I am an advocate of a new understanding of the concept of "retirement," one in which over the course of a lifetime you gain increasing levels of financial freedom and thereby gain an increasingly ability to take your life where you want to take it. I refer to this as living "the Self-Directed Life."
There's an article in the March 15, 2005, Wall Street Journal titled "Can a Job Layoff Be A Good Thing?" which provides a few stories of how people who were laid off from jobs they endured were able to make use of their savings and already-acquired smarts to manage transitions to work they loved.
Here's an except:
"Gail Blanke, an executive coach and author of "Between Trapezes," recalls a client who was about to be laid off as a lawyer at a big law firm. Ms. Blanke asked her to think about things she had loved doing over the course of her life. The woman recalled that she had enjoyed performing in school plays when she was younger. She longed to be in front of people, performing or presenting to them. So she found a new job that incorporates those desires: She became a lawyer at a corporation where she gives presentations to nonlegal staffers about the legal department's resources....
"Dave Cagle, a 49-year-old Minnesotan, is another person who figured out a way to combine his work experience with avocation. He spent 26 years in finance and administration at a metals-distribution company before being laid off in June after a merger. ....He's a wine connoisseur, so he looked into opening a wine shop. During his research, he came across a franchising business that offered a simpler route than starting his own shop from scratch. Crucially, he researched the franchise, the wine business as a whole, and the demographics of the location where he wants to open the shop."
There's an article in the March 15, 2005, Wall Street Journal titled "Can a Job Layoff Be A Good Thing?" which provides a few stories of how people who were laid off from jobs they endured were able to make use of their savings and already-acquired smarts to manage transitions to work they loved.
Here's an except:
"Gail Blanke, an executive coach and author of "Between Trapezes," recalls a client who was about to be laid off as a lawyer at a big law firm. Ms. Blanke asked her to think about things she had loved doing over the course of her life. The woman recalled that she had enjoyed performing in school plays when she was younger. She longed to be in front of people, performing or presenting to them. So she found a new job that incorporates those desires: She became a lawyer at a corporation where she gives presentations to nonlegal staffers about the legal department's resources....
"Dave Cagle, a 49-year-old Minnesotan, is another person who figured out a way to combine his work experience with avocation. He spent 26 years in finance and administration at a metals-distribution company before being laid off in June after a merger. ....He's a wine connoisseur, so he looked into opening a wine shop. During his research, he came across a franchising business that offered a simpler route than starting his own shop from scratch. Crucially, he researched the franchise, the wine business as a whole, and the demographics of the location where he wants to open the shop."
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