still can’t seem to crack the code?

Let me know how I can help!

-Steve (former Steve Rogers, current Captain America)

PS: Check out these other articles in our “Build Muscle Fast” Series:

13 Tips for Guaranteed Weight Gain.

Ultimate Skinny Guy’s Guide to Bulking Up Fast.

How to Build Muscle Quickly.

Strength 101: How to Get Strong.

How to Find a Good Trainer.

All photo sources can be found right here: [1]

Footnotes    ( returns to text)

Pickle Jar, Lego Chopping Bacon, Strong Arm, Pencil and Paper, Army Push-Ups, X-Ray, Plan B, Deadlifting, Ladybug, Sleeping cat,

Want to Get Bigger? Avoid These 9 Mistakes Skinny Guys Make Trying to Bulk Up! published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

[themoneybuff-blog]

What early retirement was like in 1957 (according to Life magazine)

143 Shares Sometimes I hit the jackpot in my quest to find old material about retirement and early retirement. Last week, for instance, I was reading Early Retirement Dude's history of the financial independence movement when he mentioned a Life magazine photo essay about early retirement from February 1957. Say what? Within minutes, I was reading the article via Google Books. Within an hour, I had ordered not just that issue of Life but three others with retirement articles. Within days, the magazines were on my doorstep. I'm telling you: We live in the future!

I had intended to scan the entire ten-page photo essay for you, but that proved impossible. My scanner only handles 8-1/2 x 11 paper. (What about legal size?) I took the magazines down to the nearest copy shop, but their scanner can't handle Life magazines either. (They're roughly 11 x 14!) So, I've opted to transcribe the bulk of the text for you, and I've included a few photos from the Google archive of this article. Note: I hate Lifes copy editing. I've taken the liberty of formatting things to match my personal sensibility. Long live the Oxford comma! And paragraph breaks. Also, you should be able to click on any of these images to view a larger version. To many young men, retirement is a goal they cannot hope to reach until they are too used up to enjoy it. To many aging work horses, it is a prospect of boredom bred of too much spare time. Between the two extremes, a few men in their 40s and 50s are pushing into a new frontier of retirement retreat from punishing jobs to a life where they still work but no longer under high pressure. Joel Brecheen, now 45, was a building-products salesman making $10,000 a year [equivalent to $91,000 in 2018] but finding himself always out of pocket for time. In 1952, with $13,000 in savings [$119,000 today], he quit, got married, and bought an orange grove near Phoenix. He remodeled a house, built five rentable apartments, tennis courts, and a swimming pool and settled into the family life he wanted to lead, teaching youngsters how to swim and play tennis and improving his property. He had special qualifications that pulled him past the critical point where many who try retirement give up and return to the beaten track. He was an expert do-it-yourselfer and a qualified athletic instructor. Still, he found decompression from high-pressure life hard to take. I'd be plastering one of the apartments, he says, and I'd suddenly think that I ought to be on my way somewhere. From his property and teaching, Brecheen today nets $8000 per year [$73,000 today].

Holy cats! This dude retired with barely more than a year's salary saved. That's ballsy. As you read these anecdotes, keep in mind they're from February 1957. A young adult reading this might have been born in 1930 or 1935. They would have reached traditional retirement age in 1995 or 2000, and they'd likely be nearing ninety now (if they're fortunate enough to still be alive). To put it another way: Warren Buffett was born in 1930. He would have been 26 years old when this issue was published. Odds are good that he read it. Odds are also good that he thought, Man, I'd like to retire early! A romantic retreat to part-time jobs Arthur and Kathryn Lynch had romantic ideas about retirement: They wanted to get away from it all. They also had advantages $30,000 [$274,000 today], no children, and technical knowledge picked up on jobs as research chemists. Four years ago when Arthur Lynch, at 45, was making more money $15,000 a year [$137,000 today] than ever before, they left Pittsburgh to settle on St. John in the Virgin Islands. There, $12,000 went into a house [$110,000 today], and Mr. Lynch put his training to use on the island's power equipment. Both Lynches like manual labor and hire themselves out as handymen. Working part time in a place they love, they net a livable $4000 a year [$36,500 today].

This guy is a little more prepared than the first fellow. He at least has two times his annual salary saved even if he put a big chunk of that into a house. And what about his wife? If she's a research chemist too, how much does she make? If this article were written today, we'd get stats on both partners in this marriage. Aside from the subtle sexism, I feel like these stories could have been written today. When I think about the folks I know who are pursuing early retirement, their lives and thoughts and passions look very similar to those profiled in this piece. I know people who want to retire early so that they can move to some remote country for a romantic retreat. I know folks who want to escape high-pressure jobs in order to pursue something more prosaic. Like the Wertzes (in the excerpt below), Bob Clyatt retired early to focus on art. People want to retire early for a variety of reasons. But our reasons today look an awful lot like the reasons people had in 1957. Getting free to lead a very busy life In 1948, Joseph B. Wertz, a 45-year-old Washington designer under contract with the government to lay out airbase plans, had reached a high-pressure level of success where he had no time for hobbies and too little time for his newly-married wife, Jeanne. So, he gave up his busy life for a life of retirement which has turned out to be every bit as busy. Today, in a made-over stable in New Mexico, he makes pottery and furniture, paints, sculpts, photographs, and does silversmithing. After deciding to retire, the Wertzes scouted the western U.S. in a trailer, looking for the ideal spot for settling down. Facing the river in Santa Fe, they bought a stable and rebuilt it into a rambling adobe house. They live there comfortably on the $4200 annual income from investments [$38,000 today]. Some of the pottery Mr. Wertz makes is so good museums are interested in showing it. Meanwhile, he has a new interest glass blowing.

