If you want to get out of the rat race and improve the quality of your life, you'll need a plan. You can get away from that paycheck to paycheck existence in one of two ways (or a combination of both). One, you'll need to find a way to make much more money than you're making at your job. Two, you'll need to find a way to spend much less money than you are currently spending. Sounds easy, right? Well, it can be, if you have the right tools and you can execute your plan well.
The first thing you need to do to get out of the rat race is to set a solid financial goal and map out the strategy for getting there. This, of course, is easier said than done. You need to determine how much money you need to live and then find a way to make that much money. It's okay to be imprecise as long as you have your career to fall back on. If you want to leave your job tomorrow, however, you'll need some solid numbers that you can rely on.
Another important aspect of finding a way to get out of the rat race is to figure out a retirement plan. If you strike out on your own, you won't have Social Security to depend on when you retire. Of course, Social Security doesn't offer anything but the barest of retirement plans to begin with, so either way it's best to set yourself up with a plan that won't leave you on a very limited budget.
Of course, just because you want to get out of the rat race doesn't necessarily mean you want to strike it rich. One way to get off that endless treadmill is to cut costs in your life and downsize yourself. Find a career that may pay less, yet offers more rewards in other ways. Money isn't everything. It might do your heart good to enjoy the simpler things in life while working at a place that doesn't send your blood pressure through the roof.
One of the best ways to get out of the rat race is to find alternative ways of making a living. For many people today, this means Internet marketing. That term--Internet marketing--scares a lot of people. They remember the "dot com" crash of the 90s and see the Internet as a place for starving artists or scams. While there are plenty of both, there are also a lot of legitimate marketing opportunities. People are buying and selling things on the Web in record numbers, and there is no sign of this changing. To become a part of it, you just have to jump in. Take a training course and learn what kinds of opportunities suit you. Use your talents to find something you really like to do and then find a way to monetize it. If you get good at it, you can make a lot of money. And you'll only have to answer to yourself.
