Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

The New Retirement

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I recently had the chance to chat with Todd Tresidder.  If you don’t know the name, don’t worry.  Up until about a year ago, I didn’t either.  But, the short of it is that the guy is retired.  In fact, he retired much earlier than most will.  At the ripe “old” age of 35, he retired.  Which must mean he’s off golfing around in the Arizona heat, right?  Or down, sipping OJ at some southern Florida retirement village?  Not likely.

Todd is retired in the sense that he doesn’t report to a boss.  He does what he wants, when he wants to.  One of the things that he wants to do is write books that help people like you and I become better financially.  He’s got several that he’s written so far, and I’m sure he’s working on more.  During that first meeting, Todd and I spoke for a while on retirement.  Speaking with another financially minded person, I usually expect to hear people talk about 401(k)s, IRAs, and stock purchasing.  I don’t discount those tools, but I just don’t feel that, like Social Security, you should be depending on them for your whole retirement.  Surprisingly, Todd agrees.  The longer we spoke, the more we found that we agreed on.  At the end of our conversations, Todd offered me a copy of his book on retirement. I accepted.

How Much Money do I need to retireLong story short, I finally read it.  It took me a while, but I’m glad I got around to it.

If there’s anything that stands out about the book, is that Todd knows what he’s talking about.  He’s got the experience behind him to talk about the subject in an informed and educational manner, and technically, probably knows more about some of his subject matter than I ever will.  He spends the first several chapters of the book dispelling a few myths about retirement, and about the way in which most people tend to think about it.  He then takes off on a few chapters of some of the math and logic behind the different ways of calculating your retirement needs, and calculating that mythical “number” that everyone seems to be seeking out that will indicate that they’ve saved all that they need to save for retirement.  Not only does that one perfect number not exist, he argues, but the calculations that we make to arrive at it are completely flawed.

The rest of the book is focused on what I like to call the New Retirement.  He goes into detail on the ways to properly estimate your income needs for the future, and then into ways that he believes (and I agree) that a properly diversified retirement “portfolio” should be structured.  I don’t want to spoil too much of the book so I won’t say much more.  What I will say is that the book isn’t terribly long.  It’s not a deeply structured manual on all the different retirement accounts.  And it’s not terribly expensive.  It’s $4.99 on the Kindle (free for Prime members), and about $10 in paperback.

Pick up a copy of How Much Money do I need to Retire at Amazon.  You can check out Todd’s site as well as the other books he’s written at FinancialMentor.com.

 

Debt Heroes

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debt heroes
Amazon

Debt Heroes

By: Jeff Rose & Ben Edwards

Ben and Jeff approached me a couple of weeks ago and asked if I’d like to read a copy of their book, Debt Heroes.  It’s $2.99 on Amaon.

They released the book as a companion to the Debt Movement that Jeff started back in February.  They even offered it for free on Amazon for a couple of days.  I was hoping to release this review during those days, but I just couldn’t get it finished in time.  Unfortunately, it’s back up to it’s regular price of $2.99 (free for Amazon Prime members).  That’s probably good for me, as I’ll be using my Amazon affiliate links to link to the book here, but I’m a bit disappointed that you won’t be able to take advantage of the free deal.

Ben and Jeff set out to write a book about debt heroes.  Everyday people that you and I, the readers, can look up to as heroes in the fight against debt.  Inside the book, you’ll find profiles of 21 debt heroes that have conquered debt, and some tips from each on how they did it.  What I found even more interesting in each profile is that each debt hero points out what their weakness was.  Not surprisingly, it isn’t the same for each one.  Also not surprisingly, that weakness played a huge part in each of their debt story.

The book is a pretty quick read (about 177 pages if it were printed), and it’s full of inspirational stories about getting out of debt.  It’s not another “get out of debt with these steps” book, but a book to give you inspiration in your own debt battle.  Of course, the hope is that you read it and it gives you the push that you need to become your own debt hero.

I think I would have liked to have seen a little bit more of each debt hero’s story.  Each of the stories is accompanied by a link to where you can read the full story, so it’s accessible; I just haven’t progressed in my kindle reading to be clicking on links and such.

If you’re looking for a little inspirational reading to help you keep on track (or get on track) with your debt elimination, I think you’ll find what you need inside the (electronic) pages of this book.  Also, remember that you don’t need a Kindle to read the book.  Amazon has Kindle apps for Android and iOS phones, as well as for PC and Apple computers, and most tablets.

Pick up Debt Heroes today.

You’ll read about it at the end of the book, but Jeff and Ben have also created a “Debt Heroes Club” that you can join to get more tips and inspiration at DebtHeroes.com.

Investing Made Simple

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Investing Made Simple: Index Fund Investing and ETF Investing Explained in 100 Pages or Less

investing made simple
Amazon

By: Mike Piper (ObliviousInvestor.com)

I had the opportunity to meet Mike at the first FINCON in Chicago last year.  He’s a thoroughly nice guy.  I knew him from his blog and website, but for some reason I hadn’t known the extent of his authorship.  I found out at FINCON that he’s written several books (9 of them if I count right) on personal finance.  They mostly lean towards the topics of investing, but even encompass Social Security and business structure.  After meeting Mike, and learning about his books, I made it a point to pick one of them up to read and review.  Well, over a year later, I finally made it to the reading and reviewing part.

Since I’m not much of an investor, I thought that it would be a double good idea to pick up the Investing Made Simple title he wrote.  I can review something he’s written, while probably learning a few things along the way.  Investing made Simple is an excellent book.  It’s short, which makes it an easy read, and the writing style is light, without all the technical investing jargon that’s typical to investing books.

It’s not an in depth book on investing, but it wasn’t intended to be.  What it is intended to be is a short (100 pages or less) book that will give anyone the basics of investing while setting them on the right track to a successful investing portfolio.  I think he accomplished that.

I think one of the things that many beginning investors, including myself, get bogged down in is that the world of investing is a pretty big world.  There’s all these different ways to invest in something.  There’s shorts, longs, calls, margin, options, commodities, ETF, bonds, and the list goes on.  And on.  But, when the beginning investor, who knows little to nothing about investing goes looking for information to get them started, it’s a whole lot of overwhelming.  Piper lays it out simple and easy.  He gives you the meat of what you need to successfully invest for the long term, while quietly informing you that you’ll likely be better off ignoring most of the  stuff that’s confusing you.

What you end up with is a book with all the basics of investing in a small package.  But, you also end up with something that, for most people, is also a complete investing manual.  Keep it simple, and invest wisely is the order that I took away from reading Investing Made Simple.  I think it should be recommended reading for all beginning investors.