Retirement Planning Guidebook: Navigating the Important Decisions for Retirement Success (The Retirement Researcher Guide)

This book has become the center for my retirement planning and prep. I can't find the words to speak highly enough of it. I am excited about how much I've learned and to put that learning into action. My wife and I have a nest egg saved big enough we will retire comfortably. We're 55 and want to retire by 60. Since my dad was a stock broker in the 80s and 90s, we comfortable doing our own investing largely with etfs. This book opened my eyes to tons more tools to add to our investing knowledge. The book starts by describing retirement, financial goals and risks very well. Goals are lifestyle, longevity, legacy and liquidity. Risks are more numerous but also well explained. It guides you through how to align future expenses and income sources - then comparing them different ways to gauge readiness. This includes budgeting explained well enough that it isn't daunting. It also has a chapter defining 4 different styles of people and how they view risks. Instead of giving one size fits all advice, it lays out solutions to fit those different styles or preferences. It highlights how some different tools can be used in all styles but just to different degrees. My bias was toward investing. I learned in this book about new tools I will probably blend into my stragety -- bond ladders, annuities, and life insurance. I have always been biased against annuities, but this book gives really strong arguments how an annuity will probably fit for a small portion of my retirement -- with benefits so huge it vastly outweighs the costs that most people shy away from. I happened to take a 3 day class on retirement planning -- a real class, not sales for an advisor. It touched on most of the things I've read in this book but to a much simpler degree. Not nearly enough to be actionable. So again, this book is the core of my planning. I highly recommend this book and have bought one of Pfau's other books to dive deeper into one topic. Not that this book isn't adequate, because it is. I just enjoy going deeper. This book is not entirely easy to read. Pfau writes well, it's just a very thorough book on some topics that are not simple. Just put the book down, digest, and reread a little if you need. He does an outstanding job with this book.

Dr. Pfau's book is a great resource for retirement planning DIYers (including advice on when not to DIY). He discusses in depth every relevant topic. I've read hundreds of personal finance books, and it's not often I learn something totally new about retirement preparation, but this book introduced me to several new things about annuities, withdrawals from retirement accounts, and Medicare. It really is a guidebook, including action plans at the end of every chapter. The writing style might not be to everyone's taste, as Dr. Pfau packs a lot of information into a relatively little space, but I kind of enjoyed that about it. This is my new favorite, and I'll be referring to it throughout my upcoming retirement.

I'd mirror what other reviewers have said about how comprehensive and detailed the coverage of retirement financial planning is. I've looked at many books and this one is in a class by itself! The RISA model is a unique and very valuable model for explaining investment styles. Bravo! However the writing is unnecesarily difficult. Long compound sentences and dense paragraphs. Probably written at the 16+ grade level. Minimal formatting that helps navigating and digesting the rigorous content. And the content is often relatively sophisticated. Its exhausting to read. I often couldnt make it through an entire chapter at one sitting. Despite the quality of the content, I know many of my friends could not make their way through this tome. Its a pity.

I felt that I had really mastered the knowledge necessary to accumulate assets. However, it turns out the knowledge to spend them down is very, very different, and I had not been exposed to it at all. This book is incredibly comprehensive, and contains so many ideas and concepts that I had never encountered during the accumulation phase. I highly recommend it. One warning: the initial chapters on retirement style and risks are a bit dry. The remaining chapters are full of interesting new ideas. Don't be put off by those early chapters, or feel free to skip them and then return later. To give one example of how useful this book is: Do you know how the '4%' rule was created? What its meaning, strengths, and weaknesses are? I didn't. I had just taken it as 'received wisdom'. But it turns out when you investigate how it was created, and consider alternatives, you learn a tremendous amount about the tradeoffs, risks, and opportunities of retirement. Its really empowering. This book has so many useful ideas, and its reassuring to get a better sense of the issues associated with drawing down wealth, so you can do it confidently and competently.

Great book on Retirement Planning.

This is a very through, comprehensive work which I found irreplaceable for my retirement references. It covers a complete range of areas of life encounters relative to planning for retirement. I evaluate this guide a 10 out of 10.. Thank you Dr. Pfau. John

This book goes in depth with retirement strategy. Mostly financial, but hits other things too. If you plan to do your own financial planning, this is a really good book to help you check your blind spots. It will help you figure out the strategy that you are comfortable with. It you will use a financial planner, but want to understand what and why the decisions are made, or judge if a particular planner is right for you, this can provide you a lot of background. If you hate thinking about financial details, this is not for you... but you are going to have a harder time managing your retirement.

The Retirement Planning Guidebook is one of the most comprehensive financial planning books I have read. It has taken me years of reading to learn some of the information in this one volume and I learned several new ways to examine my retirement plan. In the Guidebook, Dr. Pfau has developed several useful tools to aid in retirement planning. One method is the Retirement Income Style Awareness® (RISA®) matrix, which helps the reader evaluate their style identified by two main factors: Safety-First vs. Probability and Commitment vs. Optionality. Another useful tool is the funded ratio, which provides a basic calculation about whether retirement is adequately funded without accepting market risk and is an alternative to the Safe Withdrawal Rate method. If you have read many financial books, you probably will still find new information in this guidebook. If you are new to retirement planning, this is a great resource to get you started. The 2nd Edition was published in early 2023 and includes the latest changes in tax law and the impacts of the SECURE Act 2.0, as well as how retirement planning should be adjusted for the economy at that time. The book and each chapter start with a summary of the topics covered and then go into depth on each topic. The book and each chapter conclude with an action plan to guide the reader on how to implement the suggestions. The chapters in the book are: 1. Retirement Income Styles & Decisions 2. Retirement Risks 3. Quantifying Goals & Assessing Preparedness 4. Sustainable Spending from Investments 5. Annuities and Risk Pooling 6. Social Security 7. Medicare and Health Insurance 8. Long-Term Care Planning 9. Housing Decisions in Retirement 10. Tax Planning for Efficient Retirement Distributions 11. Legacy and Incapacity Planning 12. The Non-Financial Aspects of Retirement Success 13. Putting It All Together I highly recommend Retirement Planning Guidebook for both experienced and new investors planning their retirement.

Good read, very good knowledge