September 16, 2009

retirement rocks!

retirement rocks!

LIFESTYLE RELATIONSHIP FINANCES

By

Heather Compton &

Dennis Blas

ISBN 978-0-9812573-0-3

Available at www.retirementrocks.ca $24.95

I’ve been looking forward to this book for several months and the wait was worth it. First of all, yes the book deals with the financial aspects of how much is enough, designing a lifestyle to suit your financial abilities, taking care of the legalities, tax savings, investments, expenses, planning, pensions and money management issues. And yes, this is done in a way that is professional, understandable, engaging and sensitive. If I stopped at that point, I would say the authors gave great value for the investment of $24.95 and that I would have felt much more knowledgeable and prepared to look at my financial future.

What pleased me most about this book is that the writers decided to offer so much more than financial advice and looked at some of the most important issues about retirement and the most challenging for many. We have all laughed at the story of the stay-at-home wife who lives in fear as the clock strikes down to retirement and HE is going to be around the house all day. We have also seen people who retired to a recliner and reruns of I Love Lucy and died 2 years later from boredom. More and more, we are hearing from relationship professionals about late life marriage breakdowns. Rarely would a top flight retirement planning book take on these issues as part of the process of a successful last phase of our lives, and it is high time that someone did. Thankfully, retirement rocks! has done just exactly that.

The authors place primary importance on our lifestyle and relationships by placing these sections first in their book and it makes such good sense. It is easy to see that Heather and Dennis have worked hard and successfully at their own relationship and we are the better for it. They share their personal experience and have called upon many other examples to provide us with a full range of thought provoking and soul searching methods to make sure we have the most important parts of our lives in place before the frying pan of retirement hits us on the head. The two sections on Lifestyle and Relationships make this a book that is valuable and useful to people everywhere and not just in Canada where the financial advice applies most specifically. Some equally smart American accountant/advisor could easily lift the first two parts and add U.S. focussed financial material and turn this into an international best seller – yes, it’s that good. This book is full of sensible, practical advice for being proactive about creating a retirement that rocks for you and me.

Buy this book for the financial planning but

read it for the glimpse at a life worth living.

www.retirementrocks.ca

Robert J. Bannon

Book reviewer