KIRKUS REVIEW
The comprehensive tax revision signed into law in August has made previously-written retirement guides obsolete--and this one misses a few tricks on its own. As nearly everyone is now aware, the new law extends the benefits of individual retirement accounts to the populace at large and doubles (to $15,000 a year) the deductible contributions that can be made to Keogh Plans by the self-employed. Also liberalized are the rules governing estate and gift taxes, capital gains, and real property depreciation. Here, the authors furnish largely unexceptionable (if somewhat generalized) advice on determining whether retirement income will be sufficient to maintain living standards in an inflationary environment; on securing least-cost life insurance coverage; and on programming retirement plans at various stages of one's working career. They also provide brief, pro-and-con reviews of investment possibilities that can provide retirement nest eggs: certificates of deposit, US Government securities, municipal bonds, discounted corporate obligations, common and preferred stock, et al. Conspicuous by their absence, however, are annuity contracts--offered by legal-reserve life insurance companies to safeguard buyers against living too long (rather than dying too soon) by guaranteeing specified income payments at regular intervals in the future. Also missing is any mention of unit trusts. And the investment material, too, does not take into account newly-legislated tax breaks. A dispensable manual, in sum, overtaken by events.