Having discovered this article and the three other Life magazines with retirement topics I'm now forced to wonder: How many other old articles are out there about early retirement? In college, I loved working on research papers. I loved going to the library, digging out the catalogs of various magazines and journals (some of which were on microfilm), then tracking down the back issues. This project feels like it calls for similar legwork. As awesome as the internet is, it's woefully lacking when it comes to pre-1990 material. Like the U.S. as a whole, the web has a strong recency bias. Do universities still keep huge volumes that index back issues of journals and magazines? I don't know. But I think it would be fun to take a day to go visit a college library to try to do some research on this subject. Finding time to be a father Allen Cook was an airline pilot whose overseas flights kept him too long from his family. He muffed two tries at retirement. Once, he moved to Florida but got cold feet when the monthly pay check was cut off abruptly. Another time, he tried dairy farming in California and wearied of the long milking chores. Such troubles are common to people who try to retire. But Cook kept trying. In 1954, he sold his farm and livestock and bought a motel in Sarasota, Fla. for use as a business and as a residence. Soon, he was able to sell the motel at a profit, buy a house, and devote himself to a business he liked a camera shop in which he had invested. Now 39, he works at the shop full-time during the tourist season but, with a manager to spell him, only half-time the rest of the year. He takes $100 a week [$913 today] out of the till for the family's living expenses and can afford to do what he prizes most: be a full-time father.

I love that the folks at Life had no qualms talking about these men being retired even though they still worked. Nowadays, there's a lot of push-back when somebody says she's retired yet continues to earn money from her labor. We bloggers jokingly talk about the Internet Retirement Police who roam the web calling out folks who don't meet their definition of retirement. I wonder if there were Magazine Retirement Police in 1957, folks who complained that the subjects of this article weren't actually retired. I suspect not. From my reading, this is a new complaint in the past twenty years. Previous generations had no qualm with folks claiming to be both retired and working. Business tied to pleasure, plus the risks For those who retire young, it is often hard to know which part is vocation and which avocation. Warren Rice, 51, Old Lyme, Conn. engineer, and Bruff Olin, 42, a Worcester, Mass. radio-station owner, both left high-pressure lives at different times to settle in Sarasota, Fla., later joined in a sign-making business. With two of us, says Olin, neither knocks his brains out. And we can do business on a beach as well as an office. Edward Dobson, 52, quit a lucrative 15-hour-a-day law and real estate business in Washingtonville, N.Y. and moved to Sarasota. He now dabbles in real estate and two palm tree nurseries and lives on $6000 a year [$55,000 today]. The scarcity of people who achieve this state of relaxed living indicates the hazards. Capital is needed to start and a period of hard labor and discouragement must be faced. Favored regions are flooded with others trying to retire. While one member of the family may adjust to the new life, others may not. Many people are stimulated by their work, feel dismally let down when they give it up. And some, in trading money for time, simply change pressures. But if it works, early retirement can produce the blissful by-product show [in these pages]. As a word of warning, look for more of these history of retirement pieces in the future. I've ordered six or seven old books on the subject, and am now keeping my eye out for more magazine articles about the topic too. 143 Shares https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-life-magazine/

[themoneybuff-blog]

What early retirement was like in 1957 (according to Life magazine)

143 Shares Sometimes I hit the jackpot in my quest to find old material about retirement and early retirement. Last week, for instance, I was reading Early Retirement Dude's history of the financial independence movement when he mentioned a Life magazine photo essay about early retirement from February 1957. Say what? Within minutes, I was reading the article via Google Books. Within an hour, I had ordered not just that issue of Life but three others with retirement articles. Within days, the magazines were on my doorstep. I'm telling you: We live in the future!

I had intended to scan the entire ten-page photo essay for you, but that proved impossible. My scanner only handles 8-1/2 x 11 paper. (What about legal size?) I took the magazines down to the nearest copy shop, but their scanner can't handle Life magazines either. (They're roughly 11 x 14!) So, I've opted to transcribe the bulk of the text for you, and I've included a few photos from the Google archive of this article. Note: I hate Lifes copy editing. I've taken the liberty of formatting things to match my personal sensibility. Long live the Oxford comma! And paragraph breaks. Also, you should be able to click on any of these images to view a larger version. To many young men, retirement is a goal they cannot hope to reach until they are too used up to enjoy it. To many aging work horses, it is a prospect of boredom bred of too much spare time. Between the two extremes, a few men in their 40s and 50s are pushing into a new frontier of retirement retreat from punishing jobs to a life where they still work but no longer under high pressure. Joel Brecheen, now 45, was a building-products salesman making $10,000 a year [equivalent to $91,000 in 2018] but finding himself always out of pocket for time. In 1952, with $13,000 in savings [$119,000 today], he quit, got married, and bought an orange grove near Phoenix. He remodeled a house, built five rentable apartments, tennis courts, and a swimming pool and settled into the family life he wanted to lead, teaching youngsters how to swim and play tennis and improving his property. He had special qualifications that pulled him past the critical point where many who try retirement give up and return to the beaten track. He was an expert do-it-yourselfer and a qualified athletic instructor. Still, he found decompression from high-pressure life hard to take. I'd be plastering one of the apartments, he says, and I'd suddenly think that I ought to be on my way somewhere. From his property and teaching, Brecheen today nets $8000 per year [$73,000 today].

