A useful book that wraps a familiar financial topic in a slightly different (vacation) package.
A financial planner positions retirement as the “ultimate vacation” and offers related advice in this debut work.
Carver, the founder and head of a financial services firm, puts an unusual spin on the idea of one’s retirement years by suggesting that “you have to put the same amount of effort planning for them as you would for a vacation.” This analogy effectively anchors the book’s content, which is mostly standard fare for an otherwise financially focused retirement guide; the author covers such oft-discussed areas as assessing one’s finances, budgeting, and managing debt. Things get a bit more interesting, though, when he proposes a process that his firm calls “personal vision planning,” which involves “establishing a clear, actionable vision for your retirement by establishing where you want to go and why.” This self-assessment section is perhaps the most valuable in that it offers solid, specific financial guidance for funding one’s retirement; also worthwhile are the author’s tips on how to minimize expenses in the years leading up to it. The book addresses various types of insurance, how to generate income during retirement, and when to collect Social Security benefits. A chapter on the trendy “FIRE” (“Financial Independence, Retire Early”) movement is included, as well; Carver discusses the pros and cons of the strategy and concludes that it’s rather risky for most. Although the author offers a comprehensive chapter on selecting a financial adviser, he does eventually gravitate toward a sales pitch for his own firm; that said, his authoritative counsel is generally objective in tone. Appendices contain additional substantive materials, including a goal-determining exercise, a monthly expense worksheet, a retirement planning sheet, a comparison chart of different types of life insurance, and a description of key estate-planning documents. In keeping with the “vacation” theme, there are sidebars labeled “Vacation Planning Checklist” and “Avoiding Costly Road Hazards”; this conceit starts to wear a bit thin after a while, but the book remains neatly organized and cohesive throughout.
A useful book that wraps a familiar financial topic in a slightly different (vacation) package.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0648-7
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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