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Retire on Less Than You Think, Revised Edition: The New York Times Guide to Planning Your Financial Future | 
 enlarge | Author: Fred Brock
Publisher: Times Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $5.50
You Save: $9.50 (63%)
New (37) Used (17) from $4.99
Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 258490
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0805087303
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.024010
EAN: 9780805087307
ASIN: 0805087303
Publication Date: December 26, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The bestselling, hands-on retirement guide from Fred Brock, thoroughly updated and expanded for in-depth advice on housing assets, health-care options, and more With Retire on Less Than You Think, Fred Brock challenged the conventional wisdom on the real costs of retirement— and it struck a chord with Americans. Now, as mutual-fund investments continue to be a roller coaster, Brock updates his indispensable advice on finding asset streams, working during retirement, maximizing your health insurance, and choosing a community and housing to show how to
• manage the quicksand of the housing market (your best asset)
• pay for the spiraling costs of prescription drugs
• discover new cost-cutting savings
• plan for shifts over time in your financial goals
Boasting expanded resource lists and worksheets, Retire on Less Than You Think is the best guide available for making your retirement
dreams a reality.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...
Reality Check for 80% of Boomers July 15, 2007
Dale C. Maley (Fairbury, IL United States)
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
Before reading this book, my prediction of retirement for the Baby Boomers was based upon a few simple facts:
A. 20% of the Baby Boomers have 80% of the wealth. The 20% that have the wealth don't need to worry about retirement planning. As a side-line note, these 20% also have no need to sell their assets and therefore they will not crash the stock market.
B. The 80% of Baby Boomers that only have 20% of that generation's wealth will not have enough money to retire when and where they want to.
C. The financial planning rule-of-thumb that one needs 70-80% of pre-retirement income for income during retirement is not a bad rule-of-thumb.
Since 80% of the Baby Boomers will not accumulate enough money to retire when they want to (applying the 70-80% rule-of-thumb)......the only choices left to them are:
1. Work longer.
2. Reduce living expenses which can include selling your house and moving into a smaller house, move to a lower cost part of the U.S., or reduce your living standards.
3. Move to a lower cost country
4. Use a reverse mortgage for living expenses
5. Rely on family or charity
When I started to read this book, Brock immediately starts bashing the 70-80% rule-of-thumb as inaccurate and a Wall Street/Mutual Fund Industry conspiracy to get you to over-save for retirement. If you plan to stay in the same house when you retire (which 95% of current retirees choose to do), and you don't want to work until you die, and you don't want to dramatically reduce your living standards, then you will probably need 70-80% of pre-retirement income. If you can't meet the 70-80% rule-of-thumb.....the only choices left are one of the 5 options noted above.
Brock's book mostly focuses on Options #1, #2, and #4 above. Not many of us want to move to a foreign country in retirement. Relying on family or charity is not a popular option either.
If you already live in a smaller house in a lower cost part of the country and you did not save enough to meet the 70-80% rule-of-thumb, the only options open to you are to work longer, reduce your living standards, move to a lower cost country, use a reverse mortgage, or rely on friends or charity.
Brock puts way too little faith in the stock and bond markets compared to a government run Social Security program. One thing the government does do right is the TSA retirement plan for federal workers. Federal workers can choose among low cost index funds for their retirement portfolio. I'm not usually an advocate of government run programs, but in this case I think expanding the TSA program to cover the private sector is an outstanding idea. The low cost index fund approach keeps the high cost Wall Street and mutual fund industry wolves away from the private sector worker sheep.
I also disagree with Brock on how to fix the medical insurance plan in the U.S. My vote is to privatize it completely....including no tax breaks for companies who provide coverage to their workers. In my viewpoint, the auto insurance industry works relatively well in the U.S. (except for poor enforcement of uninsured motorist). Why can't the medical insurance industry work as well as the auto insurance industry? Until the individual deals directly with the insurer (versus multiple layers between the payer and the payee).....there is no real cost competition. The pre-existing condition situation needs to be resolved as well.
After reading hundreds of book, I'm concluding that "fear" does sell books. Painting the conventional rule-of-thumb of 70-80% of pre-retirement income as a big, dark conspiracy between Wall Street and the mutual fund industry is a good fear approach to selling books. In my opinion, there is no such conspiracy.
I guess this book has its place.......as a wake-up call.....or reality check..... to the 80% of Baby Boomers that have not saved enough to retire when and where they want to. The 80% of the Baby Boomers who only have 20% of the wealth are going to need more information about the 5 options I outlined above. Brock's book does contain some useful information on some of these options.
I would suggest companion books to supplement this book including:
The Richest Man in Babylon
Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor
The Millionaire Next Door
The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition
Index Mutual Funds: How to Simplify Your Financial Life and Beat the Pro's
The Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get On With Your Life
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing
Wealth: Grow It, Protect It, Spend It, and Share It
Are You Using the Right Rules to Plan Your Retirement?
