Customer Reviews

Engineering Your Retirement: Retirement Planning for Technology Professionals

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Finally, a book that answers the retirement question, "How much is enough?"

After years of reading books on investing, and saving the way I was supposed too, I needed to know when to stop. I thought I knew -- and now I have the equations, statistics and rules of thumb to test my assumptions. This is a book that Engineers and MBAs who have done a good job on savings will love. It even gives you the secret of life! (sort of, see page 90)

Finally, a book that does its homework. Well done!

Thank you, Mike.

I am a technical professional. I thought this book was excellent. It spoke to me in a way I could understand.

This book is a great resource for people with no knowledge of investing, to a mildly experienced investor.

This book proved invaluable to me in planning retirement. It provided a lot of quantitative information that, while quite basic (what percent of your nest egg can you spend per year) was new to me. It's advertised as being directed at technical professionals but that just means it contains more graphs, charts, and quantitative information than you would get from a typical financial planner. It does not require any particular mathematical skill to understand. I particularly liked the straight talk under the heading of "investment advisors are not your friends". I have recommended the book to a number of friends and relatives nearing retirement.

I was very impressed with Golio's book. Although he wrote it for an engineering oriented audience....I would contend it is still an excellent book for non-engineers. (My background is being an engineer for the last 30 years with an MBA.)

He hits the basics of financial planning very well, which includes:

1. Living below your means so you have money to save and invest.

2. Use automatic savings method where you pay yourself first like 401K's.

3. Adjust your asset allocation slightly to a less risky portfolio as you go through life.

4. Use low cost index funds to minimize expenses and maximize returns.

5. Determine your actual living expenses right before you retire so you can more accurately your retirement expenses.......and therefore the income you need to retire......versus using the 70% to 80% income replacement ratio rule-of-thumb when you get close to retirement

6. Don't withdraw more than a 4% inflation adjusted amount during retirement from your portfolio.

All-in-all, a very easy to read book which does an excellent job of explaining the basics of financial planning.

In this age of full disclosure, it can be noted that I am the author and publisher of the book INDEX MUTUAL FUNDS: HOW TO SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE AND BEAT THE PROS. This book is an introduction to the concept of index funds is and is sold on Amazon. I am also a contributing author to the book THE BOGLEHEADS GUIDE TO RETIREMENT PLANNING available from Amazon with an estimated release date of October 2009. I have also written 21 short stories on investing which are also available on Amazon.

If you want practical ideas on long term passive investing, read some of the books below:

The Richest Man in Babylon
Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor
The Millionaire Next Door
The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition
The Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get On With Your Life
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing