Joan’s Boomer Blog

This is my first post in a couple weeks because I’ve been on vacation. My husband and I drove from Texas to California and then to Oregon to visit family. Both going out and coming home, we drove through West Texas and saw nothing but wide open skies and a few tumbleweeds blowing about. On my first night home, I was walking my dogs and saw a strange site. A little black convertible drew up at the house at the end of the street. Taking up the entire back seat was a giant tumbleweed.

Mostly when I walk the dogs, I only say hello to the neighbors but I had to stop and comment on the tumbleweed. The lady getting out of the car told me she’d just driven through West Texas too and stopped to pick one up. The rest of her story got me to thinking about creating retirement incomes and second careers.

In 1994, Linda Katz wanted to build a website and start a business. As a joke she created a site called Prairie Tumbleweed Farm, offering to ship tumbleweeds to customers around the world. To her great surprise, her business became successful.

The woman on my street said she’d decided to get a tumbleweed and make a YouTube video about it’s life. When she and her friend were in West Texas, she said, the tumbleweed even got them out of getting a speeding ticket. When the police officer asked her about the tumbleweed in the back seat of her car, he probably thought she was crazy, but he laughed and let her go. Not, however, before he got his picture taken with the tumbleweed as part of the story.

What struck me about the tumbleweed business is this. If you’re looking for a second career after retirement or you need to make some supplemental income after you retire, think outside the box. Think about what interests you, think about a niche that you could fill, imagine how you could have fun making money with whatever it is. Perhaps you’ll even come up with a niche nobody has thought of yet like the tumbleweeds.

You never know what people will be interested in. Remember pet rocks? These days there is probably no idea so crazy you couldn’t make money with it, provided it’s legal. As for the tumbleweeds, they are a rather ingenious product as they can be a challenge to get rid of if you DON’T want one. In Kennawick, Washington, if a tumbleweed blows onto your property, it’s illegal to remove it to public property and the city website explains how to legally dispose of them. To some, tumbleweeds are trash but to some they are treasure.

If you have to work after retirement to supplement your income, or if you just want a second career that’s fun and interesting, put your thinking cap on and come up with something you’ll enjoy doing. Isn’t that what retirement is all about?

Create Retirement Income with Affiliate Marketing

Have you ever thought about starting your own blog or website, dreaming of piles of cash you could earn?

The Super Affiliate Handbook

Perhaps you already have a blog and you’ve considered affiliate marketing as a way to bring in extra income. Rosalind Gardener’s ebook, The Super Affiliate Handbook, describes how she made nearly $500,000 a year with affiliate marketing. Will everyone have this type of success if they read her book? No, they won’t. But if you are new to affiliate marketing, this book can give you all the basics you need to send you on your way.

I bought this handbook because, although I’ve had my own blogs and websites for several years, and I do have affiliate products on them, I’m certainly not making $500,000 a year. I was hoping I could take my business to the next level with The Super Affiliate Handbook’s information.

So let me begin by saying, after I read the handbook, I asked for a refund (and got it promptly and pleasantly). I did decide, however, that I wanted to promote this book because I think if you are just starting out in affiliate marketing, or if you are considering it for extra income, or if you’re really struggling and wondering why you aren’t making more money as an affiliate, this book will save you time and frustration. It does contain valuable tips and I have to say, if I’d read it starting out, I would probably be much more successful now.

Rosalind’s clear, concise style is very easy to read and understand, even if you’re new to affiliate marketing and building an internet business. Her focus is on choosing affiliate programs carefully, building simple but professional sites, writing compelling text and building trust from your visitors. As an ebook, it is available for instant download too.

So what does the Super Affiliate Handbook cover?

• Overview of affiliate marketing and the many ways you can earn money with it
• How to set up your own website or blog - include everything from how to choose a domain name to how to install a Wordpress blog and design tips.
• Search engine optimization tips and how to add valuable content to your site.
• Then - detailed, step by step information about how to monetize your site. Where to find affiliate programs, how to choose the right ones for your site, how to set up accounts and install the ads on your site.
• Mistakes and how to avoid them-I have to admit I was doing some of these and promptly changed course!
• How to write reviews to sell products and other sales tools.
• 31 ways to promote your website - traffic equals sales and earnings.
• How to organize, manage and grow your business.

