Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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!)

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.

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.

Mary Lloyd's book, SUPERCHARGED RETIREMENT, prepares for retirement by providing common sense information, tools to put the information to work, and an assessment of yourself to know what you want to do for the rest of your life.

Mary's knowledge, enthusiasm, experience, energy, and humor all combine to make this book a "must read" for anyone retired or thinking about retiring.

Got this book for a friend about to retire and he seemed to not be able to put it down. He couldn't thank me enough. Glad I got it!

I bought a Kindle version the first day of my retirement and it became my guide as I charted my course through unfamiliar territory. Really helpful. I would recommend this to anyone approaching retirement age or, as in my case, just retired with no plans at all.

Perceptive questions throughout this workbook enabled discernment of a future yet to be realized. The retirement is not defined by society or age, but by our willingness to listen to God's desire for us to know the gifts of life.