Retirement is Recess for Grown-Ups: When the Bell Rings Will You be Ready?

Who says retirement planning has to be complicated or boring? Preparing for what could be a three-to-four-decade period of financial independence can feel exhilarating and daunting at the same time. In this book, retired financial planner and author Jim Collier uses his thirty-plus years of experience, humor, and a special gift for making complex topics easy to understand, and in the process, he helps educate you about the absolute necessity to plan for your financial future today. “No one, including your employer or the federal government, is contributing to a GoFundMe retirement account for your benefit without your knowledge.” Retirement Is Recess for Grown-Ups blends both traditional and contemporary retirement planning strategies in an easy-to-follow format for those who aspire to achieve the new-era, multidecade retirement lifestyle. The book offers a design for living for those who may want periods of retirement along with reemployment as well as those who seek a permanent lifetime recess from work. Whichever lifestyle you choose, today’s retirement hopefuls must take charge of their financial futures if they wish to re-create their lives and enjoy the lavish benefits of financial freedom—doing what they want, whenever they want, for as long as they want. This book defines the unique challenges facing today’s retirement hopefuls and outlines actions to successfully launch retirement dreams and keep them afloat on the sea of longevity. Homework assignments include the following: • Creating You Vision™—a lifestyle-planning exercise designed to help you discover your unique relevance in seven life facets of a multi-decade retirement. Don’t leave work without this. • Completing a simple but revealing assessment of Retirement Income Security Killers™ (RISK). This exercise serves to provide a preemptive strike on potential RISKs before they threaten your financial independence. • Evaluating a financial adviser using the seven Cs—characteristics of an ideal retirement-planning fiduciary. A sixty-page companion, Retirement Recess Homework/Exercise Workbook, is available free as a download for those who purchase this book. The workbook has a $12.95 value. Visit www.retirementrecess.com for details. You can’t go to recess until your homework is finished. When the bell rings, will you be ready?

Welcome, readers.
It is my pleasure to offer my new book, Retirement Is Recess for Grown-Ups, to you. It is my hope that after reading it through and completing the recommended homework assignments in the free companion workbook, you will feel more confident about your retirement-planning endeavors. I began writing this book over ten years ago and made many revisions along the way due to the rapidly changing landscape of the lifestyle we call retirement. Over that time, average life expectancy continued to increase, pensions continued to disappear, and expectations about living more dynamic lifestyles than previous generations continued to evolve. I wanted to author a book that would capture all these evolving trends and would help the reader to better prepare for them.  The result is a book that includes discussions of both the most current financial planning elements of retirement planning and the necessary lessons for creating a retirement lifestyle plan that is personally tailored to the participant.
Why I wrote this bookDuring my thirty-two-year career as a client-facing financial adviser, I noticed that many authors who wrote and published books on the topic of retirement preparation often had ulterior motives. The most common was disguising infomercials for their own businesses as how-to-retire books, hoping to secure new client relationships from readers. When doing this, the authors tended to demonstrate a bias while trying to convince readers why the authors' ways of conducting business were the best ways for the reader to proceed. That strategy changes the tone of the message from being open and educational in nature to a sales pitch to secure new client relationships. The how-to book suddenly becomes a "why you should hire me/us" book. This can be disappointing for those who thought they bought an educational book but ended up with a book of solicitations. Another characteristic found in some published retirement-planning books is the offering of specific investment advice to the reading public. I believe this practice is dangerous for a very important reason: The specific advice given may be totally appropriate for one person and totally inappropriate for the next. As a reader, how do you know which one you are? More importantly, how does the author know which reader is a qualified candidate for a specific recommendation and which is not? My belief is that you should never take specific investment advice from anyone who does not know you and your unique situation personally.  
Why this book is different In addition to being written from my actual experience as a retirement planning professional, Retirement Is Recess for Grown-Ups has no hidden agenda or specific investment advice. Instead, it provides many easy-to-follow lessons and recommended homework assignments proven to better prepare you for what could be a retirement-recess period greater than all the years you have worked for a living.   It is my sincere hope that as you read Retirement Is Recess for Grown-Ups, you will do the following:

• Inspire and encourage the student inside you to always be open to learn new things. Knowledge provides power to change the things you can.                                                 
• Perspire as you sweat the risks that can threaten your financial well-being and learn how to identify and mitigate them before and not after they impact your financial freedom and retirement-recess playtime.                                                                            
• Conspire, if applicable, to locate, vet, interview, and hire a retirement planning professional who meets the ideals of a lifetime financial adviser described within.          
• Retire successfully on your terms and on your time.  

Best wishes for an amazing retirement-recess experience. I hope to see you on the playground soon! 
 
Jim Collier
Author