Retiring?: Your Next Chapter Is about Much More Than Money

by Ted Kaufman, Bruce Hiland Narrated by Scott R. Pollak

Overview

Retiring?: Your Next Chapter Is About Much More Than Money is a practical, concise, and encouraging guidebook specifically written to help you understand and plan for the profound, inescapable non-financial challenges that retirement brings.

Today a successful retirement requires much more than financial planning. Retirement triggers profound changes-in the rhythm of your life, in your relationships with family and friends, in your identity. Every individual's retirement is unique and you need to prepare for these vitally important non-financial challenges. Our goal is to inspire you to do the planning essential for a satisfying, meaningful next chapter.”

Retiring? provides straight-forward, “non-preachy” guidance to help you comfortably focus on key questions-When to retire? Where to live? What will you do with your time? Similarly, you need to think through how you will take care of your body, your mind, your heart and your soul. Questions are clearly explained and accompanied with realistic suggestions, sources of additional help and examples of others' experiences.

Originally written for those approaching retirement, this guidebook has been enthusiastically welcomed by both already-retired listeners wrestling with these challenges and, as well, family members and friends eager to help. This book shows how thoughtful planning now dramatically improves your prospects for a happy and fulfilling next chapter.

This book is masterfully read by Scott Pollak.

©2011 R. Bruce Hiland, Edward E. Kaufman. Produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont

Editorial Reviews

BookLife Reviews

01/31/2022

In this concise, encouraging guidebook, Kaufman and Hiland draw deep on their professional and experiential knowledge to help readers prepare for a retirement filled with purpose. Noting the prevalence of retirees who are materially secure yet still unhappy, the authors focus on approaches to facing the profound life changes encountered in the “terra incognita” of retirement, framing preparations for a post-career life in the manner of a travel guide. The authors blend functional advice and philosophical questions (“What Do You Want to Do?” “Where Do You Want to Live?”) to help readers enter this stage of life with clear goals and useful tools, emphasizing that sound financial planning is not the only key to enjoying “a satisfying, meaningful life when you retire.”

One of the guide’s strengths is its crispness: Kaufman and Hiland get to the point quickly, aligning readers with their goal of “framing the important questions and pointing you in helpful directions” while delivering motivation for their audience to take authority in creating a retirement that nourishes body, brain, heart, and soul. They offer reflective prompts throughout, instruments to probe individual readers’ needs, and specific counsel on the different stages of retirement as well as the importance of thinking through its timing, locale, leisure activities, and impact on relationships. The advice can be frank: “If you stay in your pajamas, you die,” one authority they quote declares. Still, Kaufman and Hiland acknowledge there is no perfect formula for those facing this phase of life–and they recommend viewing it as an “extraordinarily important journey” as opposed to a final destination.

Operating from the assumption that readers have already achieved financial stability affords the authors ample space to address many other measures of living well that can get overlooked in other guides. They offer plenty of external resources as well. Readers who are considering their own retirement transition or assisting someone else in preparing will benefit from this direct and highly useful guide.

Takeaway: A succinct guide on retirement planning that goes beyond finances to offer readers new perspectives on laying the groundwork.

Great for fans of: Fritz Gilbert’s Keys to a Successful Retirement, The Retirement Challenge: A Non-financial Guide From Top Retirement Experts.

Production grades Cover: B Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A

Kirkus Reviews

2021-06-14
Two octogenarians share their wisdom on nonfinancial aspects of retirement.

Many retirement books focus largely on the bottom line: financial planning, retirement savings accounts, Social Security benefits, and the like. A handful of works take a different tack, though, such as this one, which the authors dub “a guidebook to help you plan the next chapter of your life.” Certainly, both authors are accomplished retirees: Kaufman is a former U.S. senator from Delaware, and Hiland is a former business executive and consultant, both 81 years old at the time of the book’s writing. Their approach is to lay the groundwork for the reader’s transition to retirement, based on their own experience and informal research they conducted with other retirees. This slim but personal volume intentionally lacks “prescriptive advice”; instead, it features descriptive examples and thoughtfully constructed worksheets. Kaufman and Hiland start with a straightforward overview of retirement itself that seems geared primarily toward executives and professionals like the authors themselves; they note, for example, that “In the workplace, your position establishes your status with commensurate respect and privileges. With retirement, you become a ‘formerly’ or ‘used-to-be.’ ” For this audience, this work offers a brief but valuable perspective. Much of it highlights areas of concern in short chapters that focus on how to maintain one’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Kaufman and Hiland effectively facilitate such self-reflection by posing direct, insightful questions and offering checklists; most notable is a provocative “What I Value” worksheet and a “self-assessment of your emotional intelligence,” which applies a ranking scale to five dimensions (self-awareness, self-regulation, social skills, empathy, and motivation). Toward the book’s end, Kaufman and Hiland share their own retirement stories to demonstrate how “Very different approaches can accomplish a successful result.” Given their impressive backgrounds, these intimate anecdotes make for fascinating reading. In closing, Kaufman and Hiland discuss their later years with candor and grace. The authors also point to additional books and websites, within the text and in appendices, which may help extend readers’ knowledge base as they mull over their futures.

An engaging retirement self-help guide.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192305904
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	06/24/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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