A firm, friendly must-read for readers in their later years.
A comprehensive manual on saving and planning for retirement.
Thurman, the CEO of Retirement Investment Advisors, clarifies at the outset of this second edition of his 2015 book that it stands on the shoulders of the first, looking at far more data over a larger span of time to offer the most information he can in 248 pages. Since the appearance of the first edition, he notes, a company called Global Financial Data has drawn together data on “the performance of every major asset class offered in the financial markets,” going all the way back to 1930. Using this and a wide array of other sources, he takes readers through a barrage of things to consider as they look at retirement, including whether they’re really ready to retire in the first place. The key focus of the book is reflected in its title, as Thurman concerns himself not with projecting sunny or even standard retirement conditions but rather with anticipating the worst—the kind of financial “perfect storm” that can upset even the sturdiest plans: “This is your retirement income we're talking about,” he writes. “There are no do-overs, and little margin for error.” He points out that a solid framework for retirement finances covers a 40-year time span and has enough flexibility to allow retirees not only to do plenty of things while still active, but also to keep enough funds in reserve to handle mounting costs in later years.
The most prominent aspect of the author’s approach is how it aims to help readers take stock of their individual situations: There are simple questions and simple answers about everything from income sources to equity, fixed investments, stock market speculation, annuities, and the Byzantine complexities of the American social safety net. He opens the book by striking a pitch-perfect balance between the personal (recounting a touching story about his father) and the briskly professional. He never condescends to his readers, and at no point does he ever gild the lily; the book feels like a long, friendly, but no-nonsense visit from a trusted financial adviser. He demystifies all the various investment options and empirically demonstrates how some things that initially look enticing can prove poor choices in the long run. He combines plenty of charts and numerous, personalized anecdotes, always with an eye toward clarity and concision. His program is designed to help readers make the shift from “dollar cost averaging”—the kind of money-into-the-pot saving they’ve been doing all their working lives—to “reverse dollar cost averaging,” involving the smartest, most practical ways of taking that money out. He leads readers smoothly and confidently into a discussion of the value of diversifying one’s holdings, which he notes is a key to surviving unstable markets and lean years. At every turn, Thurman tends to advise a conservative, old-school approach to money management (“prudent and practical,” he calls it), foregoing flashier tactics with higher immediate yields for solid portfolios and strategies.
A firm, friendly must-read for readers in their later years.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-950863-53-2
Page Count: 248
Publisher: ForbesBooks
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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