Customer Reviews

Free Parking

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Dickson hits the nail on the head. This is a great book for everyone making $50K or less, that has fallen for the RRSP trap. Dickson shows you that having a RRSP in retirement may be the wrong strategy for those in this income range.
There are a lot of good ideas for those making more than $50K a year, like laddering Strip Bonds and knowing how much you are actually going to have for retirement. With Strip Bond interest rates around 5 to 6% now, his example of 8 or 9% is exaggerated, but you can still use the strategy.

-conventional financial planning that is!

Free Parking is just that, a book about living well, living happily, living in the now and not worrying about it all so much. Taking the Canadian social system as its departure point, contrarian author Alan Dickson - a former financial advisor and insurance salesman - illustrates the folly that is conventional financial wisdom.

Chapter titles like Career Choices - Be Careful What You Wish For, Financial Fables I and II and Taxes - A Nice Source Of Income are certainly not the standard fare dished up in a mutual fund prospectus. In fact, in the course of 180 pages Dickson makes a lucid case for ignoring anything and everything one is taught by the financial planning community. Furthermore, the profession is apparently not staffed by the brightest of the people. Which is the right cue for mentioning the book's many typographical, grammatical and spelling mistakes. There are many instances where the book proves an embarrassment language-wise.

Lines like "quit while your ahead", "5 year warranty" and "Instead of Government Bonds chose Family Bonds" detract from the book. Having said that, Free Parking is both funny and annoying at the same time and a good catalyst for refining and even redefining one's ways and means.

So next time you are approached by a representative of the financial community, ask to see his own financial plan and be prepared for the inevitable double-take.