Joan’s Boomer Blog

There’s something fascinating about the RV lifestyle, especially after 40 years of punching a time clock. My

Hit the road and enjoy views like this from your RV

husband was in the Navy for 30 years and I was a Navy Corpsman for 10 years, plus I moved around with my husband after our marriage. After years of living this way, every 3-4 years we tend to look around and say, “Where are we going next?”

Retirement should be a time of adventure and RV living means freedom and the open road. What could be better a better fit for a creative retirement?

I loved the movie Under the Tuscan Sun where the heroine takes a trip to Tuscany, buys an old villa and makes a totally new life for herself. To me, RV life is like that. My husband wants to work for two more years but we decided, if we go RVing for one year of that time, we can live on a fraction of what we are living on now, still putting away savings even without his current income. My own income comes from writing projects on the Internet so I can take my job along with me.

I’ve talked before in this blog about setting goals and writing them down. Our RV retirement goal is that within the next 18 months, we will sell our house and downsize our possessions and travel for one year, with stops of a few weeks here and there to visit family. When we return, we will take the RV to our lake property and live in it until we get our retirement home built there. We had to search for over 3 years to find a piece of property with no restrictions on living temporarily in an RV but we finally found it this past summer.

Is the RV retirement lifestyle for you? Here are some of the resources we’ve used in planning. Many of these offer free newsletters from people already living in an RV, either full time or part time.

RVLifestyleExperts.com I’ve gotten to know Jaimie Hall Bruzenak through the terrific ezine she puts out and I’ve read several of her RV lifestyle books, including Support Your RV Lifestyle! An Insider’s Guide to Working on the Road. This book, by the way, offers great ideas for earning extra income you could also use working from home. Jaimie and Alice Zyetz have put together a website packed with information and resources on living and retiring in an RV.

Read Alice’s article “Why Retire to an RV?”

There are also great articles on their website on RV budgeting and ways to save money living in an RV.

RVDreams.com - Howard and Linda Payne have put together a website offering information on all aspects of RVing, including links to Workamper sites. Workamping involves lining up jobs you can do on the road to help pay your expenses, such as signing up to be a park host to get free space rent. RV-Dreams has sells a great RV cookbook, plus there are many recipes on the site. Linda also helps support their RV lifestyle through her beadwork projects.

RVers are a friendly bunch and RVDreams also has a helpful forum where you can get all your questions answered by those who are already living the RV life.

RVNet offers an ezine and dozens of articles by different authors on all aspects of RVing. Most author also has a blog or website on the subject of the RV lifestyle worth checking out as well. There are articles on fitness in an RV, RV cooking, trip planning, Green Rving, Workamping, RV maintenance and much much more.

RV Escape Club - This club also offers one of the best mail services for RVers. If you’re on the road for a year or more, you will probably need a mail service to hold and forward your mail to you - wherever you are. Here is a link to some of their free ebooks. If you decide to become a member, you also get a bi-monthly magazine.

RVLife.com - RV Life offers a magazine, articles and blogs on Rving, fishing, golfing and travel. This digital magazine is free and has lots of terrific travel articles.

If you’re on Facebook, you can also connect with, and ask questions of, many others interested in RV living.

RV Club Forums

RV discussion groups are a useful place to find out more information from those with experience and knowledge. These RV Club sites have forums and and you don’t have to be a member to see them.

Good Sam Club- If you join the Good Sam Club, you can get disounts on many park fees, as well as other benefits.

Escapees RV Club- Great magazine with memberhips and lots of info on their website and forum.

How to Create an RV Budget

Here are some resources to help you set up an RV budget and see just how much money it would take to retire to an RV. Even though you may sell your permanent home, extra vehicles and other things that cost you money, there are certain expenses associated with RVing, such as insurance, park fees, and perhaps your vehicle payment to think about.

RV Lifestyle Experts - Preparing your RV budget - includes a worksheet.

RV Dreams - Sample Budgets and Expenses

Changing Gears offers a Budget for the RV Lifestyle

If you have an RV blog or resource you’d like to share, please feel free to post it in the comment section.

If you have dreams of retiring to an RV to live full time or want to take to the road on shorter trips after retirement, check out these resources and subscribe to a few blogs from those who are living the RV lifestyle. It won’t be long before you’re convinced this is the only way to retire!

Stay tuned in. I’ll be adding more resources as I discover them.

When I was growing up, my teenage crushes weren’t on musicians like the Beatles, although most of my

World Series 2010 National Anthem

friends loved them. My secret passion in high school was the Los Angeles Dodgers, and watching Sandy Koufax pitch was the highlight of my life. I was raised on the West Coast and back then, all you got to watch was the Saturday game of the week and play off and World Series games, unlike today when you can watch any team, any day of the week.

