So, what do you do if you don't play the game as well as everyone else and you can't amass the small fortune that experts say you need at retirement? I've always believed that families should care for their own; modern family values seem to discard the elderly and boot out the offspring as soon as they reach adult status.

Each individual brings their own experiences and skills to the family, you have a team working together for mutual benefit - spiritual, mental, physical and even monetarily. So why would you willingly dissolve this partnership? - not taking into account the irritatingly dysfunctional uncle that drives you up the wall everytime you see him.

In my family I have quite a few of the trades represented, electrical, mechanical, chemical(not what you think), carpentry, agricultural and they have, very gradually, been moving closer both geograghically and as a family; many of them having maxed out on salery and realizing that they can't work, yet, another job because when sleep comes it takes priority over everything else. It's a work in progress but cooperation in all those fields with other family members, not the exchange of cash, has put most of my family in a better position - financially.

My brother-in-law's father, here's a guy that is highly proficient at ruining a good time , but, he can "grow" anything and he will help anyone, you just have to understand his unique way. If he was placed in a home his ways and his experience would be totally lost on the residents. If that is how you treat your parents don't expect your children to treat you any differently; old doesn't mean useless - it might mean cranky but definitely not useless.

One of the ways out of the rat race is to stop playing by the rules of consumerism (working a 40 hour week for a paycheck to pay for services or products that you need). What if you forego the 40 hr. work week? you're broke right? maybe not, if you barter for goods don't you receive "some" of the same goods as you would have if you handed over cash? I mean there has got to be someone out there that will hand over their treasure for your trash - everything is relative to wants and needs.

Unconventional is the word that comes to mind when searching for alternatives to the high cost of housing/living:

* Owner built home - build as you can afford it, no mortgage

* Earth sheltered home - energy efficient, passive systems with little maintenance, many first time builder friendly designs

* Grow your own groceries - become more self sufficient, less dependent on consumer goods

No mortgage is always good, an energy efficient home with passive heating and cooling systems makes knowing the costs of heating and cooling very predictable if any supplimentation is needed. If you budget, having relatively fixed figures makes life alot easier. Growing your own produce to be more self sufficient or if you have a surplus you can set up a roadside produce cart or barter surplus.

Then we have the champion scrounger, the person that can make something useful out of other peoples discards(after all we are a throw away society); every spring we have communities that put out their broken furniture, mowers, appliances, etc. for the county to haul away, a treasure trove of potential profits, people don't care who takes it so long as it disappears. All of these things operate outside of our normal everyday, business as usual economy, but, knowing what the normal "accepted" alternatives are(welfare, old folks home, homeless), for people that don't have that huge nest egg to fall back on an underground economy is a perfectly viable alternative.

When I think of an underground economy I think of very basic transactions between two parties both needing what the other has without a middle man holding his hand out to take a very sizable slice of the pie; of course you can't have an underground economy if everyone is doing it, it then becomes mainstream, and noticed, and regulated, and then the middle man takes his share.