How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free: Retirement Wisdom That You Won’t Get from Your Financial Advisor
How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free offers inspirational advice on how to enjoy life to its fullest. The key to achieving an active and satisfying retirement involves a great deal more than having adequate financial resources; it also encompasses all other aspects of life — interesting leisure activities, creative pursuits, physical well-being, mental well-being, and solid social support.
World-class author and innovator Ernie J. Zelinski guides you to:
- Gain courage to take early retirement; in fact, the earlier the better.
- Put money in proper perspective so that you don’t need a million dollars to retire.
- Generate purpose in your retirement life with meaningful creative pursuits.
- Follow your dreams instead of someone else’s.
- Take charge of your mental, physical, and spiritual health.
- Better envision you retirement goals — including where you want to live.
- Above all, make you retirement years the best time of your life.
What sets this retirement book apart from all the others is its holistic approach to the fears, hopes, and dreams that people have about retirement. This international bestseller (over 110,000 copies sold in its first edition) goes way beyond the numbers that is often the main focus of retirement planning in most retirement books.
There are many ingredients of a happy retirement and several retirement planning tools that help retirees plan for their retirement in new and more meaningful ways. One of the most powerful tools is The Get-a-Life Tree that you won’t find in any other retirement books.
In short, the retirement wisdom in this book will prove to be much more important than how much money you have saved. How to Retire Happy Wild, and Free helps readers create an active, satisfying, and happy retirement in a way such that they don’t need a million dollars to retire.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Wow ! “Finally” Someone That Values “Living” a Life
So . . . you’ve dulled your senses with routine; keeping up the house, reading the ads for specials at Walmart, zombied to the TV, endlessly discussing the lives of the kids while silently avoiding your own despair, making frequent trips to the cabinets for munchies to fill the day. The “blissful” ideas of retirement has turned into a few cans of beer on the porch being your stated daily highlight.
If you find yourself in this kind of mild “Bummed but don’t know what I can do” depression, buy the book and wake up to rekindling creative ideas of passion to feel alive in the most free time of your life. The book is about new ideas and taking action especially for those that are not necessarily creative. Let the author take you there.
A great pleasure and insightful read that breaks our unhealthy cultural “values” The creativity and fun writing style will keep you reading. I purchased this book for my father and read it myself in one sitting due to its interest. If you are still not sure if I liked the book ? I also bought a copy in Chinese text from Taiwan for my Chinese boss too. So there. Have a look.
5 Stars Letter from a wild retiree
Dear Ernie,
This is Roy Tien. Ifm a Chinese, originally from Taiwan and have lived in Beijing in the last 8 years.
After working for a multinational oil company for over two decades, I retired 4 years ago at the age of 45Cand have since busy doing things I enjoy the most including taking an afternoon nap everyday and keeping a blog about my retirement life. Ifm so busy that I canft figure out how did I manage the time to go to work in the past. I wasnft 100% sure when I chose to retire; your book gThe Joy of Not Workingh gave me a big boost because a lot of things youfve said answered my doubts perfectly. Interestingly, I was once a successful executive, but now I think of corporate life something I would never want to spend a day in the rest of my life..
Ifve just finished reading gHow to Retire Happy Wild and Freeh and have learned more than just one or two ideas to become an even wilder retiree. In your book, you talked about things like materialism, work holism and alike as typical syndrome of the western society. What I can share with you is that you are not alone. You guys in the west might have created these things, but at least in part of Asia if not all, things are even worse, thanks to the impact you guys bring to us. The fact is, in western world, there are people including yourself who are reminding people about the threat, but here in Asia, damages have not yet reached its peak and therefore reflections are rarely heard.
I like your idea of writing a book is easier than not writing one in retiring years and will try to publish my blog (in Chinese, of course). I donft know if there are any publishers interested in my work, but will certainly give it a go. After all, give it a go is all it matters, isnft it?
Sincerely Yours
Roy
5 Stars How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free
I recently reread Zelinski’s book How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free. I first read it two years ago, just before I retired and reread it several years into my new adventure.
It is a diverse book with lots of ideas on how to live a creative retirement but I will highlight the one thing I find that makes this book truly unique. Most retirement books focus on how to have enough money to live comfortably but they miss one of the key aspects of retirement.
Our livers are devided into three parts…the “what am I going to do when I grow up stage”, the earning a living stage and then retirement. Very little thought is focused on how a person plans to spend his or her time in retirement. Since this can fully be a third of our lives, it is extremely important to focus on how one will spend their time in retirement.
Zelinski focuses on this oft overlooked aspect of retirement. We are finally free of having to follow someone else’s orders, to compromise so we can earn a living and now we can redefine ourselves in any way we choose. How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free is chocked full of ideas on how we can make choices which greatly increase our enjoyment during our golden years.
3 Stars Not what I thought it would be….
I purchased this to help me plan for retirement. It is not a book that helps you plan, it is more of a book that tells you about the mind set you need to have.
I was a bit disappointed in that, but it is a good read.
5 Stars THE BEST RETIREMENT BOOK EVER
How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free was instrumental in my deciding to retire, and knowing that I could do it, no matter what. I highly recommend it to anyone who is thinking about retiring, at whatever age. You don’t have to wait for your 60s to do the deed, and this book can show you how to do it. Whether you are looking for inspiration, directions for how to do it, or the stories of others who have done it, this book is for you. Many of the people whose stories appear in this book have taken their lives into their control and are living their dreams in unimaginable ways, and I am, too. Thanks, Ernie, and How to Retire Happy Wild and Free!
Filed under: Personal Finance Book Reviews