Holy cats! This dude retired with barely more than a year's salary saved. That's ballsy. As you read these anecdotes, keep in mind they're from February 1957. A young adult reading this might have been born in 1930 or 1935. They would have reached traditional retirement age in 1995 or 2000, and they'd likely be nearing ninety now (if they're fortunate enough to still be alive). To put it another way: Warren Buffett was born in 1930. He would have been 26 years old when this issue was published. Odds are good that he read it. Odds are also good that he thought, Man, I'd like to retire early! A romantic retreat to part-time jobs Arthur and Kathryn Lynch had romantic ideas about retirement: They wanted to get away from it all. They also had advantages $30,000 [$274,000 today], no children, and technical knowledge picked up on jobs as research chemists. Four years ago when Arthur Lynch, at 45, was making more money $15,000 a year [$137,000 today] than ever before, they left Pittsburgh to settle on St. John in the Virgin Islands. There, $12,000 went into a house [$110,000 today], and Mr. Lynch put his training to use on the island's power equipment. Both Lynches like manual labor and hire themselves out as handymen. Working part time in a place they love, they net a livable $4000 a year [$36,500 today].

This guy is a little more prepared than the first fellow. He at least has two times his annual salary saved even if he put a big chunk of that into a house. And what about his wife? If she's a research chemist too, how much does she make? If this article were written today, we'd get stats on both partners in this marriage. Aside from the subtle sexism, I feel like these stories could have been written today. When I think about the folks I know who are pursuing early retirement, their lives and thoughts and passions look very similar to those profiled in this piece. I know people who want to retire early so that they can move to some remote country for a romantic retreat. I know folks who want to escape high-pressure jobs in order to pursue something more prosaic. Like the Wertzes (in the excerpt below), Bob Clyatt retired early to focus on art. People want to retire early for a variety of reasons. But our reasons today look an awful lot like the reasons people had in 1957. Getting free to lead a very busy life In 1948, Joseph B. Wertz, a 45-year-old Washington designer under contract with the government to lay out airbase plans, had reached a high-pressure level of success where he had no time for hobbies and too little time for his newly-married wife, Jeanne. So, he gave up his busy life for a life of retirement which has turned out to be every bit as busy. Today, in a made-over stable in New Mexico, he makes pottery and furniture, paints, sculpts, photographs, and does silversmithing. After deciding to retire, the Wertzes scouted the western U.S. in a trailer, looking for the ideal spot for settling down. Facing the river in Santa Fe, they bought a stable and rebuilt it into a rambling adobe house. They live there comfortably on the $4200 annual income from investments [$38,000 today]. Some of the pottery Mr. Wertz makes is so good museums are interested in showing it. Meanwhile, he has a new interest glass blowing.

Having discovered this article and the three other Life magazines with retirement topics I'm now forced to wonder: How many other old articles are out there about early retirement? In college, I loved working on research papers. I loved going to the library, digging out the catalogs of various magazines and journals (some of which were on microfilm), then tracking down the back issues. This project feels like it calls for similar legwork. As awesome as the internet is, it's woefully lacking when it comes to pre-1990 material. Like the U.S. as a whole, the web has a strong recency bias. Do universities still keep huge volumes that index back issues of journals and magazines? I don't know. But I think it would be fun to take a day to go visit a college library to try to do some research on this subject. Finding time to be a father Allen Cook was an airline pilot whose overseas flights kept him too long from his family. He muffed two tries at retirement. Once, he moved to Florida but got cold feet when the monthly pay check was cut off abruptly. Another time, he tried dairy farming in California and wearied of the long milking chores. Such troubles are common to people who try to retire. But Cook kept trying. In 1954, he sold his farm and livestock and bought a motel in Sarasota, Fla. for use as a business and as a residence. Soon, he was able to sell the motel at a profit, buy a house, and devote himself to a business he liked a camera shop in which he had invested. Now 39, he works at the shop full-time during the tourist season but, with a manager to spell him, only half-time the rest of the year. He takes $100 a week [$913 today] out of the till for the family's living expenses and can afford to do what he prizes most: be a full-time father.

