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

by Ted Kaufman, Bruce Hiland

Overview

Planning for retirement isn't just about money. Retirement has changed dramatically since our parents' generation. People are living far longer, with far better health than ever before—both mentally and physically. Instead of slowing down, people are leaving their jobs feeling ready to take on the world. They're financially independent, active, and capable. And then, suddenly, they have nothing to do. Business friends drift away, the sense of purpose that comes with solving problems day in and day out fades into memory, and you start looking ahead to the next thirty or forty years wondering what on earth you're going to do with all that time. Retiring? takes a profound look at twenty-first-century retirement, helping you plan all the nonfinancial aspects of what comes next. Drawing on the experience of today's modern, vibrant retirees, Retiring? offers a concise, practical, and conversational guide to the best chapter of your life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781544516844
Publisher:	Houndstooth Press
Publication date:	05/04/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	124
Sales rank:	300,627
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Ted Kaufman is the former U.S. Senator from Delaware succeeding Senator Joseph Biden. Ted was Biden's Chief of Staff for nineteen years and led his presidential transition planning in 2020. He taught at Duke Law School for twenty-six years. At eighty-one, he and his wife, Lynne, celebrate their sixty-first anniversary this year.

Bruce Hiland's career included McKinsey, more than four years as Chief Administrative Officer at Time Inc., twenty years of independent consulting, and four startups. Now eighty, he and Ginny, married fifty-seven years, are enjoying their family, dealing with aging, and harvesting the fruits of their labor.

Editorial 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

BookLife 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.

Kirkus Reviews