Can I Retire?: How Much Money You Need to Retire and How to Manage Your Retirement Savings, Explained in 100 Pages or Less

I heard about Mike Piper and his books on The Bogleheads online forum. I decided to buy this book and check him out. The author boils down retirement planning to about 100 pages compared to the 370 pages in The Bogleheads Guide to Retirement Planning and Jim Otar's 525 pages in Unveiling the Retirement Myth. By the title, I assumed all 100 pages would focus on the decision on whether or not to retire. Instead, 30 pages focus on this key decision...and the balance of 70 pages focus on the steps to take after you decided to retire. This is ok, but not what I expected from the title. My reading time was about 50 minutes, but I took notes as I went to be able to write this book review. If you subtract the note taking time, my reading time was about 40 minutes. Piper mentions that state guarantee associations exist to back up an insurance company that fails. The soundness of an insurance company is critical if they are paying you a lifetime SPIA. It is extremely difficult to find data about past insurance company failures and whether investors lost money or not on their SPIA's. As we all remember in the Sub-Prime Crash of 2008, AIG basically went bankrupt and Uncle Sam had to bail them out. William Bernstein has correctly pointed out that buying SPIA's may be too risky because of the chance of insurance company failures and inability of state guaranty associations to fill the gap. Piper correctly raises the major issue of conflict-of-interest if you choose to use a financial planner. His example of conflict-of-interest is financial planners not recommending SPIA's because it reduces the amount of assets under the AUM (assets under management) financial model........and therefore reduces the annual income to the financial planner. This can be remedied by negotiating an annual retainer fee which does not depend on the vagaries of a fluctuating stock market or SPIA usage. In the spirit of full-disclosure, I am co-author of Chapter 18...Seeking the Help of Professionals..... in The Bogleheads Guide to Retirement Planning.......and I think our chapter elaborates and does a much better job of explaining the conflict-of-interest issue. One thing I was not aware of until a couple of months ago, is that if you retire between age 55 and age 59.5, you might be better off leaving your money in your 401K versus rolling it over to an IRA. Tax law allows you to withdraw from the 401K without the 10% penalty if you are in this situation. Piper does mention this fact. One thing Piper mentions that I was not aware of.......was that if you own company stock in your 401K plan...you can withdraw it and pay long term capital gains taxes versus higher ordinary income tax rates. I have not heard of this loophole before. Of course, I would recommend being fully diversified and not investing much in your own company stock.......just ask Enron employees what can happen. Piper correctly points out that if you a financial advisor who uses the 1% AUM model (he charges you 1% of assets under management each year) your 4% safe withdrawal rate really becomes 3% because of the 1% AUM fee. Many advisors charge a fraction of 1% AUM, which means your SWR is higher than 3%. Piper repeats the basic financial guide to put dividend paying investments into retirement accounts (bonds, bond funds, TIPS, and REIT's) and stocks in taxable accounts. He also points out your available options if your investment income is not high enough to support you in retirement: Work longer, work part-time in retirement, reduce retirement living expenses, reduce current expenses and save more, annuitize using SPIA's which generate more than 4% (but leave nothing for your heirs), or try to get higher returns from your retirement portfolio. Given the low savings rate and portfolio size of most Baby Boomers, I suspect many of them will tap their equity in their home and use it for retirement living expenses via reverse mortgages. Piper does not mention reverse mortgages as an option. All-in-all, a good little book with practical advice. In our U.S. culture of short attention spans (e.g. 8 sec TV commercials).....maybe more people can learn the very basics of retirement planning versus having to read full length books.

Overall this is a very good book with useful information for anyone who is looking for information about when and whether to retire. My only complaint or negative feeling about the book is with respect to chapter 3 titled "What if 4% Isn't Enough?" and the subject is increasing returns on your investments. In one of the sentences he writes, "even the pros can't seem to get the job done consistently" with respect to professional financial people being able to match or beat the market. Individual investors can do so much better by spending time learning and staying focused on a goal to increase their wealth by investing. I was finally convinced this is true after two professional money managers, one employed by Fidelity and one employed by America's Retirement Store, told me that they did not have time to invest in the types of securities that could bring true wealth to their clients. I translated this to mean that what they do is put their clients on auto-pilot and most people accept measly returns because those in the financial world have convinced them that this is true. My recommendation to individual investors who really want to learn and succeed is visit The Motley Fool website to learn about stock investing and option investing. There will be a learning curve, but after that you can spend a reasonable amount of time managing your financial portfolio. If you make up your mind to succeed with individual investing, you will be successful.

Mike Piper has a knack for writing short financial books that incorporate all the essential knowledge needs. There is no fluff but all the right stuff on your journey to a comfortable retirement. Be sure to check out his other books, which are chock full of financial wisdom and a short read. Thanks, Mike Piper, for all you do to make folks more financially literate.