The Super Affiliate handbook makes it very clear that you have to get the details right first time, every time – which is how she’s generating over $1,000 a day in affiliate income.

This book isn’t about magic tricks or get rich quick schemes. What you will find is a detailed and precise process that has worked for the author, and it could make all the difference for you.

They used to say, everybody has at least one good book in them. Nowadays, that has probably been amended to “everybody has at least one good blog in them.” If you’d like to take a passion of yours and turn it into profits to fund your retirement, the the Super Affiliate Handbook is a great place to start.

Learn more about The Super Affiliate Handbook

Starting your own blog or website can be a great source of retirement income. Take a hobby or passion and turn it into a stream of income. This article, by my friend, Eunice Coughlin, explains more about how you can use small business web services to help.

Small business web services are desperately needed for business owners who want a website that will work for them.

Back in the day, when the internet first took hold of small business, it was believed that everyone needed a website. No one knew why, exactly, other than the fact that everyone was doing it. The prevailing wisdom was if you wanted your business to be relevant, you needed to have a web site because “that’s the future, dang it!”

Fast forward about 15 years later and people still believe in the necessity of having a small business web site but still not sure why, except that everyone’s doing it.

There are still some hold-outs, though, who refuse to give in and get one, either because they can’t afford the high prices web designers charge or they just don’t see a need for it.

There are a small number of small business owners who understand the value of a well-promoted web site and demand more than just design; they’re looking for small business web services.

Your business web site should be a major marketing tool for you that can bring a huge return on investment if you do it right. It should bring you sales leads that are ready to buy your product or service because you’ve pre-sold them through your website.

There are millions of websites in cyberspace competing for the attention of your customer. How do you get the kind of traffic to your web site that will result in a sale for you?

People are online looking for information about your product or service. You’ve got to develop an online promotional plan that will draw people to your site, provide the information they’re looking for and then develop a relationship with them so that they trust you and are ready to buy your product or service.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds. It just takes time to do it. Social networking is a major part of web site promotion. Most business owners don’t have the time or knowledge to do it on their own but it is the wave of the future for small businesses who want to capture the business that’s available to them online.

The 2 main players in social networking are Facebook and Twitter. As a “bricks and mortar” type of small business where your product or service is limited by geography, use Facebook and Twitter to connect with prospects in your city or regional area.

For example, if you are a cake designer, you would want to follow people in the 20-something age group that might be considering marriage sometime in the future. Offer incentives in your “tweets” and status posts for people to like you or follow you. Every once in a while, post a link to your website or a specific page on your website that you’d like to promote.

As your posts appear on your followers walls and Twitter streams, people will begin to follow you and check out what you’re posting. It begins to have a “viral” effect and the next thing you know, you have a huge list of followers and a steady stream of visitors to your website. Google and the other search engines like Bing takes note of all this online activity that’s directing traffic to your website so that when someone searches for your business in your area or region, your website will pop up in the search engines first. The result is more customers and more sales for your small business.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/how-small-business-web-services-can-help-you-reach-customers-in-your-area-3986623.html

About the Author

Eunice Coughlin, Online Marketing Specialist, started Simple Internet Strategies in 2010 to help the small business owner attract more customers and make more money with their website. To see how she can help you, sign up for a free evaluation of your website here.

Who wouldn’t like a Four Hour Work Week? Make all your money in just 4 hours a week, then use the rest of

The 4 Hour Work Week

your time to do all the things you enjoy? If you’re a 20-something with your career ahead of you, or approaching retirement but still need or want to work part time, or perhaps you’ve lost your job in the recent economic downturn and fear you won’t find another, the book The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated could very possibly change your life.

In The 4 Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferriss puts forth the idea that there really is no “fulfilling” job. The best job, and the one we all really want, is the one which takes the least time and makes us the most money. Just imagine, if you someone offered you a job you could do anywhere in the world, paid you the amount of money you desired to support your lifestyle and took only 4 hours a week, wouldn’t you take it? The beauty behind Tim Ferriss’s book is that no one has to offer you this job, you create it yourself and he tells you how.

