Got skills

The retired-too-early story took a wrong turn for Ross Edlund in 1991.

Edlund had just sold a bakery and pastry business in Chicago, a company called Let Them Eat Cake. After foregoing law school at Northwestern University, Edlund and a business partner grew the company into a wholesale and retail operation with seven locations, 200 employees and $9 million in annual sales.

Semi-retired and in his 40s, Edlund moved to Collier County and bought a deli in Lowdermilk Beach Park in Naples. But what he thought was going to be a “nice seasonal business,” turned into a nightmare when slow days turned into slow months. “It just wasn't viable,” says Edlund, now 64. “I nearly went broke.”