 Terrible book May 4, 2007
bookus lovus (USA)
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
The only advise I can give you if you follow the author's absurd advise is to make sure you keep a tin can handy so you can panhandle for you meals when you hit your seventies. What he basically does in give stories of people living on $1200 per month and are happy. I have lived on 18K a year and it sucked. Thanks but I will still be placing a chunk of money every two weeks in my 401K.
not helpful January 7, 2007
Judy Watt (Land's End, USA)
12 out of 18 found this review helpful
I find such retirement advice not very helpful for people whose expenses probably will NOT decrease when they retire. The assumption ALWAYS is that people's expenses will be less after they retire, but I don't see how that will be true for me or many of the people I know.
Many people who live in urban areas do not own homes or cars, for example. And they may not be interested in moving to some small town in the south when they retire.
They will still be paying rent when they retire, and their rent will probably increase each year, and suppose they have to BUY a car after they retire, if they become less able to use public transportation?
So their expenses after retirement will probably go UP instead of down.
I'm not sure where to look for advice for city dwelling renters who don't own houses and cars, and who would rather die than move to the boondocks in their so-called "golden years" - but this book, like so many others, isn't it.
I guess someone needs to write a book called "It Will Take A Lot More Money Than You Have To Retire Without Moving to the Boondocks!"
 Retirement 101 July 26, 2006
Steve Burns (Nashville, TN)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
This is a great beginners book for people looking to begin there plans for retirement. It is very basic advice with the biggest angle it uses is if you own a large house in a metropolitin area then sell that house and by a small one in a place with a lower cost of living. A retiree could sell their large house in the state of New York and move to Okalahoma City and live like a king off the equity that was in it. The main point of this book is that you do not need 70% of your current income in retirement to be comfortable. You should be able to dramatically reduce your expenses when you no longer work, like eating out,clothing and gas. You should also have all your debt paid off like your cars, and even your house by retirement time. To learn about this in great detail buy this book, if this sounds like common sense move on.I think any book by Dave Ramsey is all that is ever needed on personal finance, he covers everything. From budgeting to retirement.
 Not worth buying March 30, 2006
missouri reader (fulton MO)
29 out of 33 found this review helpful
There is a little useful information in this book, but the main advice is to sell your home in an area where property values are very high and relocate to a less expensive area. This is repeated throughout the sections of the book. If you already live in one of the less-expensive areas and do not have a large house to sell,this advice is little help to you. The author advises things like buying a used car and driving it for many years; haven't most people figured this out on their own? There is a lot of filler in the form of stories about people who illustrate the author's view, many of whom are "indulging their passion for bicycling" in retirement.
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| Worthwhile Reading | Your 401k Account - An Annual Checkup
By Dee Marie
You probably perform a lot of tasks annually. Some of these tasks protect you, your family, or even your assets. These chores include visiting your doctor for an annual physical or cleaning the gutters on your house. Well, next time you're making your list of 'must-do's' be certain to include a checkup for your 401(k) plan on your list.
Your annual examination of your 401(k) plan should cover a few different aspects of your investment. You can check each one quickly by exploring your most recent account statement.
First, you should evaluate your contribution amount. Changes in your financial position over the past year could warrant an increase or decrease in the amount you put into your 401(k).
Receiving a raise at work is a great occasion to increase your retirement contribution. Changing your contribution amount isn't what matters here; it's taking the time to decide if you should make a change.
Next, you should take a look at your investment choices. A mutual fund that was outperforming its peers at this time last year may have tanked over the last twelve months. Although it's important to remember that you don't want to change your investment allocations too often, a regular examination of the funds you've chosen isn't excessive.
Finally, you should check on the way your investment options within your 401(k) are spread. Investing in four mutual funds, you might decide to put twenty-five percent of your account into each fund. However, if one fund grows more aggressively than another, at the end of the year you may have forty percent in one fund, ten percent in another, and twenty-five percent in each of the remaining two funds. Since financial experts sometimes advise that retirement accounts should be spread among many different types of investment, you may want to rebalance your account back to your original allocations of twenty-five percent in each fund.
Making changes to your 401(k) plan isn't something that should be taken lightly. Speak with your financial advisor if you aren't certain about the direction you should be taking. Regardless of the actions you decide to take, you'll feel better about your retirement plan after taking care of its annual maintenance.
Want to learn how to save more money? Head on over to http://NotMadeOfMoney.com/blog - Be sure to grab our RSS feed or sign up to receive email updates
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| | Retirement Facts | In the private sector, participation by type of retirement plan has largely reversed over the past quartercentury: 'Traditional' defined benefit pension plans were dominant in 1979, but have been overtaken by defined contribution (401(k)-type) plans. The share of workers who are in both a defined benefit and defined contribution plan has remained fairly constant over the years.
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