I would have given anything to go to a live World Series game back then and seen Sandy Koufax pitch in person. I even had a scrap book of newspaper clippings that is probably still floating around my parents house.

Since those years, we’ve become Texas natives and have gone to quite a few Texas Ranger games. This year was THE year for the Texas Rangers. We went to one of their playoff games against Tampa Bay and it was a thrilling experience! In this particular game, they didn’t start losing til the 8th inning so the crowd was wild with every pitch.

Fast forward to now. The Texas Rangers are actually going to their first World Series appearance ever and my daughter’s boyfriend managed to get four tickets. I had a chance to go but, of all things, I also have airline tickets for my semi-annual visit to see my parents in Oregon. When I made the airline reservations, I never dreamed the Rangers would actually make it.

Rangers in the World Series 2010

I looked into changing my airline reservation and it was going to cost over $200 to change it - a rip off by the airlines, by the way! I gave up the idea for a while but then my son-in-law (who would have gotten my ticket if I didn’t go) convinced me I should go ahead and do it and hang the cost. He said they’d even pay half as a Christmas present. My husband also wanted me to just pay the money and change the ticket so I could go to the World Series with him - what a nice guy!

This morning I checked with my parents to make sure they wouldn’t mind my putting off my trip. After all, even the World Series isn’t worth upsetting my parents for. However, they too were very supportive, as long as I came at a later date.

So, here I am, $273 poorer but going to the World Series, game 4. If there is any justice in the world, the Rangers will sweet San Francisco and I can actually see them win!

I think in life, sometimes you just have to go for it and hang the monetary cost! You can’t put a price tag on some of life’s most thrilling experiences and I think this is going to be one of those experiences for me.

Most of us are familiar with goal setting. We set goals to lose weight, to build a career, to save money for

Our dogs enjoying our future retirement home

retirement. How often did you achieve the goals you set out for yourself? Do you really know an effective way to set and achieve retirement goals.

I recently wrote an article Preparing for Retirement - It’s About More than Money which has proven to be one of my most popular posts. Well, goal setting for retirement is about more than money too so it’s important to learn more about how to set and achieve goals for a creative retirement.

How to Set Goals and Achieve Them

1. Deciding on Your Goals

Believe it or not, this is the step that most often stumped me. I read many books on the Law of Attraction and the number one advice they all give is Know What You Want. It seems like a no-brainer but setting definable goals is hard for many people.

When setting goals for retirement, create a list of questions for yourself to help you define your idea of a happy retirement:

• Where do I want to live when I retire?
• How do I want to spend my days?
• What things in my life bring me happiness that I’d like more of?
• What new things would I like to try out in retirement?
• Do I need extra income after retirement?

Come up with a list of your own questions and brainstorm for a while. Write down all the ideas that come to you, no matter how far fetched.

2. Look at your list and focus on the goals that seem most important to you. Simplify the wording and Write it down! Be clear and focused. Write your goals on 3×5 cards and put them where you will see them every day.

In her book Write It Down, Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want And Getting It, Henriette Anne Klauser says “Writing down your goals and aspirations is like hanging out a sign that says ‘Open for Business’.

Writing down your goals, looking at them every day, brings you one step closer to achieving them.

3. Now that your goals are formalized and written down, create another list of goals within each, steps to bring you closer to the desired goal. For instance - My husband and I decided we’d like to retire near a lake. Our goals within that goal were:

a. Decide what specifications we wanted in property. We wanted 3-5 affordable acres, someplace where we could put an RV while we built our house. Many lakes in Texas have subdivided tracts of land with acreage but have strict rules about leaving an RV on the property, unless there is already a house and a covered area to store it.

That was our first requirements and our “wish list” included being able to have chickens or perhaps small farm animals, like alpacas or sheep. We looked for about 4 years and had about given up when we found the perfect spot that filled all of our goals for a retirement home. It proved to be even more affordable than we’d every dared hope for too.

b. Our next goal within the first one is to shop for an RV. We listed goals for that too and since we want to buy used, it may take some time to find the perfect one.

The idea is to take each goal and ask yourself “What can I do today to help me achieve that goal?” (I learned that from my short career selling Mary Kaye). If your goal is downsizing to a smaller home, you can scope out real estate ads, getting a feel for what’s out there. If you want to move to another place when you retire, you can research best places to retire.

My husband wants to spend time playing golf when he retires, something he hasn’t done in 25 years. So he bought some newer clubs (he was told his old ones were antiques now-lol) and he goes out a few times a month to play some golf and shoot practice balls, looking forward to the time when he can spend even more time on it.