I love that the folks at Life had no qualms talking about these men being retired even though they still worked. Nowadays, there's a lot of push-back when somebody says she's retired yet continues to earn money from her labor. We bloggers jokingly talk about the Internet Retirement Police who roam the web calling out folks who don't meet their definition of retirement. I wonder if there were Magazine Retirement Police in 1957, folks who complained that the subjects of this article weren't actually retired. I suspect not. From my reading, this is a new complaint in the past twenty years. Previous generations had no qualm with folks claiming to be both retired and working. Business tied to pleasure, plus the risks For those who retire young, it is often hard to know which part is vocation and which avocation. Warren Rice, 51, Old Lyme, Conn. engineer, and Bruff Olin, 42, a Worcester, Mass. radio-station owner, both left high-pressure lives at different times to settle in Sarasota, Fla., later joined in a sign-making business. With two of us, says Olin, neither knocks his brains out. And we can do business on a beach as well as an office. Edward Dobson, 52, quit a lucrative 15-hour-a-day law and real estate business in Washingtonville, N.Y. and moved to Sarasota. He now dabbles in real estate and two palm tree nurseries and lives on $6000 a year [$55,000 today]. The scarcity of people who achieve this state of relaxed living indicates the hazards. Capital is needed to start and a period of hard labor and discouragement must be faced. Favored regions are flooded with others trying to retire. While one member of the family may adjust to the new life, others may not. Many people are stimulated by their work, feel dismally let down when they give it up. And some, in trading money for time, simply change pressures. But if it works, early retirement can produce the blissful by-product show [in these pages]. As a word of warning, look for more of these history of retirement pieces in the future. I've ordered six or seven old books on the subject, and am now keeping my eye out for more magazine articles about the topic too. 143 Shares https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-life-magazine/

[themoneybuff-blog]

What early retirement was like in 1957 (according to Life magazine)

