This book is going to show you how you can attain the good life. It's going to give scores of examples of others, in­cluding this writer, who have done it. I don't care what your educational background is or how much money you have in the bank, or if you have any at all. I don't care how old you are, or whether or not you have any skills. This thing can be done. You can retire from the rat-race, and I'm going to prove it.

If you have some savings to help out, fine. If you have a pension, no matter how small, wonderful. If you have a skill, swell. If you're a teacher, very well indeed; if you're an artist, or would like to be, or a writer, or would like to be, excellent. If you have any kind of industrial know-how, or construction skill, or if you're handy with tools, great.

Any of these things will help—but none of them are necessary. And all of this I'm going to prove. I'm going to take you by hand, and step by step, show you how to do it.

Meanwhile, however, I want to set some background. Other­wise much of what I've already said in the last chapter and much of what I will say after this one, will seem nonsense. So bear with me while I cover this subject of WHERE.

Let's face it. More than four out of every five people living in our country live in unfortunately grim surroundings.

The world is literally full of wonderful, desirable places hi which to reside. But rather than seek them out the overwhelming majority of us live in such traps of humanity as New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, St. Louis, Washington, Boston, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee or Houston. And I've not even mentioned such real holes as Gary, East St. Louis, the coal towns of West Virginia, the textile towns of New England.

And even in our more attractive cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans and Miami, the majority of the citizenry live in such poor neighborhoods, in such comparative squalor, that the basic attractiveness of the town is lost to them.

It is true enough that even New York or Chicago can be attractive and have their desirable attributes if you have the income of a millionaire but for the average reader of this book such cities mean drab living, too much heat in the summer, too much cold in the winter and sickening carbon monoxide fumes all year round. They also mean high cost of living, even though the living is poor indeed.

Is it hard for you to believe that there are places in the world, even within the boundaries of our own country, where it is pos­sible to live quite well on what rent alone would come to in New York City? We'll come to this and prove it in following pages. Can you conceive of living in a villa on the sea with a full time servant, or possibly even two, all your meals and entertainment paid for, on what it costs to maintain an automobile in Los Angeles? This too we'll prove.

One of the great advantages of being very wealthy is the mobility that becomes yours. Where the average American spends his life in one city, and probably even in one neighborhood, only getting away for quick vacations or occasional business trips of one sort or another, the wealthy are continually on the move. They have both the money and the leisure time to indulge themselves in travel.

Thus a wealthy family can spend their winters in Miami or Palm Beach. But when the Floridian summer is upon them and the heat becomes oppressive, they leave the South and take off for the beauties of New England in the Spring. If Old Sol burns too hot, this year, then it's off to Canada on a fishing trip, or up into the mountains for the cooler resorts. If this routine begins to pall, there is always the Caribbean in the winter months, a cruise to Haiti or Trinidad. Or there is Europe with all its resorts, both winter and summer.

It leads to a fuller life, a more complete life, a more educational one.

Or, if your family of wealth doesn't particularly like travel but rather wishes to settle down, it can choose the beauty spots of the world, California, Florida, the Southwest, including Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas. Often they leave the States completely and establish homes on the French Riviera, the Spanish Costa del Sol, or in Paris, Rome or London if cultural pursuits are of interest.

The point we're leading up to is this. It isn't necessary to be rich to enjoy these things.

Wealth is not needed to travel and certainly not needed to live abroad, or in the most desirable parts of our own country.

It is being done by hundreds of thousands of Americans who have had the determination to get off the treadmill and to lead a full life in retirement from the rat-race. For the amount of money that it costs to buy a new automobile today you could live two or three years in comfort in some of the most beautiful places in the world.

In the body of this book I am going to list a good many of these spots and give detailed information on how much it would cost to get by, or, if you have no income or pension at all, what kind of pleasurable, part time jobs, or small business opportunities are available. However, for right now let me throw a few quick facts at you that might set you back on your heels. That's what we need, so many of us, to be set back on our heels with facts. We need it so that we can be shocked to the point of at last standing up on our feet, showing determination and making a better life for ourselves.

We've all heard of "bargain paradises" where a couple can live for as little as one hundred dollars a month in adequate comfort and even a certain luxury.

They exist! Don't think they don't.

And don't think that what I say is something that applied five years or ten years ago but that in these days of inflation it is no longer so. It is so, now, today!

There are towns, cities, villages and resorts in Mexico, Spain, Austria, Greece, North Africa, Latin America, Portugal and even such exotic places as Turkey, Iraq and the South Sea Islands where living in comfort and even luxury is possible for a pittance.

