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It's a matter of sitting down and thinking it out. What is it that you really want in life? What is really important to you?
If you must have the ultra-ultra gadgets that our civilization has dreamed up, then you will need a considerable income before you can retire, free of any work, because they are very expensive. In later chapters of this book I am going to illustrate ways in which you can make good money with a minimum of effort, but if you wish to retire completely free of any effort at all and still demand a king-size house, a new car, the most expensive of frozen and canned foods as well as the latest styles in clothing, you're going to have to have a whopper of an income.
However, I repeat, what is really important to you?
More than a million Americans are currently living within the boundaries of our country in trailers. Of these, hundreds of thousands are retired men and women. And of these it has been estimated that more than a hundred thousand have actual cash incomes of less than $6,000 a year. Needless to say, their lives have many advantages. They go where the climate is best, where the scenery is most striking. They fish, they hunt, they swim when such desires come to them. They see our country in all its glory, they grow to know it intimately.
There is no doubt whatsoever that if you have a sufficient initial amount of money to buy a car (it need not be new) and a trailer (it need be neither new nor large) and an income of approximately one thousand dollars a month, you can retire and see America, Canada and Mexico. Leisurely, thoroughly, happily. There is just no doubt at all. Tens of thousands of other Americans are doing it. You can do it too.
In Miami, to choose only one example among many, there are , thousands of persons who have chosen boats on which to retire, rather than trailers. Hundreds of these boats are docked along the Miami river and in bays and inlets in the vicinity. They range in size from thirty-five feet upward and every type of small craft ever heard of is represented. There are sailboats and motor cruisers, houseboats and yachts.
How much does such a boat cost? You will be hard pressed, perhaps, to believe this, but they run as little as a thousand dollars apiece for boats large enough for a couple to live upon. In fact,
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