Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love [Paperback]

Mary Lloyd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2009

Life after retirement is much more exciting if you look beyond what you need for financial security as you prepare for it. Mary Lloyd lays out a whole new paradigm for doing this and shows you how to assess what you really want and need--physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually--to make retired life the most rewarding time of all. Supercharged Retirement will help you conquer the emotional and personal challenges of stepping out of the workforce with solutions that work specifically for you.

This book is a valuable wake-up call, particularly if you've been focused on financial planning alone. It will challenge your assumptions about this stage of life, refocus your sense of what s possible, rekindle your passions, and reawaken your drive to spend your time, energy, and resources on what's important to you. You'll discover how to

• Decide if you really want to retire now or ever.
• Design a lifestyle for your post-career years that s right for you.
• Find compelling ways to act on what's important to you and maintain your sense of purpose.
• Keep your world expanding.
• Define strategies for dealing with likely challenges and potential fears.

A passionate guide for making these years sparkle, Supercharged Retirement turns conventional wisdom about how to prepare for retirement on its ear. It delivers practical, easy-to-read advice about a better way to do it, using humor, anecdotes, and exercises along with a wide range of factual information. If you use this book, get ready to launch. With Lloyd s recommendations, not even the sky is the limit.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mary Lloyd has been a pioneer since the age of nineteen--as a female geologist, as a woman executive in the energy industry, and now as a champion of a more meaningful, vibrant version of retirement. She is the CEO of Mining Silver, a company dedicated to providing resources for using the potential of the retired segment of the population more effectively. Mary offers presentations, coaching, program development projects, and seminars.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Hankfritz Press (April 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0979831938
• ISBN-13: 978-0979831935
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #113,004 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I knew I had to write about "how we do old" after pitching a screenplay to a woman who ignored me like I was plastic fruit. That catalyst made me start to see everything a whole new way and helped me realize that we are treating anyone who's old enough to stop working as if they don't exist any more.

I retired at 47 to "write novels" (REALLY dumb idea) and am at the leading edge of the baby boom. I've learned early about the emptiness of all that leisure stuff you think will keep you happy and busy. I wrote Supercharged Retirement for you--because I don't want you to make all the mistakes I did. In writing it, I discovered an important thing for myself though--fun comes in many forms and doing something to help others is one of the best. Yes, it is a fun book.

I grew up in Wisconsin but live in the Pacific Northwest now--after Idaho, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Nebraska, and Colorado. (It doesn't look like it but I really am a responsible adult!) I love to hike, bike, and garden and, of course, spend time whenever I can with my kids, grandkid, and sibs. And yes, I am still writing novels. Stay tuned on that.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Super-charged guide for retirees, May 9, 2009

By 

Louis D. Gonzales - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love (Paperback)

As a retiree, I was really moved by the rational manner Mary Lloyd lays out her retirement road map. Most retirement books address mostly the financial planning aspects and rarely the other (more personal) realities of retirement. She is "right on" when talking about how perpetual idleness is not what retirement is about, but instead recharging your life and learning new things daily. Are you happy with how you're using your time? Are satisfied with the "stuff" you have accumulated? Are you compatible with your partner in every way (now that you're going to be together 24/7)? How's your health? What do you want to next? These are all questions I needed to explore and Mary guided me through this in a simple, humorous and rational manner. I loved it!

Dr. Lou Gonzales (Sixty going on forty, really!)

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Resource for Those Looking to Retire!, May 15, 2009

By 

C. Bonaro (Tacoma, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love (Paperback)

Super-Charged Retirement is a must read for those thinking about retiring or who have already entered into this next stage of their lives. The helpful exercises and practical advice help readers to think carefully about the years ahead which for many of us, due to extended longetvity, can be decades. My husband who is newly retired found this book invaluable as he moved from his job as a store manager for 30 years into retirement. He has discovered his true passion and found ways to invest his many talents and energy into something that is very meaningful for him. No sitting on the couch for him and wondering what to do for the rest of his life. He has a plan, and Mary Lloyd's wonderful book helped him figure out what that might be.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible, October 24, 2011

By 

L. Woods (Sunnyvale, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love (Paperback)

I suppose if you have given absolutely no thought to what you might do in your retirement years, you might with much pain extract some small amount of material for thought from this book. Otherwise, there are really much, much better options for you. The author of this book seems to believe that the entire world is interested in knowing how she (by her own admission) messed up every possible aspect of preparing for her own retirement, including breaking up her family. There are so many details about her mistakes that nobody could care about that it seems a bit narcissistic.

And then there is the stilted writing style. With so many sentences. Like this. No verb. My goodness, I would have failed 7th grade English if I had turned in a paper written like that.

And then there is the just completely useless, boring information. In one chapter, she spends 8 full pages giving a U.S. citizenship knowledge quiz. What does that have to do with retirement planning??? Absolutely nothing, and the author even admits it herself, after telling us that she ripped off the test from her local newspaper: "Each time I've worked on this chapter, I've vacillated between taking this exercise out and leaving it in." Sadly, she made the wrong choice. Over and over. Again.

Then there are the chapter names, which are as uninformative as the contents of the chapters: "Nuts and Bolts and Other Physical Stuff", "Mental Monkey Bars", "Marshmallows, Icicles, and Prickly Things in the Dark", "Managing Zucchini", "Cut List for the Whole Enchilada". Is the author trying to lose a context for naming the worst vegan candy bar?

Here is a very representative extract from this book: "When I started to work on this chapter, I got snarled up trying to describe the relationship between problem solving and decision-making. How do they fit together? Is decision making a subset of problem solving or vice versa? Which comes first?" OMG!!!! This woman is so wrapped up in her head about irrelevant, uninteresting things. The relationship between problem solving and decision making has ZERO to do with retirement planning, and even if it did, the excruciating analysis of the author's thought processes made me want to scream.

This book made me sad for the forest trees that died in vain to print it.

But there are some excellent retirement planning books out there that help you figure out if/when retirement is right for you and what you can do to plan for that time. My favorites, both by one author (Ernie Zelinski, whom I have nothing to do with and don't know personally) are How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free, and The Joy of Not Working. These are both excellent, very well written, entertaining, helpful books. But almost anything would be better than Super-Charged Retirement.