How to Retire with Enough Money: And How to Know What Enough Is by Teresa Ghilarducci
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It was an okay book, not something I will want to read again though.
The book's premise revolves around how to plan for retirement. As an early 30-something year old, why am I planning for retirement as early as now? Surely I can do this later on when I'm old(er) and wiser?
The thing is, myself and Peter are aiming to become Financially Independent as soon as we can, just so we can be "retired" and we can use that spare time in pursuing other interests, like traveling the world and building businesses that we are passionate about. So, picking up this book is adding to my agenda of learning more about retirement, and properly preparing for it.
First off, this book is catered to the US setting - so, sorry if you live in another region, you may not be able to relate much to the tips, such as:
1. Putting the maximum yearly in your 401k.
2. Maximizing your contributions to IRA (if you don't have a 401K)
3. Investing in low-fee funds (hello Vanguard)
4. Hacking away at your debt (in our case, we only have a mortgage which we are starting to hack away slowly by putting a quarter of our side hustle money in it)
5. Having an emergency fund of at least 3 months to tide you over (in our case, we are saving 6 months of our home emergency fund as a couple. I already have my own personal emergency fund, and we're working on Peter's) - having an emergency fund is a lifesaver!
6. Saving for a car as early as now - because where we live (Jacksonville, FL), it's almost impossible for us to get anywhere without a car. We are going to do the bicycle route eventually when our workplace moves closer to our home, but I'll need to learn how to cycle first (yes, I don't know how to bike) and we'll also need to buy bikes, which is an additional expense.
7. Being more frugal and only living within our means
While those tips seem great, we've already been putting them into action for the past two years, so I'm not sure how the book changed my mind or convinced me to do a change in lifestyle otherwise.
However, the book is fairly thin and is a quick read, so might be worth perusing over.
I'd give this book 3/5 stars because it may help other people, but I for one, don't find it so useful or life changing to entail a 5/5 stars.
The book was borrowed from my local library (Jacksonville Public Library)
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