If one of your goals is to set up a new business for some retirement income, you can begin progressing toward that goal by doing it on a small scale before retirement or doing research to see what you’d like to do, something you’d enjoy.

By coming up with active steps that you can take now toward your goals, it keeps your mind focused on them and also makes them seem closer because you are actually doing something toward making them a reality.

Create a Vision Board

This is another tip I learned from the Law of Attraction folks. I bought a cheap bulletin board to hand over my desk. On it are pictures I cut from magazines of RV’s the garden I want with raised beds and paths, the back deck where I want to sit in evenings at our retirement home, places we want to visit in our RV.

I look at those pictures every day and imagine my retirement life when those pictures are my reality. This helps to put energy and thought behind any goal you have.

Be Open to Things that Can Help You

Once you’ve written down those goals and decided what steps you can take to bringing them closer, be open to what happens. I believe we do attract what we think about the most. If you’re focused on those goals, you may start seeing sign posts along the way to help you toward them.

Retirement goals are different than other goals like losing weight or career goals. Retirement goals should be about fun and what you want from your life after retirement. Believe it or not, it does take planning and goal setting to get the most our of these years.

I love signing up for free newsletters and ebooks. I’ve gotten lots of great information on retirement and simplifying and enjoying life from them. Here is a list of some of my favorite ebooks relating to enjoying our retirement years. I know there are others and I’ll post them as I find them.

You will probably also enjoy the blogs which offer these free ebooks as well.

From Love Being Retired - Navigating the Retirement Jungle

Dave at Love Being Retired has written a terrific free ebook that covers lots of the issues faced by those approaching retirement. Some of the topics include evaluating when we can afford to retire, identifying and pursuing our passions in retirement, health, finances, travel, frugal retirement living and more. Dave’s blog and ebook have a very friendly, readable style and give you lots to think about.

The Positivity Blog offers a free ebook The 7 Timeless Habits of Happiness

You would think that the words “happiness” and “retirement” would be synonymous. Often, however, that is not the case. Our retirement years bring many challenges, health problems or physical limitations, worrying about our children or our finances, losing that zest for life we had when we were young, just slowing down generally. In other words, although the challenges are different than when we were young, retirement still brings it’s own share of cares and worries. The real challenge in retirement, as in any part of life, is how to be happy no matter what life throws at you.

The Seven Timeless habits of Happiness gives you sound tips on being happy, no matter what your age. Don’t put off being happy until some vague, distant time when your life is perfect, choose happiness now.

If you stop and think about it, if you don’t choose happiness in your retirement years, when will you do it?

The 437 Best Things Ever Said about Retirement by Ernie Zelinski

Ernie Zelinski, the author of How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free, offers free ebook download of the ebook listed above and The 1001 Best Things Ever Said about Work, plus excerpts of other books he’s written.

This ebook is full of great quotes about retirement and getting older. It’s a quick, fun read.

For those of you interested building retirement income from your passion in life, get Rich German’s free ebook Monetize Your Passion. This 234 page ebook is packed with great information on how to identify your passion, build a business and make money from it.

If you choose to make a donation to Rich for this ebook, he is giving all proceeds to programs to help homeless children in the USA. He’s managed to raise thousands of dollars with this project to donate back.

Zen Habits Guide to Simpifying Your Life

This isn’t exactly an ebook but the Zen Habits website offers a complete list of links to their articles on simplifying and decluttering your life. Many retirees have “been there and done that” in regards to big houses, lots of possessions and buying the next new thing. They long for peace and simplicity in their retirement. Zen Habits offers lots of great tips in this area.

If you’d like a source for free ebooks on any topic imaginable, check out Free-ebooks.net. Just register and download ebooks on hundreds of topics.

If you’ve downloaded any good free ebooks lately in the areas of retirement, simplifying your life or finding happiness, please let me know or post it in the comment section.

If you have asthma, Chronic bronchitis or emphysema, or COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) it’s very important to work with your doctor to manage your treatment. However, practicing yoga breathing techniques can improve the condition of your lungs and the quality of your life, no matter what your age, and you don’t have to do yoga to benefit from these exercises.

Deep breathing has benefits for everyone, not just those who suffer from lung conditions. Most of us breath shallowly and one of the best relaxation techniques you can do is to take several deep, slow breaths.In fact, deep breathing can even help speed up your metabolism and help you lose weight.

I’ve been doing yoga consistently for about 3 years and slow, deep breathing, done in conjunction with flowing body movements has made my lungs and joints feel 100% better than they used to. About three months ago, I started studying tai chi which also emphasizes deep breathing which corresponds to body movements. Having become more conscious of my breath, I find that I’m breathing deeper much more often throughout my day.

