THE BOOMER'S GUIDE TO RECOVERING YOUR LOST RETIREMENT: THE BILL FISHER STORY

Name: THE BOOMER'S GUIDE TO RECOVERING YOUR LOST RETIREMENT: THE BILL FISHER STORY
Author: Michael R. Burns
ISBN: 978-1477521809

by Michael R. Burns ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2012

Practical financial wisdom told with authority.

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Financial wisdom passed down from a father-in-law and tendered here as a bighearted gift.

Burns’ father-in-law, Bill Fisher, experienced plenty of financial setbacks during his life, but he put together a plan to nurture a small nest egg into something more substantial by the time he turned 72 and to turn a $50,000 bequest into $1 million by the time he died at 92. Burns tracks Fishers’ strategy, and it’s not exactly brain science; but $1 million speaks for itself. Burns is a forthright, blunt writer, and what he says is homespun but sage, humbly tendered in both tone and clarity. Readers clueless about their savings, no matter how meager, will appreciate his frankness. First, get enough income to cover your monthly expenses, which might mean getting a second job. A job, it’s noted, can be an emotional and social boon as well, offering health benefits, etc. Burns then advises when to tap into Social Security—wait until you’re 70—and how to maximize IRAs. He explains why to vest your 401(k)s in mutual funds and how to fund a sensible price-to-earning ration for your high-dividend stocks. He includes several smart rules of thumb to help avoid panic in market cycles, especially good counsel for dividend reinvestment programs: “[L]ook for quality stocks that pay a good dividend (2-5 percent), have an attractive P/E ration (from 7 to 18), and are diversified industries!” He even plumps for municipal bonds: “Muni bonds are very boring. They are like watching paint dry or grass grow,” but they earn a nice income every year. In this economic climate, Burns thinks residential real estate is a vulture’s game, yet the mortgage rates are a steal; your call. The short but dense book closes with Fisher’s stock preferences and master agent wholesale buy rates.

Practical financial wisdom told with authority.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-1477521809

Page Count: 86

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

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SELF-HELP

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HELPING ME HELP MYSELF

ONE SKEPTIC, TEN SELF-HELP GURUS, AND A YEAR ON THE BRINK OF THE COMFORT ZONE

by Beth Lisick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 2008

Funny, perceptive and surprisingly open-hearted under the cynicism.

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A delightful, Plimptonesque exercise in immersive journalism exploring the strange world of “self-help.”

Lisick (Everybody into the Pool: True Tales, 2005, etc.) devoted a year to various gurus in an attempt to self-actualize. She endeavored to become a Highly Effective Person under the auspices of Stephen Covey, to fortify her soul with Jack Canfield’s Chicken Soup, to get fit with Richard Simmons on a cruise ship, to straighten out her perilous finances with Suze Orman, to consistently discipline her young son with Thomas Phelan’s 1-2-3 Magic method, to figure out John Gray’s Mars/Venus gender dichotomy, and generally to live a better, happier life. It is to the reader’s great benefit that Lisick is: 1) a mess, 2) cynical and horrified of cheesiness, and C) effortlessly funny. Her visualizations didn’t go right, she didn’t have the right clothes for the ghastly seminars and on Simmons’s cruise she got high and made inappropriate advances to a surly young musician accompanying his mother. Lisick makes keen use of comic detail, as when she charts the deflation of Simmons’s hair over the course of the cruise. She is tough on the well-paid experts, but fair, sincerely laboring to suspend her skepticism and game to put their advice into action. Some of it works: A home-organization expert helps Lisick’s family emerge from their chaotic clutter, and Phelan’s discipline strategy tames her truculent toddler. But of course the book is funniest when things don’t go so well. The author’s revulsion over Gray’s retrograde sexual stereotypes (and disturbingly smooth, buffed appearance) is palpable and highly amusing. Her articulate hatred of the anodyne platitudes in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way provides a tonic for anyone dismayed by fuzzy New Age smugness. None of that from Lisick, who is sharp, irreverent and endearingly screwed-up. Her experiment may not have solved all of her problems, but she got an enjoyable book out of it.

Funny, perceptive and surprisingly open-hearted under the cynicism.