A readable and invaluably thorough resource for understanding retirement finances.
A comprehensive guide offers advice on preparing for retirement.
Pfau begins his exhaustive breakdown of retirement planning with a note of caution for prospective retirees about to enter the labyrinthine jungle of United States federal regulations: Patience and information are the only surefire ways to make it through. “Fight the impatience that could lead you to choose short-term expediencies carrying greater long-term costs,” he warns, and his book is designed as the ultimate weapon in that fight. The author takes readers through every aspect of constructing their retirement’s financial superstructure, balancing the realities, and preparing for the unexpected. Everything from stock market speculation to the pluses and minuses of annuities to life and long-term-care insurance are discussed in great detail. Pfau acknowledges that there are many competing schools of thought on all of these issues, and he bases his own framework on the fact that different people approach their retirement finances in different ways. Some place their top priority on dependability, while others want more flexibility. As the manual explains the author’s approach, it is often seriously technical, full of thorny terminology and many charts and graphs, as befits the complexity of the subject. Readers are given clear but extremely in-depth instructions on how to navigate the intricacies of Medicare, for instance (a lack of understanding of the rules, Pfau writes, “can lead to gaps in coverage, overpayment on services or coverage, and unanticipated outcomes”). And in every section, readers are urged to do the “legwork” of discovering their options. The ultimate goal is to create a sufficient and sustainable retirement portfolio. Although the sheer amount of granular detail the author brings to the subject can seem daunting, the clarity of his explanations will smoothly carry even financially illiterate readers along.
A readable and invaluably thorough resource for understanding retirement finances.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-945640-09-4
Page Count: 474
Publisher: Retirement Researcher Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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