[.ca] J.K. Lasser's Your Winning Retirement Plan (J.K. Lasser ...

Thinking of retirement:
JK Lasser's Your Winning Retirement Plan was very informative. If you are thinking of retirement you may want to read this book first. I found it helpful, and more than ever realize that I need to hire a Financial Advisor, because this is a big step. My money is going to have to get me through my golden years, hopefully for a long time.

Financial Realism in Retirement:
This is what happens when a highly qualified person writes a book to help others understand their retirement finances so that they can realistically plan and feel as comfortable as is possible with their present and future financial well-being. It is based on realistic historical and mathematical facts. The planning methodology is as good as it gets. I can't say enough about how useful this book has been to me to say nothing of the confidence I now have in my personal finances. It's not enough to say that Mr. Hebeler is to be congratulated!

A Rudder in a Sea of Misinformation:
I was fortunate to meet Mr Hebeler in 1995 at an economic summit during which he explained the difficulties of retiring. I purchased his spiral-bound books back then for $15 each and learned the painful truth of his affordable fractions. I still remember one cartoon featuring two big, nasty looking bulldogs. They were labeled "taxes" and "inflation". The caption read: After feeding both of these there isn't a lot left over for you. I still have vivid memories of realizing a comfortable retirement was going to be the end to a very careful journey. Fortunately I was 35 at the time and there was plenty of time to plan and execute the path to retirement. I laugh out loud when I read the criticisms of this book saying it is too outdated and there are easy to use, web based programs that make retirement planning simple. The problen with simple programs is that they are simple. Life takes many twists and turns. Even if you were able to accurately project the 30 year average of inflation and investment returns, the order in which you receive them makes a tremendous difference in your success of failure. Read this book and you'll see the folly of projecting constant rates of return or inflation.You'll be able to use realistic figures in the retirement planning software. One shocking discover I kind of knew, but faied to grasp, was the tremendous drag the high annual expense costs of the average mutual fund had upon a sound retirement. The average mutual fund charges 1.5% per year to manage the fund and many index funds are as low as 0.2%. One could construct a well diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, cash, and real estate with a cost well under 0.5%. That 1% difference is huge when compounded over 30 years! Don't buy a cheap software program to base your retirement upon! I use the $49 Excel spreadsheet fom www.analyzenow.com . This isn't pretty, but it does the basic job. It's a deal at that price. Check what a financial planner charges per hour. I also use a program from MoneyTree called Silver 4.0 which was recommended to me by a CFA whom had used it for himself. It's not cheap. $450 and $225 a year to maintain, but it is pretty. When I feed it the conservative estimaes based on the recommendations Mr. Hebeler advocates in his book, The numbers make sense and I can see how the cash flows from the retirement accounts for the next 45 years. This book doesn't cover all the bases you'll need for retirement planning, but it does cover the assumptions you'll need for basic planning.

Lasser Let Me down:
Lasser is a known name in the consumer 'financial' publishing business. This book about retirement planning is very outdated and even misleading in some areas. The calculations it asks the reader to do are with pencil and paper. As my daughter used to say "A,DUUh!" There are a myriad of easy PC based tools in the market that are far superior. I would have returned the book the next day if I bought it at a local book store.

Good stuff:
This book is different that others I have read and makes much more sense. Just wish I had it 30 years ago.