An unusual approach to retirement finance that delivers worthwhile ideas.
A look at retirement strategies focuses on spending instead of saving.
This debut personal finance book approaches the monetary aspects of retirement from a different perspective than most works in the genre. The volume doesn’t concern itself with strategies for saving and investing to build a retirement nest egg but instead concentrates on plans for spending the accumulated funds in order to limit the overall tax burden. McDonald—relying on software designed by his programmer son, Trevor, which readers are encouraged to find on the companion website—argues that the standard advice for making withdrawals from taxable and nontaxable retirement accounts leaves many people paying more in taxes over a multiyear period than they would by following his formula. Using several hypothetical retired couples—along with two single people—McDonald walks readers through the calculations involved. He shows how strategic withdrawals from 401(k)s and IRAs, combined with Social Security payments and other retirement income, may result in higher taxes in a given year but often lead to significant overall savings over the course of several years. The book is targeted at a fairly narrow audience, the group the author calls “Younger Baby Boomer Savers”—those in their late 50s and early 60s whose retirement savings are in the top quintile—who are in the best position to implement his strategy and benefit from the tax savings. For those readers, this work is an effective addition to their personal finance bookshelves. McDonald does a good job of explaining the tax implications of different forms of retirement savings and the legal requirements for annual withdrawals. The volume covers tax policy in fairly general terms—avoiding a morass of wonkish details but clearly laying out the elements that have a measurable effect on the total amount retirees will have available to spend. By approaching retirement finance from a new angle, the author offers insights to those who have moved beyond contributing to their 401(k)s and are now ready to maximize their benefits.
An unusual approach to retirement finance that delivers worthwhile ideas.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 979-8885257374
Page Count: 142
Publisher: RTS Tech Publications LLC
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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