Did you know that a full time servant will cost you six to eight dollars a month in Southern Spain? That a bottle of champagne in the same country sells for about 60$ in American money?

Did you know that prices are so low in Turkey that you can actually buy a satisfactory three course meal for 10#?

That in Mexico it is possible to rent a mansion for as little as $25 a month?

That in such countries as Ireland and England you can buy a tailored Harris or Donegal tweed sport coat for $25 (it would cost at least $125 in the States).

That you can buy a brand new car in several different European countries for less than a thousand dollars? That in tax free Rhodes, one of the most beautiful of the Greek islands, you can buy a German camera cheaper than in Germany, Swiss watches cheaper than in Switzerland, French luxury perfumes cheaper than in France?

Of course, living abroad isn't always suitable, even for we who have decided to make the break and retire from the way of life of the majority to seek happiness, peace and serenity, rather than the carrot on the end of a stick which so many are chasing. If one has children, there is school to be considered. Or there are some­times other motivations. However, one doesn't have to go abroad to find bargain paradises. Given a correct frame of mind, and a concentration upon the real values you can find them without the bounds of our own land.

I don't suggest that there is anywhere in the United States where you can live on a keeping up-with-the-Joneses basis for a hundred dollars a month. I don't know of any. I do know of many scenically beautiful, climatically wonderful places where life is easy, clothing informal, housing comfortable rather than luxurious and people judged by their real worth rather than the size of their bankroll or car. In such places either on a pension, or at a job or business which doesn't interfere with the good life, you can retire and live at your ease, pursuing whatever it is that really counts in your life, be it hobby, study, art, or just plain fun.

Nor is it necessary to select one spot and take roots there. Remember what I've said about the advantage of the wealthy in having mobility. This might apply to many of our readers, as it once did to me. I spent several years looking over this old world of ours. When I found a delightful spot, I'd settle for a time. It might be in the mountains here, or a river there, on the beach, or in a large cultural center such as Paris. Always I sought the beauty spots, the economical places—and always I found it simple to maintain myself. But this we will get into in succeeding chapters.

CASE HISTORY No. 1. Some of us, even those with children, find it desirable to spend a period abroad, then to return to the States for an equal period, followed by another stretch abroad. I have two friends, Shirley and Bert Zerman, who live in this manner. They have decided that their way of life actually gives their children more real education than if they were settled in one town and attended but one school. Shirley and Bert have three children and the first time they moved abroad it was for two years in Italy—Bert was interested in studying the Renaissance in the spare time from the various projects he usually had going.

The children learned Italian in short order, as only children can, and from time to time, although not very consistently, attended Italian schools. Upon return to New York they were placed in public school and to the surprise and gratification of their parents, quickly caught up with their age group—in fact, surpassed it. The sophistication they had picked up in international traveling gave them an advantage over their fellow students.

Next, Bert and Shirley spent almost a year in Mexico (where I met them) and here the children learned Spanish, not to mention a great deal about life as it is led in other lands. Upon their return to New York, this time, the Zerman progeny were head and shoulders above their classmates in many respects.

Next trip abroad was to France and Spain, and, you guessed it, the Zermans wound up with another language to their credit and considerably more in the way of background than even the majority of their teachers could boast.

At this writing, I haven't seen or corresponded with the Zermans for almost two years but when last heard of, the oldest of the boys was attending the Sorbonne in Paris. At the age of sixteen, his French is good enough for this outstanding French university, evidently. The other children are still in their early teens but I can only imagine what advantages their universal backgrounds will give them when they are grown to adult estate.

CASE HISTORY No. 2. Alan and Ruth Silletoe I met and became friends with in the little town of Soller, on the north coast of Majorca, the largest of the Balearic Islands. Alan had been in the British army in Burma during the war and had picked up a bug that shows no signs of leaving, even almost fifteen years after the war has ended. British disability pensions are nothing near as adequate as American ones. Alan got something like $50 to $55 a month.

Under similar circumstances, the average American couple would undoubtedly have gone to work as best they could. Alan taking some part time job, such as watchman, and Ruth going into teaching for which she once trained in England. However, Alan and Ruth aren't average, and Alan isn't American, although Ruth is. Instead of spending their life wearily in some London slum, they took off for the sunshine of Majorca and made a life there while both tried to break into the writing field, Ruth with her poetry, Alan with his novels. They didn't do very well, but they were doing what they wanted to do, and that is what counts.

Their house, when I knew them, cost 550 pesetas a month which at that time came to $13.75. Prices have gone up a bit since then, but at the same time the Spanish peseta has lost value so that if you are using either American dollars or British pounds, prices are about the same.

