Securing a Retirement Income for Life: Strategies for Managing, Protecting and Preserving Your Wealth, 2nd Edition

How much you need to finance your retirement depends on how well you want to live and the expected length of your retirement life. Do you want to maintain or increase your standard of living? Do you want to start a new business, provide financial help to family members or engage in a new hobby or activity? How much you need to accumulate depends on the lifestyle you envision.

Securing a Retirement Income for Life will show you how much you need to accumulate to provide a retirement income for life and how to implement the very best strategies for managing, protecting and preserving your wealth. The interactive nature of this new book will show you how to go about planning to meet your retirement needs and objectives and how best to prepare for uncertainties when the future is unknown.

For many people, retirement may represent the longest stage of their life. It is a time when they can look forward to a whole new range of exciting challenges and activities - to experience their own vision - with the same passion, excitement and sense of accomplishment they had during the first part of their life. Along with a much longer life, however, comes more complex and much more expensive financial challenges. This book will help you prepare for the many challenges and uncertainties that lie ahead as you approach retirement and during your retirement years, such as the potential risk of outliving your money.

The shift away from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans is a trend that has revolutionized retirement planning by placing more of the responsibility for saving on the individual. Since fewer retirees in the future can expect to receive a steady stream of income from employer provided defined benefit plans, individuals will have to rely more on their own resources for a much higher percentage of their retirement income.

According to author and Certified Financial Planner practitioner, Bill Griffith, Jr., CFP, "people are faced with having to make serious decisions about how to manage their company retirement plan, how much to contribute, how to invest their money and what to do with their vested balance after they retire." "They need to have a plan based on clear and accurate information to help them make decisions about when to retire, how long they can expect to live in retirement, how much they need to accumulate and how to manage their funds throughout their retirement years."

The investment needed to finance retirement depends on an accurate forecast of expenditures and rate of return assumptions well into the future. The uncertainty of traditional return assumptions and rising healthcare costs are both significant risks in retirement and can have a tremendous impact on retirement savings and security. Decisions about when to retire, how long you can expect to live in retirement and how much you need to accumulate are complicated by an ever changing set of circumstances. Throughout this book, the author emphasizes a process-driven approach for facing these and other critical issues in retirement. You will learn about the proper methods for managing retirement funds and how to protect against the risk of funding long-term liabilities.

Meeting financial obligations through an investment-based approach is only one part of the process. Securing a Retirement Income for Life will show you how to use a combination of methods to assure that your retirement income will last for life.

Bill Griffith and "Zippy" are San Francisco icons, but Griffith now lives in Connecticut with his wife, the cartoonist Diane Noomin. He continues to create "Zippy