What Color Is Your Parachute? for Retirement, Second Edition: Planning a Prosperous, Healthy, and Happy Future (What Color Is Your Parachute? for Retirement: Planning Now for the) - Softcover

Nelson, John E.; Bolles, Richard N.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 158008205X ISBN 13: 9781580082051

Publisher: Ten Speed Press, 2010

Synopsis

Plan Now for the Life You Want

Today’s economic realities have reset our expectations of what retirement is, yet there’s still the promise for what it can be: a life stage filled with more freedom and potential than ever before. Given the new normal, how do you plan for a future filled with prosperity, health, and happiness? As a companion to What Color Is Your Parachute?, the world’s best-selling career book, What Color Is Your Parachute? for Retirement offers both a holistic, big-picture look at these years as well as practical tools and exercises to help you build a life full of security, vitality, and community.

This second edition contains updates throughout, including a section on Social Security, an in-depth exercise on values and how they inform your retirement map, and the one-of-a-kind resource for organizing the sea of information on finances and mental and physical health: the Retirement Well-Being Profile. More than a guide on where to live, how to stay active, or which investments to choose, What Color Is Your Parachute? for Retirement helps you develop a detailed picture of your ideal retirement, so that—whether you’re planning retirement or are there already—you can take a comprehensive approach to make the most of these vital years.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

You may be wondering what's new in this revised edition of What Color Is Your Parachute? For Retirement.

First, you'll notice that it captures the continuing evolution of retirement as a life stage. Society is irrevocably remaking the old retirement into a new retirement--even though no one knows yet, for sure, what that will mean. This book helps you prepare for that momentous shift.

Second, you'll notice that this edition provides you with additional planning tools and techniques. Even with all the uncertainty, you'll still have more freedom in retirement, than in any other stage of life. This book helps you design, and take concrete steps toward, the life of your dreams.

The emergence of the new retirement has been hastened by economic turmoil. Rather than being an anomaly, the Great Recession is representative of a long-term shift. It wasn't simply a deviation, and then a return to normal. Instead, it reset the expectations for what normal is. (The new normal?)

How does all this affect you, and your plans for retirement well-being?

Financially, we've seen our retirement accounts and home values take the roller-coaster ride of a lifetime. Traditional pensions, which offer a guaranteed monthly benefit, have increasingly shown signs of inadequate employer funding. A similar problem on a larger scale is being faced by Social Security. The ballooning federal debt complicates long-term fixes for the Social Security and Medicare funding problems. At all levels, governments will be forced to re-think the assistance they provide to a rapidly growing number of older citizens. Uncertainty has prompted many to keep working as long as possible. Have we now come to view continued employment as an expected part of retirement?

Geographically, we've begun to think more deeply about where we really want to live. Rather than speculating on future home values, we're viewing our home and community as environments that support the life we want to live.

Medically, we know retirement is a life stage that brings increased interaction with the medical delivery system. But the system itself will be undergoing significant changes in the coming years--just when we'll personally need more care. One effect of economic stress is to drain our biological vitality, so it's even more important for each of us to build that up, directly.

Psychologically, the concept of retirement happiness as carefree decades of leisure is now out of date, and out of step. It's being replaced by our desire for a deeper sense of fulfillment, and engagement in life. From now on, we're more likely to recognize that our happiness is connected to our sense of community, than our level of consumption.

You can use this book to gain insight and make plans for all these areas of your life, because it's a unique kind of retirement book. It's not a finance book (although it is about prosperity). It's not a medical book (although it is about health). And it's not a psychology book (although it is about happiness).

Instead, you might think of this as an introductory course into all the aspects of designing your retirement life. Or if you've already studied retirement, you might think of this as your capstone course, pulling all of your studies together. Either way, you'll find this book to be both a philosophical, and a practical, resource.

Finally, here's a bit of heart-felt advice for you. The best way to read this book is to actually do the exercises, fill in the blanks, and write all over the pages. We provide you with a process for designing your retirement life. But you, Dear Reader, must provide the content. That's how you make it into your book, instead of our book. After all, it's your retirement, isn't it?

From the Back Cover:

Today's economic realities have reset our expectations of what retirement is, yet there's still the promise for what it can be: a life stage filled with more freedom and potential than ever before. Given the new normal, how do you plan for a future filled with prosperity, health, and happiness? As a companion to What Color Is Your Parachute?, the world's bestselling career book, What Color Is Your Parachute? for Retirement offers both a holistic, big picture look at these years as well as practical tools and exercises to help you build a life full of security, vitality, and community.

This second edition contains updates throughout, including a section on Social Security, an in depth exercise on values and how they inform your retirement map, and the one of a kind resource for organizing the sea of information on finances and mental and physical health: the Retirement Well-Being Profile. More than a guide on where to live, how to stay active, or which investments to choose, What Color Is Your Parachute? for Retirement helps you develop a detailed picture of your ideal retirement, so that--whether you're planning retirement or are there already--you can take a comprehensive approach to make the most of these vital years!

About this edition

• Publisher: Ten Speed Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 158008205X
• ISBN 13: 9781580082051
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288