Shares 140 Sometimes I hit the jackpot in my quest to find old material about retirement and early retirement. Last week, for instance, I was reading Early Retirement Dude's history of the financial independence movement when he mentioned a Life magazine photo essay about early retirement from February 1957. Say what? Within minutes, I was reading the article via Google Books. Within an hour, I had ordered not just that issue of Life but three others with retirement articles. Within days, the magazines were on my doorstep. I'm telling you: We live in the future! I had intended to scan the entire ten-page photo essay for you, but that proved impossible. My scanner only handles 8-1/2 x 11 paper. (What about legal size?) I took the magazines down to the nearest copy shop, but their scanner can't handle Life magazines either. (They're roughly 11 x 14!) So, I've opted to transcribe the bulk of the text for you, and I've included a few photos from the Google archive of this article. Note: I hate Lifes copy editing. I've taken the liberty of formatting things to match my personal sensibility. Long live the Oxford comma! And paragraph breaks. Also, you should be able to click on any of these images to view a larger version. To many young men, retirement is a goal they cannot hope to reach until they are too used up to enjoy it. To many aging work horses, it is a prospect of boredom bred of too much spare time. Between the two extremes, a few men in their 40s and 50s are pushing into a new frontier of retirement retreat from punishing jobs to a life where they still work but no longer under high pressure. Joel Brecheen, now 45, was a building-products salesman making $10,000 a year [equivalent to $91,000 in 2018] but finding himself always out of pocket for time. In 1952, with $13,000 in savings [$119,000 today], he quit, got married, and bought an orange grove near Phoenix. He remodeled a house, built five rentable apartments, tennis courts, and a swimming pool and settled into the family life he wanted to lead, teaching youngsters how to swim and play tennis and improving his property. He had special qualifications that pulled him past the critical point where many who try retirement give up and return to the beaten track. He was an expert do-it-yourselfer and a qualified athletic instructor. Still, he found decompression from high-pressure life hard to take. I'd be plastering one of the apartments, he says, and I'd suddenly think that I ought to be on my way somewhere. From his property and teaching, Brecheen today nets $8000 per year [$73,000 today]. Holy cats! This dude retired with barely more than a year's salary saved. That's ballsy. As you read these anecdotes, keep in mind they're from February 1957. A young adult reading this might have been born in 1930 or 1935. They would have reached traditional retirement age in 1995 or 2000, and they'd likely be nearing ninety now (if they're fortunate enough to still be alive). To put it another way: Warren Buffett was born in 1930. He would have been 26 years old when this issue was published. Odds are good that he read it. Odds are also good that he thought, Man, I'd like to retire early! A romantic retreat to part-time jobs Arthur and Kathryn Lynch had romantic ideas about retirement: They wanted to get away from it all. They also had advantages $30,000 [$274,000 today], no children, and technical knowledge picked up on jobs as research chemists. Four years ago when Arthur Lynch, at 45, was making more money $15,000 a year [$137,000 today] than ever before, they left Pittsburgh to settle on St. John in the Virgin Islands. There, $12,000 went into a house [$110,000 today], and Mr. Lynch put his training to use on the island's power equipment. Both Lynches like manual labor and hire themselves out as handymen. Working part time in a place they love, they net a livable $4000 a year [$36,500 today]. This guy is a little more prepared than the first fellow. He at least has two times his annual salary saved even if he put a big chunk of that into a house. And what about his wife? If she's a research chemist too, how much does she make? If this article were written today, we'd get stats on both partners in this marriage. Aside from the subtle sexism, I feel like these stories could have been written today. When I think about the folks I know who are pursuing early retirement, their lives and thoughts and passions look very similar to those profiled in this piece. I know people who want to retire early so that they can move to some remote country for a romantic retreat. I know folks who want to escape high-pressure jobs in order to pursue something more prosaic. Like the Wertzes (in the excerpt below), Bob Clyatt retired early to focus on art. People want to retire early for a variety of reasons. But our reasons today look an awful lot like the reasons people had in 1957. Getting free to lead a very busy life In 1948, Joseph B. Wertz, a 45-year-old Washington designer under contract with the government to lay out airbase plans, had reached a high-pressure level of success where he had no time for hobbies and too little time for his newly-married wife, Jeanne. So, he gave up his busy life for a life of retirement which has turned out to be every bit as busy. Today, in a made-over stable in New Mexico, he makes pottery and furniture, paints, sculpts, photographs, and does silversmithing. After deciding to retire, the Wertzes scouted the western U.S. in a trailer, looking for the ideal spot for settling down. Facing the river in Santa Fe, they bought a stable and rebuilt it into a rambling adobe house. They live there comfortably on the $4200 annual income from investments [$38,000 today]. Some of the pottery Mr. Wertz makes is so good museums are interested in showing it. Meanwhile, he has a new interest glass blowing. Having discovered this article and the three other Life magazines with retirement topics I'm now forced to wonder: How many other old articles are out there about early retirement? In college, I loved working on research papers. I loved going to the library, digging out the catalogs of various magazines and journals (some of which were on microfilm), then tracking down the back issues. This project feels like it calls for similar legwork. As awesome as the internet is, it's woefully lacking when it comes to pre-1990 material. Like the U.S. as a whole, the web has a strong recency bias. Do universities still keep huge volumes that index back issues of journals and magazines? I don't know. But I think it would be fun to take a day to go visit a college library to try to do some research on this subject. Finding time to be a father Allen Cook was an airline pilot whose overseas flights kept him too long from his family. He muffed two tries at retirement. Once, he moved to Florida but got cold feet when the monthly pay check was cut off abruptly. Another time, he tried dairy farming in California and wearied of the long milking chores. Such troubles are common to people who try to retire. But Cook kept trying. In 1954, he sold his farm and livestock and bought a motel in Sarasota, Fla. for use as a business and as a residence. Soon, he was able to sell the motel at a profit, buy a house, and devote himself to a business he liked a camera shop in which he had invested. Now 39, he works at the shop full-time during the tourist season but, with a manager to spell him, only half-time the rest of the year. He takes $100 a week [$913 today] out of the till for the family's living expenses and can afford to do what he prizes most: be a full-time father. I love that the folks at Life had no qualms talking about these men being retired even though they still worked. Nowadays, there's a lot of push-back when somebody says she's retired yet continues to earn money from her labor. We bloggers jokingly talk about the Internet Retirement Police who roam the web calling out folks who don't meet their definition of retirement. I wonder if there were Magazine Retirement Police in 1957, folks who complained that the subjects of this article weren't actually retired. I suspect not. From my reading, this is a new complaint in the past twenty years. Previous generations had no qualm with folks claiming to be both retired and working. Business tied to pleasure, plus the risks For those who retire young, it is often hard to know which part is vocation and which avocation. Warren Rice, 51, Old Lyme, Conn. engineer, and Bruff Olin, 42, a Worcester, Mass. radio-station owner, both left high-pressure lives at different times to settle in Sarasota, Fla., later joined in a sign-making business. With two of us, says Olin, neither knocks his brains out. And we can do business on a beach as well as an office. Edward Dobson, 52, quit a lucrative 15-hour-a-day law and real estate business in Washingtonville, N.Y. and moved to Sarasota. He now dabbles in real estate and two palm tree nurseries and lives on $6000 a year [$55,000 today]. The scarcity of people who achieve this state of relaxed living indicates the hazards. Capital is needed to start and a period of hard labor and discouragement must be faced. Favored regions are flooded with others trying to retire. While one member of the family may adjust to the new life, others may not. Many people are stimulated by their work, feel dismally let down when they give it up. And some, in trading money for time, simply change pressures. But if it works, early retirement can produce the blissful by-product show [in these pages]. As a word of warning, look for more of these history of retirement pieces in the future. I've ordered six or seven old books on the subject, and am now keeping my eye out for more magazine articles about the topic too. Shares 140 https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-life-magazine/

[themoneybuff-blog]

What early retirement was like in 1957 (according to Life magazine)

Shares 129 Sometimes I hit the jackpot in my quest to find old material about retirement and early retirement. Last week, for instance, I was reading Early Retirement Dude's history of the financial independence movement when he mentioned a Life magazine photo essay about early retirement from February 1957. Say what? Within minutes, I was reading the article via Google Books. Within an hour, I had ordered not just that issue of Life but three others with retirement articles. Within days, the magazines were on my doorstep. I'm telling you: We live in the future!

