Fantasy Retirement; Travelers

by Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett

Who knows what defines fantasy retirement now—for a lot of boomers it may well be simply having some period of life in which they aren't doing the 9-to-5, but still somehow managing to eat and keep the lights on.

Happily, the notion of indulging one's longtime dreams of leisurely pursuits is not dead. A Portland, Oregon, couple is living the road-trip dream and making a cottage industry out of it. Check out Road Trip Dream. If nothing else, give these folks credit for what used to be called pluck. (Does anyone use that word anymore? It's a good one.)

Some people, like Michael Mandlin, a basketball junkie, who is at least 25 years from so-called retirement age, is getting a jump on his fantasy now instead of job-hunting and putting money away the way his parents did. (For all the good it probably did them.) Mandlin is hitting all the cities in the NBA surfing strangers' couches and blogging about it on his sprawling and often well-written blog, Free Ballin'.

— Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett is a
3rdActs contributing editor in Portland, Oregon