88 of 103 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Making Retirement Sound Too Much Like Work, July 24, 2007
This review is from: The Wall Street Journal. Complete Retirement Guidebook: How to Plan It, Live It and Enjoy It (Paperback)
In the pharmaceutical world, there are "me too" drugs, which are brought to market by companies that want part of the action for a particular type of best-selling drug. The purpose of the new offering is not to bring something better to the market, or to bring something cheaper to the market, the purpose is to gain some market share of an already existing market.
This may be the primary reason behind the publication of this new book. Kiplinger's has had a book out there for more than a decade. It covers essentially the same ground. I'm sure that there are other books in this same survey category that I am not familiar with. The point is that this book turns out, at best, to be a "me too" book for the Journal.
But, what if that were not the case, and this book were to be judged on its own merit? Then what? An early question could be who is the book written for? My experience tells me that once folks are retired a year or so, they are past the point of seeking retirement advice from a book. The Kiplinger's book says that its focus is on ages 50-65 and for those who are "in or out of the workplace." This sounds like the audience is mostly pre-retirees. With that in mind, let's look at this new book, itself.
We're told that the book addresses "both money and time." Wisely, the "time" section come first; otherwise, like so many other high-level books on retirement, the financials might end up with more space than they should in the overall effort. At least the "time" section has a chance to shine if it goes first.
Unfortunately, the time section is not much of an "upper." Instead, it is filled with warning and negatives and much of the stuff that reinforces any anxiety someone might have about retirement before reading the book. We're told that any "assumption" that someone is going to like retirement better than work is "dangerous," especially for "people who have enjoyed their careers." And we're told about a couple for which "rest and relaxation didn't hold much appeal." Instead, these guys enter the wine business "in retirement." We're told that it was "nerve-wracking," that they end up with 15 employees and that they begin producing thousands of bottles of wine per year. We're told that this story is "encouraging." But what does it have to do with "retirement?"
Then we learn about another guy who tried retirement, but returns to the workplace, saying, "A huge piece of my life was totally gone." Then, another guy who retires from IBM, only to open a "small travel business." Define "small travel business." Sounds not like "retirement" to me.
But, alas, there is one paragraph in this "time" section that tells those of us who might want to embrace the "traditional" retirement, which it equates to playing golf all the time, having drinks before dinner and not much else, that this is just fine with the authors. However, it is quite obvious in my reading that this is NOT the recommended way to go.
In fact, the next chapter is all about working in retirement, of all things. It features many of the leading myths on the subject, such as "A number of studies have found that an overwhelming number of Baby Boomers expect to keep working in retirement." And we meet people for which work in retirement helps them pay their bills, or gets them medical insurance and even gets them "out of bed" in the morning. We're given advice on how to get and/or keep a job in retirement, including the use of life coaches and employment firms. This is about "retirement?"
We're well into the book by now, and it is getting painfully obvious that this is not really a book about the pleasures of retirement. No, next we'll get advice on volunteering in retirement, and relocating in retirement, the latter of which finds a way to give an early plug for long-term-care insurance, which will get a ton of coverage later. Then, we get a chapter on Health and Fitness, which takes the opportunity to tell us that the marketing folks at Fidelity Investments say that we're going to need more money than we could have possibly imagined just to cover our basic medical costs in retirement. And, we're told, "That estimate doesn't even include long-term care..." Bummer.
And this is the good news, folks. Now, we come to the second half, which is on the financials of retirement. And guess what? Now, we get to be scared about money! "The big risk, of course, is that your savings will expire before you do," we're told. And that in recent years financial planners have begun to say that we'll need 100 percent or more of our pre-retirement income in retirement, because we should expect expenses to increase, not decrease.
We're given an example of a couple's retirement budget that leaves them with some money for discretionary expenses, only after they have paid for, you may have guessed it, their long-term-care insurance premium.
But there is hope for retirement finances to work. The book suggests that we consider not stopping work or starting to work again in retirement and/or delaying social security benefits. This is hope? I thought this book was about retirement?
Next come chapters called "Assets and Buckets", "Pensions, 401(k)s and IRAs", "Social Security and Medicare", and, I kid you not, "Long-term-care Strategies," the latter of which begins with a horror story about a lady who, because she was quickly draining her savings, had to move into "a nursing home that took patients on Medicaid." Horrors of all horrors. And now we're told that "almost seventy percent of sixty-five-year-olds are projected to need some kind of long-term care." Who tells us this? "Health care researchers." Translation: The long-term-care industry.
But, I know, I'm hardly being fair about all of this. I mean, after the nice discount on the price you get by buying it via [...], there is surely value in this book. And there is. Lots of it. The last 14 pages of the book, for example, give us stories of 10 retirees who have found their version of "retirement" to be just great. Among them are the "ones who bought ranches out West and raised enus," and others who "purchased vineyards in Virginia and raised grapes," and others who "start businesses or they start teaching or they start competing in triathlons." There, I think that just about completes the list! I can't think of anything else. Can you?
But there I go again. Probably the biggest flaw in the book, beyond not bringing us much optimism or cheerfulness about life in retirement, is that it does not acknowledge that the majority of people do not have the luxury of planning their retirement. Life gets in the way, such as the leading causes for retirement: the job dries up and/or the health of the individual or a loved one forces the person to stop working full-time. The other major flaw is that it the authors' approach simply makes retirement sound, smell and look like work. For some that make all kinds of sense. For others it makes little or no sense. We're looking for something that does NOT sound, smell or look like work. We've been there and done that! And third, the obsession with long-term-care insurance is a real turnoff. That really has to go!
To finish, I really wish that I could give this book a better review. The authors are to be commended for the wealth of information they bring us via the Encore sections of the Wall Street Journal. But for those who want some inspiration and more hopeful advice about a future in retirement, I continue to recommend "The Joy of Not Working" and other books by author Ernie Zelinski.
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