The first part of The 4 Hour Work Week pertains to employees who are currently working 80 hour weeks and want to escape the rat race. Tim tells you how to do that. The part of the book I was most interested in, though, was the part that told you how to build your own 4 hour work week business. Every single resource you could possibly need is there and the entire process is laid out for you with steps to follow. This is the part of the book you could use to finance a permanent retirement, working minimal hours but still having the income to enjoy life in any way you choose.

In Timothy Ferriss’s best life, he travels, living in different countries for months at a time, operating his business remotely using just 4 hours a week of his time. He even offers tips and guidelines for anyone who wants to do the same. Instead of working for years and then retiring, he says you should take “mini-retirements” all through your life.

While I would love to travel and spend maybe three weeks or a month in England or France, living abroad for months isn’t really on my list of things I want to do at this stage of my life. However, my husband and I do want to travel the US in our RV and it would be nice to have a income from something that only took 4 hours a week.

I got a Kindle 3G Wireless as an early Christmas present because I was going to spend nearly 3 weeks with my parents and my husband thought it would be great for the trip. I subscribed to the 14 day free subscriptions of USA Today and my hometown newspaper and bought a nice book of fiction to occupy me on the trip. While shopping the Kindle store, (from my Kindle!) I stumbled on The Four Hour Work Week. I thought, “This has to be too good to be true,” or some other type of come on.

I love reading reviews of books or other products before I buy and this book has an astounding 911 5 star reviews and 112 4 star reviews. Out of over 1,000 reviews, there were only 24 1 and 2 star reviews. I read all the negative reviews first and the only hesitation I had in buying the book was that it sounded too good to be true. However, I decided to go with the majority and buy the book. I am so glad I did!

You don’t have to be an exec working 80 hour weeks to build a 4 hour work week with this book. The process is simple really. You invent or find a product to sell, test it thoroughly and then market it and Tim explains how to do this. If you want to invent a product, you might think along the lines that I am and come up with an information product to sell - audios, a guide book and other materials. If you choose to find a product or build a store, Tim offers resources for that as well. They drop ship the product for you an the entire process is automated.

One thing I love about the Kindle is that you can highlight and bookmark different parts and then review them later. I have lots highlighted in this one.

I’ve seen that this remote business management work in my own business on a small scale. I have blogs and Amazon affiliates and earn money from Google Adsense. When I am home, I spend about 5 hours a day on various computer tasks, writing articles, promoting my blogs, etc. When I travel, I spend one hour, 5 days a week or less, and the money still comes in, without me doing a thing. I can put my business on remote control for 2-3 weeks without affecting anything.

If I can do this on a small scale, I can see how it would also work on a large scale and I am eager to try the steps laid out in The 4 Hour Work Week. I still have a week or so before I return home but the ideas are already working as to what I can do and how. I intent to follow Tim’s steps letter for letter and see how it turns out.

Even if I don’t become a citizen of the work and take tango lessons in Brazil like Tim Ferriss, I have some great ideas about how I would like to spend my time (The first step in the process is deciding how you’d like to spend all the free time you will have.)

I’ll keep you posted on how the process is going for me but in the meantime, get The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content for yourself, try the process and let me know what you think of it.

This book is going to be in my daughter’s Christmas stocking this year!

I just read an article in Natural Health magazine which said stepping out of our comfort zone is good for our

I took up knitting and yoga and made myself this yoga blanket

physical and mental health As we get older, though, many of us find a routine and stick to it because it is comfortable. Why change things that are working for us? Why take a chance?

I see this in my own parents. They are in their 80’s and their routine never varies. They eat breakfast, lunch and dinner on a tight schedule. They “go to town” to get groceries on a certain day of the week and eat breakfast at the restaurant where the waitress knows them by name. This structure gives them security, I think. As long as the routine continues the same, life is good.

Many of us fall into this sort of comfortable routine living as we get older but, as this article said, you don’t have to take up bungee jumping to gain benefits from shaking things up. Even small changes can create new neurological connections in our brains, boost our mood and improve our health.

It can be scary to try something new. I remember the first time I walked into a yoga class at the Y. I’d done yoga on my own with DVD’s off and on for years but never taken a class. Despite the instructor’s speech about not judging for how well we did, I was afraid all the people in the class would be 20 year old down dog experts and I’d look stupid.