Your first reaction is going to be, "Only $13.75 a month! They must have lived in a pigpen!"

To the contrary, their home was lovely. It had three bedrooms (one of which Ruth converted into a study), a living room, a dining room (which Alan converted into a study), a large kitchen and pantry and a modern bath. There was a patio and a wealth of flowers. The house came completely furnished even to dishes and linens and had a view which would be difficult to surpass in the States no matter what your financial position.

They had to be careful, there is no denying that. However, Ruth had a servant come in three times a week for half a day, thus getting her basic cleaning and her laundry done. Ruth also had to make a considerable amount of her own clothes, but luckily she finds relaxation in her needle and likes to sew.

They bore up their end of the entertainment in the Anglo-American colony of Soller, having occasional cocktail parties and inviting friends in to dinner from time to time. Possibly they would have eaten more meat and less fish if their income had been better, but fish is wonderful in the Mediterranean and fruits and vegetables so cheap that even the most limited budget could afford the best.

Besides their work, there were long hours to be spent on the beach since swimming in the Balearics lasts for about nine or ten months of the year. There were hikes into the mountains and picnics to be held in the deserted ruins of old Moorish fortresses and towers. There was fishing and skin diving and occasional boating trips along the Majorcan coast, termed the most beautiful in the world by many travel authorities. And there were wonderful evenings of plain, old fashioned conversation with their fellow English speaking neighbors, both American and British. Since entertainment is so cheap in Spain, everyone could indulge in it and the Silletoes spent comparatively few evenings at home.

Alan and Ruth spent at least three or four years in Soller, and decided that although they loved it there they were too young to settle down before seeing a bit more of the world. The last time I heard from them, in early 1958, Alan had just sold his first novel, entitled Saturday Night and Sunday Morning to the W. H. Allen publishing company. The advance was ample enough to take them to Greece where I suppose they are now living. They plan to stay there for several years too.

CASE HISTORY No. 3. I'm not going to give you the name of this next example I'd like to use because he's a close personal friend and some of the things I'm going to say would ruffle his feathers. So we'll call him Freddy and if he ever sees this, I'll deny it's really him I'm talking about.

Freddy calls himself an artist—and isn't. And I doubt if he ever will be. But he makes a living at it.

So far as I know, the only lessons in art he ever took were in high school and he didn't excel in it. For one thing, he told me himself, the only reason he took the subject was because it was easy to get passing marks.

However, once between jobs Freddy started hitchhiking across the country and found himself in a certain art colony which we'll leave unnamed so that I can continue to deny that it's he I'm talk­ing about when Freddy hits the ceiling. He got a temporary job with one of the more successful local painters and stayed on longer than he had figured in this New Mexican town.

To kill time, occasionally, he'd mess around with the equipment which was all over the artist's home, and the artist himself was kind enough to give him pointers once in awhile.

Not to stretch it out too long, one day Freddy sold a painting to a tourist much to his surprise and much to the surprise to every­one else in town. So he painted the same painting again—almost exactly, since Freddy isn't overburdened with artistic ideas. And damned if that didn't sell too.

He quit his job as handyman to the artist, got himself some painting materials of his own and set up his easel where lots of tourists would pass. He painted the art colony, the adobe houses, the cowboys and the Indians the way the tourists thought they ought to look, after a lifetime of looking at movies and poster calendars. And they sold like hotcakes.

Freddy knew better than to try to get good prices for the tripe he was turning out. Instead, he figured it was better to charge from $10 to $25 per painting and sell lots of them, than to charge $100 and up and sell few if any. Besides, anyone willing to spend $100 on a painting wasn't of the mental caliber of the people who would buy Freddy's half-baked wild western stuff.

But in spite of the good thing he'd made of his "art" Freddy wasn't happy in the Southwest in the heat of summer. He'd been born in New England and loved the ocean, although he couldn't bear the winter weather in that part of America.

So he took off one summer, locking the door of his adobe com­bination studio and house with the idea of taking a vacation. When next we heard from him he had opened a studio in a Maine art resort and was selling scads of horrible paintings portraying lighthouses on the rock bound coast of Maine. Now it's a matter of Maine in the summer and the Southwest the rest of the year. Freddy spends, I would estimate, about three hours of his day at "work" if you can call it work. The rest of the time he either flatly loafs or spends fishing or hunting with the Indians. The Indians, by the way, think his painting is just wonderful. Any­body else in town will tell you flatly that he is the world's worst artist.

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