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Early Retirees in New Ventures, Mostly for Fun

The New York Times, 7/3/08

Abstract:

 RISK-AVERSE? Clueless as to what P.&.L means? You, too, can be an entrepreneur.

Not the hard-driving type who makes the business news pages. Rather, the laid-back, come-what-may variety. Many of them are part of the first wave of America’s 76 million baby boomers who are taking early retirement and turning their hobbies into small businesses. Very small businesses.

They say their microbusinesses are a way to give focus to a favorite pastime, get more zest out of life and make a little money. The best part is they do not care if the ventures fail.

For all their insouciance, these quasi-entrepreneurs display some of the symptoms that drive their mainstream brethren. Their compulsion to escape the restraints of the workplace before they turn 65, for example, reflects their desire to run their own show.

Carl Boast, owner of Peaceable Kingdom Photos in Moneta, Va., was making a hefty salary in New Jersey as a neuroscientist in the pharmaceutical industry when he decided he “wasn’t a fan of working for a living” and began plotting his departure.

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