What I found in that class though were people in various stages of expertise. There were a couple who really stood out but most of the class was just like me. There were even a couple people who had a good 20 years on me and they were in there stretching and doing their best.The real challenge became more about improving by my own standards than about how I looked to others.

Taking a class can be a great way to get our of our routine. Many community colleges have special deals for seniors. The one near our home allows seniors to pay just $20 and then take any number of classes from the list, which covers historical topics, hobbies and crafts, travel, and many others.

It’s easy to get stuck eating at the same restaurant all the time too. You enjoy the food so why not? Next time you find yourself heading for the same old watering hole, try something new. Maybe you’ve never had Vietnamese food or Thai food. Maybe you’d love them if you tried them. If you aren’t sure what to eat, as we weren’t on our first trip to a Vietnamese restaurant, ask the waiter or waitress what the specialty is.

If you like cooking, try new recipes or take an ethnic cooking class in a cuisine that is new to you. If you like walking, try a new park to walk in. Try a new hobby. A couple years ago, I took a knitting class and was hooked. Knitting now gives me a chance to challenge myself with trying new patterns and stitches. Anything that keeps you studying and seeking new information and techniques is good for your brain.

Doing something that challenges you is always a good way to break routine. To me, taking up yoga at 58 years of age was a challenge. It’s challenged my mind as well as my body and it made it easier for me to walk into my first tai chi class, where, once again, I feared looking like an idiot among the experts.

Many of the new things I’ve tried in recent years have ended up becoming new passions of mine. Other things, I tried once and then moved on but I got something out of every experience.

Retirement is a time when we should be trying new things that we haven’t had time for in the past and falling into a rut, doing the same things because they are a comfortable habit mean we are missing a chance for new adventures which help keep us young at heart.

Do you have certain things you do because they are comfortable? What new things have you tried in the past year and what did you get from the experience?

I hadn’t heard about unretirement until recently but I think it’s soon going to be a new word in our retirement vocabulary. A casualty of the recent economic downturn, the traditional view of retirement, working at a job for 20 to 30 years and then stepping into the world of leisure and relaxation is ceasing to exist and unretirement is taking its place.

Our recent ideas about retirement are indeed, a recent invention. This humorous article The History of Retirement from Early Man to AARP takes retirement up to 1999 but it needs a new chapter to cover the past four years or so when economic hardships caused many people close to retirement age to lose jobs, pensions and
savings. Many baby boomers find they can no longer afford the
leisurely retirement they’d planned. They know they will need
supplemental retirement income and that means working at least 20 hours a
week, if not more.

And that, basically is unretirement. Those approaching retirement age will make a choice of either working at least 20 hours a week and/or downsizing their lifestyle, which, by the way, is another trend left over from the recession among people of all ages.

For some, working longer is a preference. After all, people are living longer, healthier lives nowadays and how many years can you spend in your rocking chair or fishing boat without getting bored? Many people of traditional retirement age still feel productive and have a lot of offer, even if employers don’t want to hire hire those over 50.

If you find you do have to work at least 20 hours a week, get creative and find something that fulfills a passion. I’ve written several articles about turning hobbies into income and creative ways to supplement retirement income. Continuing to work at something you love can add years to your life and life to your years.

The other trend from the recession which seems to be sticking around is to be more cautious with money. Pay down debt, save more and purchase only what you need. Do it yourself classes are overflowing these days as more and more people find pleasure in gardening, preserving food, sewing, doing simple repairs and more. These things do save money, true, but having a productive hobby may help retire and still live well on less money.

I personally plan to work til I can’t type anymore, but I may slow down over time. I’ve found my passion in writing my blogs and working on my health and wellness website. My husband and I found a nice little piece of land where we can have a garden and a few chickens and we’re planning to build a small, energy efficient home to live in there. All of these things will help us save money and I think the amount of work involved will probably equate to unretirement since maintaining gardens and 10 acres will pretty much a full time job.

Has the recent economic conditions caused you to rethink your retirement plans? Will you keep working for pleasure or profit? I’d love to hear readers thoughts on this new trend.

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.

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 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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