Before reading this book, I had always harbored a great deal of suspicion for the generally accepted wisdom of "retirement." According to popular financial magazines, I will need somewhere around $2 - $3 million by the time I turn 65 to live a "comfortable" retirement. What a sick joke.
Retirement, as the author points out, is a myth. There is no such thing as retirement. Retirement at age 65 was arbitrarily made up years ago to get rid of the elderly so younger people could fill up those jobs. There is something else the author touches upon and that is America's obsession with accumulating large sums of money over years and years to one day get to that glorious point where we no longer have to work. Great, so what about now? What do we do during our working years? Do we sacrifice all the good years of our lives saving up ungodly sums of money just to get to the point where we can quit and do nothing but goof off all day? There's something wrong with this picture. As the author points out, and I have noticed this myself, we focus on retirement for the same reason we look forward to the weekend: we hate our jobs. Americans by and large just don't like to work. If we loved to work, we would have to change our national slogan to "Thank God it's Monday." I don't think so.
This book is basically divided into two parts. The first part is his radical and somewhat controversial plan to avoid retirement altogether. In other words, plan on not retiring at all. The author points out that this is done in several ways, most of which are not really new: (1) pay cash for everything except maybe a house (2) get rid of all your credit cards and ATM cards except maybe an American Express which you pay off every month (3) mentally quit your job. This is done by accepting the fact that there is no job security, so you might as well keep your eyes and ears open for other opportunities. Part of his plan reminded me of "The E Myth" by Michael Gerber. Gerber asserted that small business owners have turned their lives over to their business. We business owners revolve our lives around our businesses, or in other words, our business becomes our life. Been there done that. Many career oriented workers do the same. We proclaim that we are satisfied with our work, but in reality, it's because the work becomes an end in itself. A business or a job both have the same objective: to supply you with the money you need to live and enjoy life. That's it.
My favorite quote from the book was this little gem: "Forget about the pursuit of a holistic work life. You cannot successfully integrate your work and the rest of your life. Your work is not your life. Your work is what you do so you can have a life."
The second part of this book was okay. It's basically an alphabetical listing of various financial topics. There's not a whole lot of new information in here, but as an avid reader of financial books, newspapers and magazines, I like to get as much information as possible. Every book has something worthwhile in it. This section helped explain some topics that I had not understood before, particulary about annuities.
My overall impression of this book was very good. Although there is not a lot of new information in here, his plan for dying broke is wonderful. In particular, the death of "retirement" as we know it was particularly eye opening. There really is no such thing as "retirement," and people shouldn't even bother planning on it. What's even worse is that children nowadays look forward to inheriting their parents' estates. Now, you're supposed to save huge amounts of money to retire on, but additionally, you have to keep a large chunk of that to pass onto your heirs. My advice: go out and buy that bumper sticker which says "We're spending our children's inheritance."
I'm giving this book 4 stars because I appreciate the originality of his thinking. So much of our society is focused on retirement and the future, we forget to live our lives from day to day. There's nothing wrong with saving for retirement, but when we save large sums of money, we end up sacrificing our working years for something later on that may never happen. It's an industry based entirely on fear. The more you accumulate for "later," the less you can enjoy yourself now. What really touched me was when the author wondered why it is that the biggest legacy we leave to our children is an inheritance. That only happens after you're gone. What about while you're still here? Now that's something to ponder.
