Two financial planners, one of them a lawyer, draw on personal and professional experience as they offer advice to older women looking ahead to retirement.
In her role as a financial adviser, Blayney had helped other women plan for retirement, but when she stopped working at age 67, she found negotiating her own retirement plans to be unexpectedly challenging. Facing the increasing physical limitations of aging, along with numerous financial and lifestyle decisions, Blayney decided to compile the resource book that she herself needed to make the transition to retired life. She collaborated with like-minded colleague, attorney, and financial planner Fox, who had retired at age 71. Beginning with daunting statistics such as that women over the age of 65 are “80% more likely to be below the poverty line than men” and that 5,000 U.S. women turn 65 every day, Blayney and Fox assess the challenges that face a group in which “many feel alone, unseen and unheard, in a culture uncomfortable with the realities of aging.” Their topics range from identification of and protection from elder abuse to choosing the most practicable living situation and navigating the complexities of Medicare and Social Security. A deep dive into financial planning options includes chapters on annuities, reverse mortgages, strategies for spending down savings and investments, and estate planning. The authors’ perspectives as older women help to give their guidebook authority and heart. Even though they are both professionals in financial planning, they candidly admit to facing the same challenges as women far less schooled in economics, such as increasing difficulty in changing ceiling light bulbs and overcoming a reluctance to join a senior center. One notable limitation is the book’s firmly heterosexual perspective. Given the extra legal and social challenges that gay couples may face in later life, it’s surprising that the authors present aging as a “his and hers” proposition and don’t discuss the challenges of lesbians looking ahead to retirement. Nonetheless, with numerous lists, questions, and detailed explanations of complex financial and personal issues, this sincere and thorough guide would be helpful to women of all ages.
A practical and compassionate handbook designed to help women envision their lives after work.Pub Date: June 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64543-164-0
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: BUSINESS | PERSONAL FINANCE | GENERAL BUSINESS
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Everyone’s favorite avuncular socialist sends up a rousing call to remake the American way of doing business.
“In the twenty-first century we can end the vicious dog-eat-dog economy in which the vast majority struggle to survive,” writes Sanders, “while a handful of billionaires have more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes.” With that statement, the author updates an argument as old as Marx and Proudhon. In a nice play on words, he condemns “the uber-capitalist system under which we live,” showing how it benefits only the slimmest slice of the few while imposing undue burdens on everyone else. Along the way, Sanders notes that resentment over this inequality was powerful fuel for the disastrous Trump administration, since the Democratic Party thoughtlessly largely abandoned underprivileged voters in favor of “wealthy campaign contributors and the ‘beautiful people.’ ” The author looks squarely at Jeff Bezos, whose company “paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018.” Indeed, writes Sanders, “Bezos is the embodiment of the extreme corporate greed that shapes our times.” Aside from a few passages putting a face to avarice, Sanders lays forth a well-reasoned platform of programs to retool the American economy for greater equity, including investment in education and taking seriously a progressive (in all senses) corporate and personal taxation system to make the rich pay their fair share. In the end, he urges, “We must stop being afraid to call out capitalism and demand fundamental change to a corrupt and rigged system.” One wonders if this firebrand of a manifesto is the opening gambit in still another Sanders run for the presidency. If it is, well, the plutocrats might want to take cover for the duration.
Even if they're pie-in-the-sky exercises, Sanders’ pitched arguments bear consideration by nonbillionaires.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593238714
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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SEEN & HEARD
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. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
Categories: BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | PSYCHOLOGY
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