Retirement Catch Up
REVIEWS OF
THE RETIREMENT
CATCH-UP GUIDE
Retirement
Advice for Procrastinators
By Kerry Hannon, USA
TODAY
The Retirement Catch-Up Guide
By Ellen Hoffman
Newmarket Press 160 pp
You haven't started saving for retirement yet? Shame on you. But Ellen Hoffman, the retirement columnist for Business Week Online wants to redeem you. In The Retirement Catch-Up Guide, she tackles the challenges that face late starters.
There are droves of us. She tells us that, according to a Public Agenda Foundation study, 46% of Americans have saved less than $10,000 for retirement. Then, too, the rate of personal savings has been spiraling downward from 9% of disposable income in 1982 to half of 1% in 1998. Clearly not good enough, considering we're all living longer, we're spending more years in retirement and, if we're lucky, Social Security will replace maybe 40% of our previous income.
Catch-Up is about maximizing your Social Security benefits, turning home equity into retirement income and increasing your savings by cutting down your daily expenses. All easier said than done, no doubt. How did you get yourself in this perilous situation? It could have been one or more of several things: poor money management or credit card debt; or losses in a divorce settlement or a business failure. You might have just made some lousy investments. Then again, maybe you simply procrastinated about taking action to secure your future.
The guide offers 54 lessons to help boost your future resources now. These are real-people stories, but no real names are used, to protect the savings-impaired. Hoffman diligently lays out a primer on how to put a financial plan together, how to consolidate your IRAs and how to get an estimate of your potential Social Security retirement benefits.
The book is fairly slim and is easy reading for the most part. The "real-people" vignettes are very short, and each lesson takes no more than three pages.There's an excellent list of resources-- from Web sites to toll-free numbers --that anyone, no matter what age, will find helpful. She calls the book a first step. And that is precisely what it is --a concise guide to get you going.
Although most of the advice is top-rate, some has been repeated time and again in other financial self-help books. There's the usual one about how you could get rich if you just didn't buy a caffe latte for $3 every morning--that if you just invested that for 30 years, it could amount to $22,500 when you retire. I can handle that, given all the other solid, and more original, advice embedded in this financial planning guide.
Hoffman's bottom line is that you have to pay more attention to your investments and make a commitment to reading all the financial statements you receive each month. Her message is that you may have lost time, but you can do it.
From Internet Book Watch
The Retirement Catch-Up Guide offers fifty-four lessons drawn from real-life experiences and conditions to boost the development of future financial resources for retirement. Especially appropriate for those who are coming late to planning for the retirement, Ellen Hoffman offers an invaluable, practical, and workable compendium of sound advice on all aspects and every stage of financial planning for retirement.
Beginning with a thorough examination of all retirement resources, she then
covers making a plan, readjusting the plan (including such
happenstances as delaying retirement, starting a new career or
business, etc.); downsizing present lifestyles to increase savings;
making the most of home equity; learning to be a successful saver and investor;
and monitoring retirement resources.
The Retirement Catch-Up Guide is very highly recommended, "user
friendly", comprehensive, reliable, and invaluable reading for anyone
wanting a financial secure and adequate standard-of-living retirement.
What Others are Saying
"This book offers great advice for baby boomers and anyone else concerned
with retirement planning."
-- Senator Chuck Grassley
FormerChairman,
Senate Special Committee on Aging
"A jam-packed guide filled with common-sense advice, countless resources,
and personal anecdotes that make the task of planning
for retirement much less daunting. Ellen Hoffman understands
the complexities of retirement planning, and her gift is
the ability to convey the information
in the most compelling manner."
-- Don Blandin
President, American Savings Education Council
"If you haven't started saving yet for retirement, this book will help you
find the incentive to do so."
-- Ric Edelman
Edelman Financial Center