11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great for Gen-X'ers Too, September 3, 2001
This review is from: The New Retire-Mentality: Planning Your Life and Living Your Dreams . . . at Any Age You Want (Paperback)
I really enjoyed reading this book. It has given me a new perspective on my career. I am glad that this wasn't just another book on how to save millions of dollars. Anthony discusses the importance of finding your calling, so to speak. He wants readers to look at what they enjoy most and do that for most of their lives. Of course, there may be a time when we are unable to work or no longer want to work. Then, it is important to have some money set aside. Otherwise, you can retire from the typical working world at any age and begin the life you've always wanted to live.
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39 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Hopeful retirees beware, April 28, 2001
This review is from: The New Retire-Mentality: Planning Your Life and Living Your Dreams . . . at Any Age You Want (Paperback)
If you want to read a book that is encouraging and informative about the retirement phase of life, "The New Retirementality," by Mitch Anthony is probably not for you. A better title for the book, at least for the first third of it, might be "The New Anti-Retirementality," because the author works so hard at trouncing any possibility that a traditional, kick-back style of retirement can be any good for anybody. For example, the author says, "The concept of retirement was an illogically founded and shortsighted social manipulation, which is no longer relevant and is hopelessly out of touch with our times." No margin for error there, but in case you have any doubts, get this: "The hangover can start within a week or two (into retirement). It begins when the retiree starts asking, 'Is this all I've got to do for the rest of my days?'" Want more? How about, "A life of total ease is one step from a life of disease. The reason so many retirees are ill at ease is because without the contrast and paradox of meaningful labor, leisure loses its meaning. First you become bored and then you become boring....Bored retirees form bad habits. Purposeless retirees are sick retirees." Are you getting the drift? Apparently, his viewpoint comes from some personal trauma. Although he never completely describes the retirement experience of his parents, it must have been a bad one. Among his references to it is this one: "Many of us have already seen enough of our parents' and forerunners' retirement scenarios to know that this is not the life for us." And the book's back cover reveals, "A living example of the New Retirementality, Mr. Anthony has no plans to ever retire." So, what is the "New Retirementality"? It seems to me that it begins with a solid put-down to retirement as it is generally thought of, mixed then with contradictions about how awful some jobs can be but how the true purpose in life is to find one's true passion in the workplace, concluded by how the new psychology based financial planners and coaches can lead the obviously helpless commoners to true happiness, not in "retirement," since the point has already been made that that is a no-no, but more likely to a state of financial "emancipation," which seems to be more playing with semantics than anything else. Also thrown in to add bulk perhaps are sections on how a good attitude leads to a longer life, basic tips on how to save and accumulate money, tips on how to improve your job situation and evaluate employers, a chapter on how to find happiness, plus profiles of what the author calls "a whole new breed of planners and advisors." The book, in my opinion, presents an unconvincing thesis that there is something to look forward to more than traditional retirement and that he has explained it coherently within the covers of his book.
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21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Where's the meat?, August 6, 2001
This review is from: The New Retire-Mentality: Planning Your Life and Living Your Dreams . . . at Any Age You Want (Paperback)
The book's hypothesis is a good one and Anthony may be on to something here, but he never quite delivers on how exactly to go about it, which is retire when you want to but keep on working on your own terms. The answer, of course, is the same as other retirement books dish out. Have a fat portfolio. It is really another investment planning book in a different guise, and, frankly a lot of the figures he uses are still based on the roaring bull market of the '90s and not the reality of today's market. It is a book pretty much directed at a target audience of the upper middle income baby boomer who wouldn't mind keeping on working after retirement because his work is not all that taxing to begin with. A policeman who has been walking a beat in Watts for 30 years or a Detroit assembly line auto worker would get a big chuckle out of this.
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