Yes You Can Still Retire Comfortably

This is a survival manual for the difficult but exciting road to retirement security.

Many people feel unprepared for retirement. Some don't feel like they have enough money saved and are fearful of having to work for the rest of their lives. Others are confused about how to negotiate through the retirement maze of decisions that need to be made. Where do I invest my money? Should I go to a financial advisor? What do I do about Medicare? Where should I live? Will I need a part time job? The good news is "Yes you can retire". The author outlines some simple dos and don'ts that will guide you in the process. He offers helpful suggestions for those who are behind on their savings yet still hope to retire. A retired minister, the author writes unashamedly from a Christian perspective and quotes passages from the Bible throughout. He writes not as a financial expert or as a person of wealth but as someone who has never made a lot of money (a little guy) yet when it came to retire he found himself sitting pretty. He believes that you can do the same thing by following his easy to understand steps for retiring successfully.

Life is not lived all at once - it's lived in moments, days, months, years, and decades. This means that the financial plans and actions we all have to take to meet our responsibilities sensibly must be organized by years and decades. Ben Stein wrote the original guide to this subject almost a quarter century ago. Now, Ben, along with Phil DeMuth, the eminent financial planner and writer, have gotten together to update the book, incorporating the massive changes that have occurred in the economy in the past 25 years. This book tells you what and when to save, how much to save, what to save it in, when to spend, and when to say no to your present and yes to your future. Yes, You Can Get A Financial Life! is a time-traveling guidebook on how to organize the money side of your life for all of the decades of your life.

With the bursting of the stock market bubble, and after 13 rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, yields on CDs and money market funds tread at historic lows - a negative return after inflation. Gone are the days when investors could earn 5 percent interest, risk-free. With smaller savings coupled with lower returns on what savings remain, retirees and others living on fixed-income investments watch in horror as their income checks shrink with each passing month. However, there are investments that still earn a significant rate of return - and do so reliably and consistently. These fixed-income securities include bonds, real estate investment trusts, preferred stock, emerging market debt, and annuities, among others. They earn the kind of returns that baby boomers and the retirement community need in the same way they need to draw breath, yet hardly anyone knows anything about them. As 70 million Americans reach retirement age in the next 15 years, fixed-income investing will become a sociologically inevitable mega trend. Yes, You Can Be a Successful Income Investor! shows you how you can safely secure the highest possible yield from your savings, even in a treacherous investment environment.

Most investors spend their time worrying about selecting individual stocks and mutual funds: big mistake! Modern Portfolio Theory—developed in 1952 by economics Nobel Prize winner Harry Markowitz—shows that it’s more important to focus on how our securities interact as a whole. Astonishingly, most investors—including many professionals—still run their investment accounts the same way people did back when "How Much Is That Doggie In the Window" played on the Hit Parade. It’s time to apply what we’ve learned in financial economics over the past 50 years to bring your portfolio into the rock-’n-roll era.Armed with a computer, you, the investor, can use sophisticated tools to analyze your holdings—tools that would have been the envy of the biggest money managers only a decade ago. First among these is the Monte Carlo simulator: the better mousetrap that investors have been waiting for.With their trademark wit, Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth show you how your current portfolio is radically underdiversified, costing you money. They offer step-by-step instructions to supercharge it across a variety of investment situations to get you the best risk-adjusted returns.

As 70 million Americans reach retirement age in the next 15 years, fixed-income investing will become a sociologically inevitable mega trend. Yes, You Can Be a Successful Income Investor! shows you how you can safely secure the highest possible yield from your savings, even in a treacherous investment environment.

As senior citizens age, they tend to go through less money; in fact, the typical over-75 household spent only $25,763 in 2004. This is in direct contrast to financial planners who tell you that you need to save large amounts of money in order to live comfortably during your retirement years. In this new book, you will learn how to manage your expenses, how to reduce and eliminate debt, how to save and invest wisely, how to use retirement planning tools, how to reduce living expenses, how to downsize to a smaller, less expensive property, how to save on small items, how to prioritize your insurance, and how to cut back. Additionally, you will learn about withdrawal plans, selling your home, simplifying your life style, and streamlining postretirement activities. Perhaps most interestingly, you will be presented with the option of moving overseas when you retire. Places such as Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, Malta, and Mexico offer lower living costs and lower prescription drug prices. - Publisher.

Most investors spend too much time trying to outguess the market and not enough time thinking about their long-term financial futures. That’s why today’s retirees (and soon-to-be retirees) need strategies, not stock tips. Nationally recognized Certified Financial Planner®, radio talk-show personality, and author Raymond J. Lucia shows you little-known concepts that can fatten your savings and boost your standard of living in retirement. In an easy-to-understand and often humorous style, Lucia details how ideas such as nontraded real estate investment trusts, 72(t) elections, and equity-indexed annuities can give you, the investor, a leg up on the path to retiring in comfort and safety. Lucia brings his 30 years of experience to bear in revealing how and when to tap your retirement plans, ways to use your home as a source of retirement dollars, and how to lower taxes on appreciated company stock. He’ll also explain how investing in low-income housing tax credits can help you tax-wise even as you assist others. Filled with hands-on, in-depth insights and practical advice, this book will give you all the tools you need to win at the retirement game.