Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a person who is on the verge of retirement, this is one of many investment and retirements books I've read recently. If you take the author's advice in your retirement strategy many of the authorities on retirement planning would tell you that you will run out of money in a very untimely way! Written near the end of the boom cyle of the 1990's the book suggests that you can safely withdraw 8% or more of your investments a year for living expenses. This is an extremely optimistic approach. Most current experts recommend a 4% or so withdrawal rate is much more realistic considering the long term analysis of the various markets. This was proposed by the landbreaking research in the Trinity study, written several years before the publication of this book and has become the predominent thinking of modern investment advisors. I especially was miffed at a short discussion suggesting that managing and reducing your living expenses was much less important than your investment strategy. These two items go hand-in-hand and each has a vital place in retirement considerations. You may wish to buy this book for it's decent discussion of the various investment markets, but there are far better out there. This discussion was only fair. I've found the books by Boggle and Berstein to be among the best. If you should have the temptation of following the author's advice regarding spending habits and safe withdrawal rates from your investments, I would stongly recommend that you weight this against other expert advice on the subject.