На информационном ресурсе применяются рекомендательные технологии (информационные технологии предоставления информации на основе сбора, систематизации и анализа сведений, относящихся к предпочтениям пользователей сети "Интернет", находящихся на территории Российской Федерации)
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].
Life magazine article on early retirement
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].
