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

Outlines how baby-boomers can plan for retirement, discussing how to invest to get the maximum return from savings and how to use an established nest egg to get the most income.

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.

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.

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.

A practical action guide for financial independence and early retirement from the popular Our Next Life blogger. In today's work culture, we're expected to hustle around the clock. But what if you could escape the traditional path and get on one that doesn't require working full-time until age 65? What if you could wake up every day without an alarm clock and do the things you love most? Tanja Hester and her husband Mark left their crazed careerist lifestyle to live their dream life in Lake Tahoe, retiring early from high-stress careers. Now Tanja will help you map out a customized plan for freedom and make it easy to succeed, whether you're good at math and budgeting -- or not! Work Optional is more than just a financial plan: it's a plan for your whole life -- designed by you, not by an employer or clients. Tanja walks you through envisioning your dream life, accounting for variables such as health care and children, protecting yourself from recessions and future unknowns, and achieving a purpose-filled early retirement, semi-retirement, or career intermission with completely doable, non-penny-pinching steps. You can live a happier, more meaningful life, free from the daily grind. Regardless of where you are in your career, Work Optionalwill get you there.

Will you receive Social Security benefits at retirement? Most Americans will receive some sort of Social Security benefit when they retire. In fact, for most Americans, Social Security will provide the bulk of their retirement income. Yet, the VAST majority have no clue how their benefit is calculated. Many, in fact, will completely discount their benefits as a pittance. They'll fall for the doom and gloom that says they need MILLIONS to retire. That health care costs will destroy their retirement. That Social Security is going bankrupt. All these negative things permeate the financial industry and the media. As such, many working people are scared to death of retirement. And they stay at crappy, old jobs for much longer than they would have liked...because they're AFRAID of running out of money!Don't be like this! With a thorough understanding of how Social Security works, you will be well-armed to deal with the naysayers who continue to peddle the horror stories that await you if you quit your job to enjoy your life In this book, I will explain it all. And hopefully, you will put it down, take a deep breath, relax a bit and say "you know something? It's about time I enjoyed life on MY TERMS!"

Retirement is the beginning of life, not the end.

Here is a single-sit read than can change the course of your retirement. Written by Dr. Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor, a retirement and savings specialist, and a trustee to two retiree health-care trusts worth over $54 billion, How to Retire with Enough Money cuts through the confusion, misinformation, and bad policy-making that keeps us spending or saving poorly. It begins with acknowledging what a person or household actually needs to have saved—the rule of thumb is eight to ten times your annual salary before retirement—and how much to expect from Social Security. And then it delivers the basic principles that will make the money grow, including a dozen good ideas to get current expenses under control. Why to “get rid of your guy”—those for-fee (or hidden-fee) financial planners that suck up valuable assets. Why it’s always better to pay off a loan or a mortgage. There are no gimmicks, no magical thinking—just an easy-to-follow program that works.

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.