I had intended to scan the entire ten-page photo essay for you, but that proved impossible. My scanner only handles 8-1/2 x 11 paper. (What about legal size?) I took the magazines down to the nearest copy shop, but their scanner can't handle Life magazines either. (They're roughly 11 x 14!) So, I've opted to transcribe the bulk of the text for you, and I've included a few photos from the Google archive of this article. Note: I hate Lifes copy editing. I've taken the liberty of formatting things to match my personal sensibility. Long live the Oxford comma! And paragraph breaks. Also, you should be able to click on any of these images to view a larger version. To many young men, retirement is a goal they cannot hope to reach until they are too used up to enjoy it. To many aging work horses, it is a prospect of boredom bred of too much spare time. Between the two extremes, a few men in their 40s and 50s are pushing into a new frontier of retirement retreat from punishing jobs to a life where they still work but no longer under high pressure. Joel Brecheen, now 45, was a building-products salesman making $10,000 a year [equivalent to $91,000 in 2018] but finding himself always out of pocket for time. In 1952, with $13,000 in savings [$119,000 today], he quit, got married, and bought an orange grove near Phoenix. He remodeled a house, built five rentable apartments, tennis courts, and a swimming pool and settled into the family life he wanted to lead, teaching youngsters how to swim and play tennis and improving his property. He had special qualifications that pulled him past the critical point where many who try retirement give up and return to the beaten track. He was an expert do-it-yourselfer and a qualified athletic instructor. Still, he found decompression from high-pressure life hard to take. I'd be plastering one of the apartments, he says, and I'd suddenly think that I ought to be on my way somewhere. From his property and teaching, Brecheen today nets $8000 per year [$73,000 today].

Holy cats! This dude retired with barely more than a year's salary saved. That's ballsy. As you read these anecdotes, keep in mind they're from February 1957. A young adult reading this might have been born in 1930 or 1935. They would have reached traditional retirement age in 1995 or 2000, and they'd likely be nearing ninety now (if they're fortunate enough to still be alive). To put it another way: Warren Buffett was born in 1930. He would have been 26 years old when this issue was published. Odds are good that he read it. Odds are also good that he thought, Man, I'd like to retire early! A romantic retreat to part-time jobs Arthur and Kathryn Lynch had romantic ideas about retirement: They wanted to get away from it all. They also had advantages $30,000 [$274,000 today], no children, and technical knowledge picked up on jobs as research chemists. Four years ago when Arthur Lynch, at 45, was making more money $15,000 a year [$137,000 today] than ever before, they left Pittsburgh to settle on St. John in the Virgin Islands. There, $12,000 went into a house [$110,000 today], and Mr. Lynch put his training to use on the island's power equipment. Both Lynches like manual labor and hire themselves out as handymen. Working part time in a place they love, they net a livable $4000 a year [$36,500 today].

This guy is a little more prepared than the first fellow. He at least has two times his annual salary saved even if he put a big chunk of that into a house. And what about his wife? If she's a research chemist too, how much does she make? If this article were written today, we'd get stats on both partners in this marriage. Aside from the subtle sexism, I feel like these stories could have been written today. When I think about the folks I know who are pursuing early retirement, their lives and thoughts and passions look very similar to those profiled in this piece. I know people who want to retire early so that they can move to some remote country for a romantic retreat. I know folks who want to escape high-pressure jobs in order to pursue something more prosaic. Like the Wertzes (in the excerpt below), Bob Clyatt retired early to focus on art. People want to retire early for a variety of reasons. But our reasons today look an awful lot like the reasons people had in 1957. Getting free to lead a very busy life In 1948, Joseph B. Wertz, a 45-year-old Washington designer under contract with the government to lay out airbase plans, had reached a high-pressure level of success where he had no time for hobbies and too little time for his newly-married wife, Jeanne. So, he gave up his busy life for a life of retirement which has turned out to be every bit as busy. Today, in a made-over stable in New Mexico, he makes pottery and furniture, paints, sculpts, photographs, and does silversmithing. After deciding to retire, the Wertzes scouted the western U.S. in a trailer, looking for the ideal spot for settling down. Facing the river in Santa Fe, they bought a stable and rebuilt it into a rambling adobe house. They live there comfortably on the $4200 annual income from investments [$38,000 today]. Some of the pottery Mr. Wertz makes is so good museums are interested in showing it. Meanwhile, he has a new interest glass blowing.

Having discovered this article and the three other Life magazines with retirement topics I'm now forced to wonder: How many other old articles are out there about early retirement? In college, I loved working on research papers. I loved going to the library, digging out the catalogs of various magazines and journals (some of which were on microfilm), then tracking down the back issues. This project feels like it calls for similar legwork. As awesome as the internet is, it's woefully lacking when it comes to pre-1990 material. Like the U.S. as a whole, the web has a strong recency bias. Do universities still keep huge volumes that index back issues of journals and magazines? I don't know. But I think it would be fun to take a day to go visit a college library to try to do some research on this subject. Finding time to be a father Allen Cook was an airline pilot whose overseas flights kept him too long from his family. He muffed two tries at retirement. Once, he moved to Florida but got cold feet when the monthly pay check was cut off abruptly. Another time, he tried dairy farming in California and wearied of the long milking chores. Such troubles are common to people who try to retire. But Cook kept trying. In 1954, he sold his farm and livestock and bought a motel in Sarasota, Fla. for use as a business and as a residence. Soon, he was able to sell the motel at a profit, buy a house, and devote himself to a business he liked a camera shop in which he had invested. Now 39, he works at the shop full-time during the tourist season but, with a manager to spell him, only half-time the rest of the year. He takes $100 a week [$913 today] out of the till for the family's living expenses and can afford to do what he prizes most: be a full-time father.