Both yoga and tai chi are so relaxing that I’m sorry I didn’t take them up many years ago!

If you don’t want to take a yoga class, or don’t have time, here are some helpful tools to teach you yoga deep breathing techniques. It won’t take long to improve your lung health, and feel more relaxed and energized.

Breathe - Guided Yoga and Breathing Exercises To Relax and Revive Rodney Yee is a favorite of mine and I have several of his Yoga Cds. His voice is relaxing and he takes you through various breathing exercises for health and relaxation. This one also includes some simple relaxation yoga poses.

Functional Fitness for COPD and Asthma - an on demand rental from Amazon which you can use for 7 days for just $1.99. If you decide you like the exercises in the video, you can also purchase it. These exercises require no special equipment and can help reduce the symptoms of asthma and COPD, plus there is some explanation of these conditions.

Yoga Breathing - Guided Meditations for Beginners. Don’t be put off by the word meditation in the title. Meditation focuses on breath and breath is what you need to improve if you have COPD or Emphysema. This is an MP3 download and you can listen to samples and then download the entire MP3 for $4.95 or individual breathing meditations for 99 cents each.

Here’s one I just started using on the basis of a recommendation in Yoga Journal: The Practice of Pranayama: An In-Depth Guide to the Yoga of Breath. I have been looking for a guide that would help me learn the art of yogic breathing and this 7 CD set is a complete program. If you have any type of lung or breathing problems, you don’t have to do yoga to benefit from this practice.

Pranayama is a Sanskrit word with two parts. Prana, meaning life force or breath, and yama, meaning to suspend or to control. Pranayama is control of breath and this 8 hour, 155 track CD breathing program, Richard Rosen says, (from Yoga Journal) will help “your breath will smooth and lengthen, your mind will become calm and clear….and you will gradually fine-tune the dial of your consciousness.”

Read more about the benefits of deep breathing and some simple breathing exercises.

Natural Remedies for COPD, Emphysema and Asthma

Read more about COPD on WebMd

Lots of women have wanted to buy Avon or sell Avon at one time or another. My first experience with Avon was as a kid growing up in the 50’s and 60’s. My aunt could always be relied on to give me Avon jewelry or perfume for Christmas. Those fragrances, Imari, Sweet Honesty and Timeless are still around after all these years and they’ve been joined by dozens of new fragrances as well.

I’ve been an Avon Representative off and on three times over the past 20 years and usually only quit when we relocated. I always seem to gravitate back to Avon as a home based business. Nowadays, with Avon websites available, it’s possible to reach even more customers than it was back then.

In the current economy, everybody is looking for a good home based business to make some extra income and Avon offers the added bonus of having products you and your family can use too - products you can purchase at at great discount, depending on the size of your order.

These days, everybody can use more income and an Avon home-based business can provide full or part time income for retirees, working or stay at home moms, or just about anyone.

As a home based business idea, selling Avon has lots of advantages:

1.  Low sign up fee - It only costs $20 to become an Avon Representative, which includes your first 2 campaigns brochures.

2. Low Cost or Free Website - These days a home based business needs a website and Avon offers each representative a personalized website at very low cost - the website is even free if your customers place at least a $25 order through your site.

3.  Products have name recognition. Avon is known for its Skin So Soft line, quality make-up, jewelry, wellness products and more. Their Anew line of anti-aging products has expanded in recent years to provide a great selling opportunity for Representative.

4.  Avon brochures offer something for everyone. Some people like Anew products, some like Avon make up or Skin So Soft. Holidays are a great time to sell Avon. There are dozens of quality, budget conscious gift ideas for all those people on your list. Need little gifts for teachers, grandchildren or Great Aunt Sarah? Avon has it all.

5.  As a Representative, since you sell Avon, you can also buy Avon at great discount prices. The amount of your discount depends on the size of your order so even if you only sell enough to pay for your own purchases, you can save your family quite a bit of money by shopping Avon.

6.  Sales! Buy Avon by shopping the sales and save money. Every Avon brochure has great sales and you can usually get whatever you want at a discount on an already low price. You and your customers can order from the current brochure or the past one so you can compare prices too.

7.  For a Representative, Avon offers lots of local or online training and support.

8.  There is only a small minimum order required each 2 week cycle to stay qualified as an Avon Representative. Orders can be placed online to save time and effort too.

9. When you sell Avon, you have an enjoyable business. You get to know and like your customers and since Avon has a total money back guarantee, you can always keep your customers happy.

