Paul Terhorst
Articles by Paul Terhorst
Drink the good stuff. There’s no rewind on the play of life; we retirees should enjoy good wine and the good food that goes with it. Every day, as much as we can, provided we maintain our health and body.
If you were born between World War II and 1960 and you’re even semi-thinking of retiring to Latin America, now is the time to choose the country that interests you.
When we retire and decide to move abroad, we naturally want an idea of what our new living costs will be. Unfortunately, those living costs depend largely on slippage.
My friend Martin went to La Paz, Bolivia, for a business conference. While on a mid-morning stroll, he saw an apple vendor sitting on a box, behind a small pile of delicious-looking apples. Martin figured his friends at the conference would enjoy an apple, too, so he told the vendor he’d buy all her apples. She flat-out refused to sell to him. He tried to cajole and otherwise persuade her, to no avail. “Senor, I can’t let you buy all my apples. If I sell out now I won’t have anything to do for the rest of the day.”
“This is a lousy time to be living off investments,” my retired economist friend Arturo told me. “The S&P 500 still needs to get to where it was in March 2000. Bond yields are negative—that is, they don’t even match inflation.
MasterCard, Visa, and most banks that issue credit cards hit you for 3% or so on anything you charge overseas because…well, just because.
My French friend Etienne doesn’t drink alcohol. He never had a drinking problem, he just saw the harm alcohol does–car crashes, destroyed marriages, early death, and so much unhappiness. So he decided not to drink.
In this issue we present our annual Quality of Life Index. The U.S. looks like a pretty good choice for retirees. That’s good news, now that the collapsing dollar makes the rest of the world so much more expensive. Still, Vicki and I choose to live abroad. We’re Americans, but since 1981 (except for brief periods in Austin, Texas and in Las Vegas in the 1990s), we’ve lived overseas. Why? We have a spirit of adventure, the key to a quality retired life abroad.
I recently reread two novels, Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, both by 19th-century writer Theodore Dreiser. In the books Dreiser writes about the poor in the 19th-century, their problems, and how they struggled through them. One problem was simply getting enough to eat. I was surprised to learn that, in those days, the poor ate all their meals out. Only the rich could afford a kitchen, pots and pans, and the luxury of home cooking. The poor ate at boarding houses, typically, where they lived in a tiny room upstairs. Alternatives were lunch kitchens or street vendors. But hardly anyone had the means to cook for themselves.
Albert Camus wrote The Plague just after World War II. In the book, the bubonic plague hits the Algerian port city of Oran, and the government closes the city to all comings and goings.
The other day my 82-year-old friend, Martha, astonished me with the comment: “I hate being retired.” She told me that if she could, she would go back to work immediately.
In 1901 John Wendell Anderson and eleven others bankrolled Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company. A few years later, all 12 were fabulously rich.
Last month I talked about “touch and go.” With touch and go you keep moving, you make the world your home. Your life is filled with adventure, challenge, and excitement-that is, if you can afford it.
My friend Mariela has a 14-year-old daughter. Says Mariela of her daughter, “She’s all touch and go.” I asked what that meant. “Teenagers want to touch everything, to do everything. But they quickly get bored and move on. Today it’s piano lessons, tomorrow horses, next year golf, tennis, ballet, singing lessons, whatever. They never stick to anything. I call it touch and go, it’s a way of life. All kids act like this.”
The song in the musical Oklahoma says, “Don’t start collecting things, people will say we’re in love.” We collect for good reasons: mementos to remind us of treasured moments, souvenirs to give a trip focus and add to the adventure, art for intellectual stimulation.
Last month, Paul and his wife Vicki, who retired at 35, told you how to fund your retirement. This month, Paul tells you about controlling your costs once you’ve made the leap.
First off, you need financial resources to retire. In our book, Cashing In on the American Dream: How to Retire at 35, published by Bantam in 1988-we said that $500,000 was enough for most couples. That was nearly 20 years ago. Today you might want to have a few more bucks set aside before making the leap.
We retired young, 22 years ago, at age 35. Since that time, we’ve been asked what we do all day, and we’ve asked others the same question.
When Hérnan Cortés, Spain’s brilliant but unstable conquistador, landed in Mexico in 1519 he and his men were terrified by what they saw.
Montezuma had all the advantages: a huge Aztec army, knowledge of the terrain, and seemingly unlimited resources. He’d likely crush the tiny Spanish fleet and its handful of men like he’d step on a cockroach.
Paul and Vicki Terhorst retired young (they were 35-years-old) and have traveled the world ever since. As Vicki puts it “the world is our home.” You, too, can do something extraordinary in 2007. All you need to do is make a decision to make the change. Every month this year, you’ll here from Paul and Vicki, who’ll pass on their hard-earned tips on life in retirement.
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