I love that the folks at Life had no qualms talking about these men being retired even though they still worked. Nowadays, there's a lot of push-back when somebody says she's retired yet continues to earn money from her labor. We bloggers jokingly talk about the Internet Retirement Police who roam the web calling out folks who don't meet their definition of retirement. I wonder if there were Magazine Retirement Police in 1957, folks who complained that the subjects of this article weren't actually retired. I suspect not. From my reading, this is a new complaint in the past twenty years. Previous generations had no qualm with folks claiming to be both retired and working. Business tied to pleasure, plus the risks For those who retire young, it is often hard to know which part is vocation and which avocation. Warren Rice, 51, Old Lyme, Conn. engineer, and Bruff Olin, 42, a Worcester, Mass. radio-station owner, both left high-pressure lives at different times to settle in Sarasota, Fla., later joined in a sign-making business. With two of us, says Olin, neither knocks his brains out. And we can do business on a beach as well as an office. Edward Dobson, 52, quit a lucrative 15-hour-a-day law and real estate business in Washingtonville, N.Y. and moved to Sarasota. He now dabbles in real estate and two palm tree nurseries and lives on $6000 a year [$55,000 today]. The scarcity of people who achieve this state of relaxed living indicates the hazards. Capital is needed to start and a period of hard labor and discouragement must be faced. Favored regions are flooded with others trying to retire. While one member of the family may adjust to the new life, others may not. Many people are stimulated by their work, feel dismally let down when they give it up. And some, in trading money for time, simply change pressures. But if it works, early retirement can produce the blissful by-product show [in these pages]. As a word of warning, look for more of these history of retirement pieces in the future. I've ordered six or seven old books on the subject, and am now keeping my eye out for more magazine articles about the topic too. Shares 129 https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-life-magazine/

[themoneybuff-blog]

What early retirement was like in 1957 (according to Life magazine)

Shares 129 Sometimes I hit the jackpot in my quest to find old material about retirement and early retirement. Last week, for instance, I was reading Early Retirement Dude's history of the financial independence movement when he mentioned a Life magazine photo essay about early retirement from February 1957. Say what? Within minutes, I was reading the article via Google Books. Within an hour, I had ordered not just that issue of Life but three others with retirement articles. Within days, the magazines were on my doorstep. I'm telling you: We live in the future!

I had intended to scan the entire ten-page photo essay for you, but that proved impossible. My scanner only handles 8-1/2 x 11 paper. (What about legal size?) I took the magazines down to the nearest copy shop, but their scanner can't handle Life magazines either. (They're roughly 11 x 14!) So, I've opted to transcribe the bulk of the text for you, and I've included a few photos from the Google archive of this article. Note: I hate Lifes copy editing. I've taken the liberty of formatting things to match my personal sensibility. Long live the Oxford comma! And paragraph breaks. Also, you should be able to click on any of these images to view a larger version. To many young men, retirement is a goal they cannot hope to reach until they are too used up to enjoy it. To many aging work horses, it is a prospect of boredom bred of too much spare time. Between the two extremes, a few men in their 40s and 50s are pushing into a new frontier of retirement retreat from punishing jobs to a life where they still work but no longer under high pressure. Joel Brecheen, now 45, was a building-products salesman making $10,000 a year [equivalent to $91,000 in 2018] but finding himself always out of pocket for time. In 1952, with $13,000 in savings [$119,000 today], he quit, got married, and bought an orange grove near Phoenix. He remodeled a house, built five rentable apartments, tennis courts, and a swimming pool and settled into the family life he wanted to lead, teaching youngsters how to swim and play tennis and improving his property. He had special qualifications that pulled him past the critical point where many who try retirement give up and return to the beaten track. He was an expert do-it-yourselfer and a qualified athletic instructor. Still, he found decompression from high-pressure life hard to take. I'd be plastering one of the apartments, he says, and I'd suddenly think that I ought to be on my way somewhere. From his property and teaching, Brecheen today nets $8000 per year [$73,000 today].

Holy cats! This dude retired with barely more than a year's salary saved. That's ballsy. As you read these anecdotes, keep in mind they're from February 1957. A young adult reading this might have been born in 1930 or 1935. They would have reached traditional retirement age in 1995 or 2000, and they'd likely be nearing ninety now (if they're fortunate enough to still be alive). To put it another way: Warren Buffett was born in 1930. He would have been 26 years old when this issue was published. Odds are good that he read it. Odds are also good that he thought, Man, I'd like to retire early! A romantic retreat to part-time jobs Arthur and Kathryn Lynch had romantic ideas about retirement: They wanted to get away from it all. They also had advantages $30,000 [$274,000 today], no children, and technical knowledge picked up on jobs as research chemists. Four years ago when Arthur Lynch, at 45, was making more money $15,000 a year [$137,000 today] than ever before, they left Pittsburgh to settle on St. John in the Virgin Islands. There, $12,000 went into a house [$110,000 today], and Mr. Lynch put his training to use on the island's power equipment. Both Lynches like manual labor and hire themselves out as handymen. Working part time in a place they love, they net a livable $4000 a year [$36,500 today].

