global financial disasters

Maureen and her husband, Tom, took early retirement in their mid-50s to enjoy life after raising four children and building up considerable assets. Globalization had never affected their lives before, but when their idyllic retirement was cut short by financial disaster they began to realize how insidious the whole concept of globalization was – how it affects everyone.

"Tom had benefited from a long career with the same employer; he had never been out of work in his life and together with my part-time wages as a shop assistant we had built up considerable assets by the time we were in our mid-50s," explains Maureen. "When the children left home, it was time for Tom and I to start a new life."

"We had enough money invested to keep us in reasonable luxury for the rest of our lives," explains Maureen, "and, after 35 years of marriage, raising four children and working hard, we really deserved to start enjoying ourselves while they were still young enough to get the maximum benefit out of life."

"Having never gambled in our lives before, we decided we had reached a time in our lives when it was safe to risk part of our retirement funds on the stock market," says Maureen, "and we did so well that we both quit our jobs and took early retirement."

"Because we're not particularly astute people financially," explains Maureen,"we trusted our accountant and lawyer to take care of the business of managing our money, and we paid them well to do so."

"Also, we didn't want to spend our retirement watching every rise and fall in the stock market," explains Maureen. "All we wanted to do was enjoy ourselves, and in trusting our accountant and lawyer to invest our money in new global wealth schemes we ended up losing most of our retirement funds.”

"Incidentally, the accountant and lawyer had major losses, too," says Maureen, "but because they ran businesses where losses can be written-off - and they had ongoing work - they could pay their bills. We couldn't".

"Our major regrets it that we did not put our money into real estate - at least our money would have stayed in this country rather than disappearing into Nigerian scams or something," says Maureen, "but at the time we considered this option and chose ease of liquidity and quick gains instead. Serves us right!"

"We had no recourse but to get back to work," sighs Maureen, "but after five years of leisure we had lost touch with everything."

Read more of Maureen's story:

early retirement dangers