I subscribe to Mike Piper's blog, Oblivious Investor, and he was pushing this pretty hard in the past two weeks. I balked for that reason, but when he offered a special $5 price on Amazon, it was too good a deal to pass up. I like it very much. It's short enough (99 pages) to read in one or two sittings, and he summarizes the key decisions and calculations very well. I especially appreciated the information he provided about distributions and their income tax consequences. Most of the retirement books I have read focus only on the accumulation stage of the retirement process. This book deals specifically with the "when can I pull the trigger and retire?" and "how should I distribute my accumulated retirement savings?" The last pages deal with the right kind of financial planner you should use. There is no perfect answer since each type of compensation arrangement has inherent conflicts of interest. But, avoid the sales people and the Assets-Under-Management advisors. He recommends hiring an hourly fee-only planner. I agree. The disclaimer I have to make here is that I am studying myself to become a Certified Financial Planner (CFP), so my bias has always been towards fee-only planners.

Okay, it's sort of like what my parents use to say about how much you pay for something, "A lot of times you get what you pay for" That's kind of the situation here. 100 pages isn't a whole lot of room for information, so you shouldn't think that your going to get a lot of details on implementation of your retirement plan. I would consider this coffee table reading for someone who has not even considered retirement; Retirement 101, This book will introduce you to the basic concepts and most of the things you need to consider. What you will not get is details. So if you are looking for a book to give you an introduction (ie the cliff notes) so you can have a general conversation with your spouse, or best friend, this may be good for you. If you are getting serous, and are a beginner, you should really consider the AARP retirement Survival Guide listed below. I don't really want to beat up on the book to much, because it does give you a good 10,000 foot overview. Just remember, you are getting what you pay for here as far as the 100pages is concerned. Here is a list of some of the books I have read in preparing for retirement, and a one-liner, and ranking for each. I will order them in the order I would read them: 1. The AARP Retirement Survival Guide: How to Make Smart Financial Decisions in Good Times and Bad (Julie Jason) Rank: 5/5 Summary:Real good overview and introduction to the many considerations for retirement. 2. Buckets of Money: How to Retire in Comfort and Safety (Raymond Lucia) Rank: 4/5 Summary: Interesting concept on planning for retirement. Although I'm not sure I will use the plan Raymond lays out here, I think the general concept is a real good idea on how to think about tapping your assets as you plan for retirement. 3. Annuities For Dummies (Kerry Pechter) Rank: 4.5/5 Summary: Great details on the highly complex subject of annuities, a critical tool for your retirement planning to alleviate longevity and market risk. If you read the books above, I don't think there is a need for reading the books listed below since either they don't have the depth, or have already been covered in sufficient detail in the books above. The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning g (Various Aurthors) Rank: 3.5/5 Summary: I think this book tries to cover a little to much, and as a result has topics that I don't think are appropriate for the retirement planning. Since the book attempts to cover so many topics, it really doesn't give real good details on any one topic. I think of this book, more as an executive summary for the various topics it covers. Can I Retire? How Much Money You Need to Retire and How to Manage Your Retirement Savings, Explained in 100 Pages or Less (Mike Piper) Rank: 2.5/5 Summary: What do you expect for 100 pages? Although the author does seem to stay on-topic in this book, its just to broad to really give you any actionable information. Perhaps a decent book if you are just wading into the whole concept of retirement and don't want to put alot of thought into details(IE the big picture). This book does not answer the question it poses in the title. Hope this helps James

Outstanding all around retirement book. This book stands out by being short, while clearly and simply addressing very complex topics. Mike never ceases to amaze through his books, blogs and presentations. Would like to see more details on what to do with remaking asset allocations not dedicated to bridge towards social security. Allocation during and after bridge years I look forward to reading more publications for DYI investors. Thank you Mike.

This book can be read in one sitting. It is easy to undesand and follow and has useful references...and the price is right. What's not to like? It's a fine starting point for in depth reading and a good place to read if you have limited time and are just wondering without the sense of urgency of retiring soon. It makes the point that retirement planning should start wel, in advance.

Since early 2007 I have been doing a self-study on investing, financial markets, and retirement issues and have read most of the classic academic literature, from Benjamin Graham, Roger Gibson, and Charles Ellis, to Burton Malkiel, William Bernstein, and John Bogel. As the previous reviewers have noted, Mr. Piper writes both extremely clearly and very well. He boils down a subject to its pure essense, yet on nearly every page he adds notes of clarification just where a newcomer might tend to get lost [or even bring clarity to someone who has been doing a total immersion into finance books!]. In a couple places, as I finished a chapter and was thinking, "that was really good, but what about..?", and then I turned the page to find the answer. I never found anything, not a word, which I did not agree with him, and although it is of course impossible to cover everything completely in 100 pages, many folks [like all the ones who don't have the time to read the dozens and dozens of fine books on the topic] will find most the basics of what they need to get started for retirement in this book. For those who need more, the finer points are out there in specialized books, or on self help websites like the Bogleheads or Mr. Piper's own. This is NOT "retirement for dummies"! Mr. Piper knows his subject thoroughly and presents it well. The book will stand re-reading, even for non-novice readers. I am ordering a few more copies to give out to family [including my wife] and friends who are near or starting retirement, and plan to read his other books also. There are rumors that Mr. Piper is thinking about writing a similar 100 page book on Social Security, which I hope is true, since I am already 61.