This guy is a little more prepared than the first fellow. He at least has two times his annual salary saved even if he put a big chunk of that into a house. And what about his wife? If she's a research chemist too, how much does she make? If this article were written today, we'd get stats on both partners in this marriage. Aside from the subtle sexism, I feel like these stories could have been written today. When I think about the folks I know who are pursuing early retirement, their lives and thoughts and passions look very similar to those profiled in this piece. I know people who want to retire early so that they can move to some remote country for a romantic retreat. I know folks who want to escape high-pressure jobs in order to pursue something more prosaic. Like the Wertzes (in the excerpt below), Bob Clyatt retired early to focus on art. People want to retire early for a variety of reasons. But our reasons today look an awful lot like the reasons people had in 1957. Getting free to lead a very busy life In 1948, Joseph B. Wertz, a 45-year-old Washington designer under contract with the government to lay out airbase plans, had reached a high-pressure level of success where he had no time for hobbies and too little time for his newly-married wife, Jeanne. So, he gave up his busy life for a life of retirement which has turned out to be every bit as busy. Today, in a made-over stable in New Mexico, he makes pottery and furniture, paints, sculpts, photographs, and does silversmithing. After deciding to retire, the Wertzes scouted the western U.S. in a trailer, looking for the ideal spot for settling down. Facing the river in Santa Fe, they bought a stable and rebuilt it into a rambling adobe house. They live there comfortably on the $4200 annual income from investments [$38,000 today]. Some of the pottery Mr. Wertz makes is so good museums are interested in showing it. Meanwhile, he has a new interest glass blowing.

Having discovered this article and the three other Life magazines with retirement topics I'm now forced to wonder: How many other old articles are out there about early retirement? In college, I loved working on research papers. I loved going to the library, digging out the catalogs of various magazines and journals (some of which were on microfilm), then tracking down the back issues. This project feels like it calls for similar legwork. As awesome as the internet is, it's woefully lacking when it comes to pre-1990 material. Like the U.S. as a whole, the web has a strong recency bias. Do universities still keep huge volumes that index back issues of journals and magazines? I don't know. But I think it would be fun to take a day to go visit a college library to try to do some research on this subject. Finding time to be a father Allen Cook was an airline pilot whose overseas flights kept him too long from his family. He muffed two tries at retirement. Once, he moved to Florida but got cold feet when the monthly pay check was cut off abruptly. Another time, he tried dairy farming in California and wearied of the long milking chores. Such troubles are common to people who try to retire. But Cook kept trying. In 1954, he sold his farm and livestock and bought a motel in Sarasota, Fla. for use as a business and as a residence. Soon, he was able to sell the motel at a profit, buy a house, and devote himself to a business he liked a camera shop in which he had invested. Now 39, he works at the shop full-time during the tourist season but, with a manager to spell him, only half-time the rest of the year. He takes $100 a week [$913 today] out of the till for the family's living expenses and can afford to do what he prizes most: be a full-time father.

I love that the folks at Life had no qualms talking about these men being retired even though they still worked. Nowadays, there's a lot of push-back when somebody says she's retired yet continues to earn money from her labor. We bloggers jokingly talk about the Internet Retirement Police who roam the web calling out folks who don't meet their definition of retirement. I wonder if there were Magazine Retirement Police in 1957, folks who complained that the subjects of this article weren't actually retired. I suspect not. From my reading, this is a new complaint in the past twenty years. Previous generations had no qualm with folks claiming to be both retired and working. Business tied to pleasure, plus the risks For those who retire young, it is often hard to know which part is vocation and which avocation. Warren Rice, 51, Old Lyme, Conn. engineer, and Bruff Olin, 42, a Worcester, Mass. radio-station owner, both left high-pressure lives at different times to settle in Sarasota, Fla., later joined in a sign-making business. With two of us, says Olin, neither knocks his brains out. And we can do business on a beach as well as an office. Edward Dobson, 52, quit a lucrative 15-hour-a-day law and real estate business in Washingtonville, N.Y. and moved to Sarasota. He now dabbles in real estate and two palm tree nurseries and lives on $6000 a year [$55,000 today]. The scarcity of people who achieve this state of relaxed living indicates the hazards. Capital is needed to start and a period of hard labor and discouragement must be faced. Favored regions are flooded with others trying to retire. While one member of the family may adjust to the new life, others may not. Many people are stimulated by their work, feel dismally let down when they give it up. And some, in trading money for time, simply change pressures. But if it works, early retirement can produce the blissful by-product show [in these pages]. As a word of warning, look for more of these history of retirement pieces in the future. I've ordered six or seven old books on the subject, and am now keeping my eye out for more magazine articles about the topic too. Shares 129 https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-life-magazine/