Click here to Buy or Sell Avon

As a retirement income, Avon is a natural because many retirees have grown up using or knowing about Avon products and they like them. Buy or sell Avon to make money and save money too!

If you love reading blogs, you may already have a blog of your own. If you don’t have a personal or business blog, but you’d like to, it’s easy to get started witht his simple guide “Create Your Own Blog.”

There are many, many books on blogging out there and I own many of them! When you’re starting out, it’s a good idea to have one or two blogging reference books to help you get through the initial process of setting up and publicizing your blog, helping you avoid beginner’s mistakes. A good book on the basics, like Create Your Own Blog, really simplifies the process for you and from then on, it’s simply a matter of creating useful content and doing some social marketing to reach a wider audience.

I’ve been reading many retirement blogs lately which are entertaining and give me lots to think about as far as retirement issues. Whatever your stage of life or whatever your interest, there is an opportunity to share what you know and what you think with a ready made audience.

Author Tris Hussy is a long-time professional blogger and gives many workshops and classes on blogging. His book guides you through every step, from getting started to building a worldwide audience. No matter what your purpose in blogging, whether you want a personal blog or a business blog, you want it to look professional and meet your goals. Hussy’s book got 39 four and five star reviews on Amazon, out of 44 total reviews.

Create Your Own Blog covers:

• How to find free or low cost blogging tools
• Portfolio blogs for artists and hobbiests
• Blogs for podcasting
• Video Blogs
• How to make money with your blog
• How to build an audience and publicize your blog
• Lots More!

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You wouldn’t think a cancer diagnosis or health crisis could ever be a good thing. Yet, how often do you read about people who learn they have a serious health problem and totally change their lives for the better, realizing for the first time that they may have had the wrong priorities in life? They suddenly want to spend more time with their loved ones, they want to exercise more, eat a better diet and pay more attention to their overall health. Many people, when faced with a potentially fatal health issue start stress reduction activities like meditation, tai chi or yoga.

Just yesterday, I read a story in the newspaper about a woman who worked 80 hours a week as CEO of a company only to be halted in her tracks 10 years ago by breast cancer. This diagnosis caused her to totally change the way she lived and she felt for the past 10 years she’s lived more fully than she did before, focusing on health, diet, exercise and family, which she credits with helping her be cancer free until recently when she was diagnosed with bone cancer.

Granted these healthy activities didn’t keep her cancer free forever, but she did live a better quality of life and perhaps bought herself 10 good years and tools to help her beat cancer again. Research shows that for those with breast and colon cancer, especially, diet and exercise can extend being cancer free for many more years than if a person makes no changes at all.

It makes you wonder if we really need such a devastating diagnosis to force us to focus on better health and make family and relationships a more central part of our lives. There is an old saying that when someone is on their death bed, they don’t usually say they wished they’d spent more time at the office!

Our retirement years are often the years when serious illness can strike but, hopefully, these are also years when we have more time for healthy living. We can take up cooking as a hobby, for instance, focusing on healthy veggie recipes. We can take that daily walk we’ve always promised ourselves we would start, take a class at the local Y or start doing yoga or meditation to increase our immunity and decrease stress.

In his book Anticancer, A New Way of Life, Dr. David Servan-Schreiber, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, describes how he was stricken with brain cancer and beat it, only to have it return 15 years later. With his first diagnosis, he made no changes at all in the way he lived, but after the cancer’s return, Servan-Schreiber started researching healthy living alternatives so he could stay cancer free.

He does not advocate these lifestyle choices instead of a doctor’s treatment and advice but anyone can benefit from eating anticancer foods, learning to have an anticancer mind set and practicing mind/body techniques like yoga and meditation.

Most experts agree, I think, that if more people lived an anti-cancer way of life, there would be, not only less cancer, but less illness overall. The younger we begin, of course, the better off we are in terms of health but better late than never.

I have read that about 97% of how well we age is due to our lifestyle choices. Neglect of our health is probably one of the causes of most illness, and sometimes, in my opinion, illness and or a health crisis is a wake up call that we need to do things differently in our lives. But why must we wait for something serious to force us to take care of ourselves?

I have a superstition that if I take care of myself, reduce stress, practice yoga and meditation to stay in touch with my spiritual side and make family and relationships a big focus in my life, then I’ll never need that wake up call.

You might say you don’t have time for all this healthy living but do you have time to cope with a devastating illness?

It may not keep me from actually getting cancer or having a health crisis but if that does happen, then I will have better tools to cope with the situation.

I highly recommend AntiCancer A New Way of Life to anyone who wants to know how to live a cancer free lifestyle. This book was rated 5 stars by 186 people on Amazon.

Read more relaxation tips for better health.