Spend It Backward: A Lifetime Perspective on Money, Its Management, and Ultimate Rewards [Paperback]

Dave Curkendall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 13, 2007

Spend It Backward introduces a new methodology for money management that is easy to apply and can revolutionize your approach to the lifetime management of your finances. Rooted in the theory of optimization, the familiar elements of a financial strategy – earnings, savings, taxes, investments, and spending – are woven together with this new methodology that actually optimizes the trajectory of your financial life. Savings are emphasized, but only as the enabler of a balanced flow of finances. The book is about spending as much as it is about saving. So the crucial question is how much money can be safely spent now considering that you have but one life to live and the length of even that one is highly uncertain. This question is authoritatively answered. Follow the prescriptions of this book and be assured that you will optimize the joy of your monies throughout your life and, when you finally do retire, adequate savings will be there to gentle your declining years as well.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Both the book and its author can be introduced with the phrase: A Rocket Scientist explores the world of personal finance and discovers a better way. Dr. Curkendall was formally schooled in engineering and mathematics first at Cornell and then at UCLA. An unusual provenance for a book on financial advice, but one that brings new insight and concepts to this well trodden path. He has long applied his skills at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to the design, determination and control of spaceflight trajectories. Here he brings the same concepts that optimized those trajectories to the optimization of your own unique life's financial trajectory. Spend It Backward is his first venture into publishing but he has written over 100 technical papers and has lectured widely. In that sense he has been writing and explaining ideas all his life. He currently he divides his professional time between JPL and with viaSpace, Inc., a Pasadena technology firm.

Product Details

• Paperback: 132 pages
• Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (November 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1419682350
• ISBN-13: 978-1419682353
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,173,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Many aspects of this book are intriguing, although not all of Curkendall's arguments were convincing, December 18, 2007

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spend It Backward: A Lifetime Perspective on Money, Its Management, and Ultimate Rewards (Paperback)

The author is a bona fide rocket scientist employed at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. One of the skills rocket scientists must have in abundance is to understand how to optimize limited resources, for after the spacecraft is launched, there is no way to refuel or repair it. Furthermore, the original cargo space is extremely limited.
Living now and preparing for retirement is an exercise in optimization and playing the probabilities, both absolute and conditional. What many people fail to understand is that while the life expectancy may be 74 years, if you are now 65, it does not mean that you have an average of nine years left. The life expectancy takes into account the deaths from year zero on, so the fact that you have avoided an early death means that your life expectancy at 65 may be a good deal more than the supposed nine years. Therefore, your retirement planning must reflect these realities.
Of course, you must be able to live now in a reasonable degree of comfort, so your current spending, money not put away for retirement, is an optimization tradeoff. Living on the streets in order to build a larger retirement nest egg is a foolish strategy. Executing an effective program of tradeoffs is a hard problem and Curkendall attempts to wade through and simplify the morass. While there is some success, the problem is one that cannot be solved in a book of 130 pages.
The basic premise of this optimization is summed up by the simple formula

S = C / E[L]

Where C is your current capital and E[L] is the expected number of years that you will live. The result S is then how much you can spend a year and anything over that should be saved for retirement. While in theory this formula will work, as Albert Einstein said, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice but in practice there is." The problem is that the values of C and E[L] are not static. New medical technologies are causing the value of E[L] to increase and exterior forces can force dramatic changes in your personal value of C. For example, and the author tackles this issue, when the dot-com bust hit the stock markets, most stock portfolios declined at least 30%. While the stock market eventually rebounded, that is no help to the person whose value of E[L] is low.
I found many aspects of this book intriguing, although not all of Curkendall's arguments were convincing. At the end, an effective retirement plan can be summed up in one simple phrase, "Start early and save often."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting take on the spend vs. save argument for retirement..., February 3, 2008

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spend It Backward: A Lifetime Perspective on Money, Its Management, and Ultimate Rewards (Paperback)

This little self-published title, Spend It Backward: A Lifetime Perspective on Money, Its Management, and Ultimate Rewards by Dave Curkendall, PhD, is a very different way to look at the age-old question of "how much do I need to save for my retirement?". Using a fair number of graphs and formulas, Curkendall seeks to find the balance between spending money now and spending money later. The trick is to figure how long you're going to live and what level of "joy" you want to have in your life.

Contents:
Spend It Backward?; The Zen of Money Management - Recognizing You Won't Live Forever - But Then Again You Might; Turning The Retirement Plan Into a Life Plan - Now We're Getting Somewhere; Variations on the Theme - Determining Flexibility & Sensitivity to Changes; Getting Realistic - Taxes & Social Security; Some Crucial Details - On Being Female and Getting Married; The Biggies - Your Car, Your House, & Your Kids' Education; The Tao of Investments - That 4% is Both Harder To Make and Better for You Than You Think.

Curkendall uses optimization theory to work on determining the balance between spending now and having savings for later. The goal is to optimize the Joy of your money by having enough to enjoy and live on from now until you die. Living on the bare edge while you save big for your retirement is just as wrong in his book as spending it all now and living on food stamps at 65. This is done by the use of graphs and formulas that can be constantly readjusted based on your ever-changing reality. Perhaps you had a banner year in terms of pay. Those higher amounts could be used to boost up the savings curve and see how it increases the spendable money available down the road. Conversely, a financial bad patch can also be factored in and studied for future effects. What it means is that at any given time, your estimated amount of money you'll have available for retirement (as well as how much of it you can spend each year) should be easily seen. It definitely beats the normal "save everything you can and hope it's enough for later" approach that most people take.

While some parts are easy to read, the author does go into his formulas and graphs somewhat deeply. I think that people with a math or financial background would get the most out of this book without suffering from math anxiety. But if you're willing to work hard at the formula pieces, you really will see a different take on the "saving for retirement" argument.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, November 27, 2007

By 

Scott K. "Kerks" (New Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spend It Backward: A Lifetime Perspective on Money, Its Management, and Ultimate Rewards (Paperback)

What a great book. I am 28 and getting on my feet financially and I found so much helpful information. What a great book. If you are looking to start your path toward being financially sound. Or maybe, start all over after years of doing it the wrong way, pick up this book.