For Seniors

What Color Is Your Parachute? for Retirement: Planning Now for the Life You Want

Description

For more than 35 years, WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE? has guided millions of job-hunters to find satisfying careers. Now, PARACHUTE FOR RETIREMENT will help them plan for the next stage of life. Going beyond financial planning, Richard N. Bolles and retirement expert John E. Nelson tackle readiness in terms of money, health, and happiness, using the latest research from economics, medicine, and psychology. PARACHUTE FOR RETIREMENT will inspire readers to take the helm of their retirement destinies, while fulfilling their lifelong goals, passions, and dreams.

Reviews

Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2010-05-17
Summary: "Disappointing"

The text was written in a flippant style, which detracted from the points the authors were trying to make. I think a more professional, shorter version would be more helpful

---

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-03-25
Summary: "Good book becoming even better"

I am a psychologist who teaches classes on happiness, positive psychology and retirement well-being. People who attend wish to think about how to "end well"; develop a life they enjoy and perhaps even leave a legacy of leaving the world a better place than he or she found it. I have read practically every retirement planning and advice book published since 2005.

What I liked about this book, is by using Martin E. Seligman's signature strengths, one can develop criteria for choosing among all the possible activities. Research has shown that this increases a person's happiness. Now in the revised version there will be a tool to help you focus in on your values. The key to choosing satisfying retirement activities, in my opinion is finding the sweet spot between doing something you value that uses your signature strengths.

I have to disclose that I know the author and we test drove some of the ideas at a workshop through the Wisconsin Alumni Association. Everyone of the people attending said they would recommend the program and they found it very useful.

Having been retired since 2005, I have some personal experience with this life phase. Retirement is a cycle of transitions, change and being responsible for setting your own agenda and making choices. It is very easy to get busy, but difficult to design a life you find deeply satisfying. John E. Nelson's goal is to give people tools to achieve increased satisfaction with their choices. I would recommend getting the new version when it comes out.

---

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-08-14
Summary: "Makes you think"

This book reminds me of a text book with lab excercises. It is an easy read and the excercises are fun. I haven't quite finished it but as I read chapter to chapter it makes me think of things that I had not really considered. I will read it again so that more will sink in. I hope to retire within a year.

---

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-06-25
Summary: "A Mild Rebuttal to George Fulmore's Review"


Mr. Fulmore has written such an unpleasant review that I might have skipped the book, if I hadn't actually read it already. Skipping this book would have been a mistake, though.

Like Mr. Fulmore, I read and review a lot of retirement-related books (though not, usually, for Amazon). I have also taken the time to read some of Mr. Fulmore's other reviews. He is clearly a smart and well-read man, but his preferences are somewhat idiosyncratic. It bothers him when authors cover the same ground that a lot of other books cover -- a legitimate beef from someone who reads about retirement as a hobby.

But if you are one of the 99.9% of people who are not going to read a whole shelf of retirement books, and perhaps will read only one, this is a very good one to read -- partly BECAUSE it covers the essential ground covered in most other good books on the subject.

Its most conspicuous virtue, though, is its balance. John Nelson has an approach to retirement that is explicitly, deliberately balanced -- because a life that is meaningful and rewarding should itself be balanced. Nelson believes, and builds his book upon the idea that, a good life requires a balance of money, health, and happiness. More importantly, he tells you how to do it. This is important.

Nelson deals with these topics in sufficient breadth so that you legitimately feel that the ground is being covered, and with enough specificity so that you walk away with ideas you can really use. This is no small feat, and though it is clear (and I don't mean this at all facetiously) Mr. Fulmore doesn't need this kind of information, chances are that YOU do.

I might also mention that it is one of Mr. Fulmore's personal quirks that he doesn't like to hear about working in retirement (he disses it in his other reviews, too). Such talk does seem paradoxical, but it makes perfect sense. Most people retire with the idea that they will relax and enjoy themselves the rest of their lives. This often turns out to be self-defeating, though, because doing something productive is an important part of most people's lives, and if it isn't "work," it's something that often closely resembles it, even in retirement. There is certainly nothing wrong with retiring from a career job that has become stressful or otherwise too much, and (perhaps after some time off) taking on a new job that is different and rewarding. The fact that life might deal us some financial reverses and a job can help compensate for that, is a plus, but often is not the main reason retired people go back to some kind of gainful employment.

Is this the best book on retirement you could get? Not if you're George Fulmore. But on the theory that you are someone else, it just might be your best bet. Retirement is a field crowded with many worthy books, some of them very strong on particular aspects of retirement. But if you want a BALANCED book, that will help you create and maintain a BALANCED retirement, I recommend John Nelson's book to you.

---

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-03-05
Summary: "Prioritizing Grid"

For those who have struggled, as I have, with the manual version of Richard Bolles' Prioritizing Grid, there is a web version, published with Bolles' permission, at: www.GroundOfYourOwnChoosing.com.