@Doric
Yeah, I'm glad you're not a muppet, you don't have to point it out, but I don't understand the animosity in your reply.
I also suspect that your humour chip has malfunctioned.

Yours Sincerely,
Mr GweeB

@Shane
You're an interesting one as well because of your position right now, and because you happen to live in America where it's just sooooooooo fucking easy to escape the rat-race that I'm puzzled what it is you find hard about achieving it.  The internet is an amazing research tool, we've never had it so easy, everything you need to know is already out there.  Have to say, the members of this forum are quite unique in that usually, people who appreciate the freedom of escaping the rat-race are respectful to one another.  Not here though, it's treated as if a person is rubbing it in, when actually, it's just an attempt to point alternatives out.  Still, this forum isn't for that sort of thing, so that's understandable I suppose.

But by being respectful, you learn stuff, cause people talk to you (trust me), they contact you out of the blue cause they know from what you write, that you're planning to achieve what they've already achieved.  They can see when you're genuine as long as you're doing exactly the same thing as they were doing when they were preparing to ditch the rat-race.  We've just heard how Doric lives, but for some reason he had to write it like it was a revenge post, he even called me a GweeB in the process :-D

For those who aren't interested in ditching the rat-race, that's fine, but that's no reason to mock those that are, or take what they're doing as some sort of one-upmanship.  What you both yourself and Doric forget is that I know what I'm doing (whether you want to believe that or not).  And while I'm not out of the UK yet, I know from people who I'm in contact with (people who are already living the lifestlye I'm going to be living), that what I'm going to do is not only perfectly sustainable, but actually quite ingeniuos.  I won't just have a stress-free lifestlye, I'll have quite a few luxuries besides - I've given like-minded lifestylers a few ideas before I even manage it myself.  Escaping the rat-race doesn't mean giving-up what you like (and this is for you, Shane).  It's not like you'd be without electricity.  It's not like you'll never speak to your friends again.  The year is 2015, an age of satellites, mobile communication, solar power, pure-sine inverters, deep-cycle rechargeable batteries, diy electronics.  And for me, personally, there's absolutely nothing about the rat-race I desire, and nothing I could have that I can't have by being away from it all.  So personally, I say fuck the rat-race, I don't want it.  And if that's not for you, that's fine, but people (meaning both yourself and Doric in this instance) need to quit acting like it's some sort of 'one-upmanship' when I post stuff related to that type of thing, there's no need for the snarkyness, I don't get why you do it or what you think it will achieve.

Crap ... there goes another long post that was never meant to happen ...