Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Retirement Planning

  • RECONFIGUREMENT™ by E. Alan Fleischauer – Money Management, Retirement Planning, Career Planning

     

    A guide to achieving financial freedom in retirement, E. Alan Fleischauer’s bestseller Reconfigurement™ reveals a roadmap guided by the Mantra, “Navigate, Customize, and Thrive.”

    Advances in medicine, nutrition, and longevity planning now offer unparalleled possibilities to live longer, higher-quality lives. However, looming over this rosy image is a genuine concern: the financial ramifications of a longer retirement term. More alarming is that a sizable portion of the American populace is not harnessing their 401(k) retirement plans.

    In light of this scenario, can traditional investment programs with fraying safety nets, such as pensions, remain viable? Reconfigurement combines the emotional fulfillment of making retirement dreams a reality with practical guidance that rejects the notion of a set retirement age of 65. This work’s personal tales and sound financial guidance entice readers away from the constraints of traditional retirement approaches.

    Author Fleischauer integrates the needs of financial, professional, and retirement life to create a path for long-term stability and success.

    Reconfigurement opens with an eye-opening examination of the unpleasant reality of money and its importance in our lives. It focuses on why budgeting is crucial in a society where success relies so heavily on personal finance. Practical advice and experiences follow to demonstrate the viability of preserving the capacity to earn.

    After addressing the financial side, Reconfigurement moves on to the career aspect with a series of tests to assist readers in discovering what career would fit them best.

    Continuing the journey, the book explains financial stability pillars that can help strengthen assets and ensure a fruitful retirement. It guides readers through the complexities of insurance, social security systems, and investment opportunities. Next follows the link between safeguarding one’s financial future through insurance and planning for retirement with a chapter on investment options.

    The foundation of life, healthcare, takes center stage as Reconfigurement untangles the web of Medicare and Medicaid to safeguard one’s well-being across the years.

    The specter of long-term care looms as the book addresses its issues and how to plan around them. Next comes guidance on securing a legacy for one’s posterity, focusing on wills, trusts, and the complexities of their legal and tax implications. This path to financial freedom finally carries into uncharted territory: education savings, budgeting skills, and charitable donations.

    Reconfigurement delivers an in-depth account of the different aspects involved in preparing for and managing life transitions, both those hotly discussed and those concealed.

    Case studies, practical counsel, and real-life examples serve to close the gap between theory and implementation. Also, the author concedes that the financial material may tire readers, so he endeavors to balance it with humor, anecdotes, and interactive components in a conversational tone.

    Rather than aiming for ‘one-size-fits-all’, this book’s advice remains flexible for each reader’s unique situation.

    Readers are encouraged to make decisions consistent with their goals, circumstances, and preferences. It is worth noting that Reconfigurement primarily targets the American audience in reflecting American financial standards and systems. However, its overarching financial planning concepts, emphasizing individual customization, assure its global applicability.

    Reconfigurement by E. Alan Fleischauer won Grand Prize in the 2022 CIBA Harvey Chute Awards for Business & Finance Non-Fiction.

     

    5 Stars! Best Book Chanticleer Book Reviews

  • RETIRE SECURELY: Insights on Money Management from an Award-Winning Financial Columnist by Julie Jason – Personal Financial Management, Retirement Planning, Budgeting & Money Management

    RETIRE SECURELY: Insights on Money Management from an Award-Winning Financial Columnist by Julie Jason – Personal Financial Management, Retirement Planning, Budgeting & Money Management

    If you’re wondering what the difference is between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA, then you’ll want to pick up Julie Jason’s Retire Securely: Insights on Money Management from an Award-Winning Financial Columnist. You will be treated to a crash course on financial terms like these and get inside information on saving and investing thanks to scores of conversations she’s had with her readers over the years.

    Plenty of titles on financial planning and investing exist on bookstore shelves, but what makes Jason’s compilation different is that hers is culled from more than 1,000 columns she has written over the years for the Connecticut newspapers, Greenwich Time and the Stamford Advocate. In 2013, King Features syndicated her “Retirement Planning and Investment” column, where she explores topics like 401(k) investing, choosing a financial adviser and how to determine if sending your kid to college is a good value. Jason, who worked as a Wall Street lawyer, money manager, and investment counselor, really knows her stuff: whether it’s unraveling the complicated world of market trends or explaining estate planning, her columns are worth reading and applying to your financial life. Her column has recently moved from King Features to Andrews McMeel Syndicate [Chanticleer Reviews was notified about this change on April 3, 2020].

    “Through my dialogue with readers, I want to share a message of both promise and watchfulness,” she writes in the Introduction. With an easy to follow and conversational tone, Jason invites readers to get financially literate–understanding how to read a mutual fund prospectus, for example. (A prospectus is not literature that you read from start to finish. Instead, it’s designed to protect you, so read it like a warning label on a medicine bottle, she advises.)

    Recognizing that some investors are overwhelmed by financial jargon and the pressure to keep up with the Joneses, she assures her readers that attaining financial security is “a work in progress,” with room for improvement. “I’ve interacted with hundreds of people who wrote to or visited with me to discuss their challenges, concerns, and questions,” she says.

    Our culture’s most significant challenge today, she says, seems to be the pressure Millennials face as they swim in debt. On top of it, Jason points out, this younger generation is in the dark about financial matters. So much so that in 2013, President Obama helped create the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans*, designed to educate young people on how to “successfully handle their personal and household finances as they grow into adulthood.”

    Citing statistics, Jason tells us at least half of 18-to 24-year-old adults stated they would have benefited from a high school course on managing their money. Unfortunately, financial literacy isn’t a mandatory class, so the on us falls on parents to approach kids early with guidelines for saving and even borrowing money.

    Because the book idea came from dialogue she had with readers via her column, many of the issues have to do with feeling secure in retirement, as evidenced in chapters like, “It’s Never Too Early for Retirement Planning” and “Understanding the Relationship Between Your W-2 and Your 401(k).”

    We all could take a cue on how to improve our financial know-how, and a number of the columns are especially useful for parents and their children to review at various stages of their financial planning life cycles.

    Lastly, if you’re wondering how republished articles, some from a decade ago, could be relevant today, Jason has taken the time to update some of the columns to keep pace with changes in the market.

    Retire Securely: Insights on Money Management from an Award-Winning Financial Columnist by Julie Jason won First in Category in the CIBAs 2018 I&I Awards for Instructive Non-Fiction.

     

    *The Council officially ended on January 29, 2013: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/financial-education/Documents/PACFCYA%20Final%20Report%20June%202015.pdf