How to Retire the Cheapskate Way: The Ultimate Cheapskate's Guide to a Better, Earlier, Happier Retirement - Softcover

Yeager, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307956423 ISBN 13: 9780307956422

Verlag: Crown, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Unlike most retirement planning and lifestyle books that focus on investing – or at the other end of the spectrum, on how to get the senior discount on a Grand Slam Breakfast at Denny’s –  this new book from Jeff Yeager, America’s favorite cheapskate,  makes the compelling case that you can have a joyous, worry-free retirement by merely spending smart and focusing on what you truly want and expect out of retirement. 

Combining Yeager’s loveable humor and offbeat anecdotes that have garnered him an ever-growing fan base, How to Retire the Cheapskate Way shares with readers hundreds of retirement secrets and tips, including:

·How to Simple-size Your Way to  a Better Retirement

·The 20 Secret Cheapskate Principles for Retiring Comfortably on Less...Maybe Even on Social Security Alone

·How to Survive the Medical Maelstrom (without resorting to DIY surgery at home)

·Plus Dozens of Fun Ways to Both Earn a Little Extra Income During Retirement and Painlessly Cut Your Expenses

Yeager, who serves as the official “Savings Expert” for AARP and its 40+ million members, weaves together both everyday practical tips and life-changing financial strategies with the real life stories of frugal retirees  as well as people of all ages who are working toward a better, earlier, happier retirement The Cheapskate Way.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JEFF YEAGER is the author of The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches, The Cheapskate Next Door, and Don't Throw That Away!. He has appeared as a guest correspondent on NBC’s Today Show and Discovery’s Planet Green network. He is also the author of the popular blog The Green Cheapskate, www.TheDailyGreen.com. Visit him at www.UltimateCheapskate.com.

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Who Says You Can’t Afford to Retire? Just Go Ask a Cheapskate

Everything we’d ever read or been told about retirement planning and investing seemed to be a lie, or at least wasn’t working out for us. It wasn’t until we really started looking at the spending side of our finances that we began to feel like retirement was once again something within our reach . . . something we could actually control. We realized that we could simplify our lives and retire very happily on less money than we ever thought possible.

--Frugal retirees Doris and Chuck Wye

Whether your goal is to retire early or simply enjoy retirement more, this book will show you how the key to realizing your retirement dreams is more about how--and how much--you spend than it is about complicated investment schemes or even the size of your retirement nest egg.

That should be a refreshing message to many Americans today: Since the start of the Great Recession in 2008, Americans have lost more than $2 trillion in retirement savings--that’s more than a third of their prerecession savings--not including the drop in the value of their homes. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, nearly 60 percent of those surveyed had changed their retirement plans because of the economic downturn. Record numbers of Americans now say they’ll need to work longer than planned or believe that they may never be able to afford retirement.

Not so fast, say my happily retired cheapskate friends, as well as other masters of smart spending who are still working toward their dream retirements, with their retirement plans unaltered by the economic meltdown going on around them. This book contains their retirement blueprints, their tried-and-true plans for retiring the cheapskate way.

In the pages ahead, you’ll meet some of my fellow “cheapskates,” and I don’t use that term in a pejorative sense. If you prefer, call us “frugal,” “thrifty,” or even just “smart consumers.” In my own lexicon, being a “cheapskate” is a virtue, not a vice. It’s not about being greedy or dishonest, and it’s not about sacrifice or deprivation. It’s all about choices--deciding what’s really important in your life (particularly those things that come without a price tag) and skipping the rest. I honestly believe that most Americans--not all, but most--would be happier, and the quality of their lives would actually increase, if only they would spend and consume less.

So, to me, a “cheapskate” is the polar opposite of a “conspicuous consumer.” Cheapskates are too self-confident--and frankly too smart--to spend money on things they don’t need, and probably don’t even want, just to impress others. Cheapskates believe that their time here on earth is too precious to waste it chasing after more money and more stuff than what they really need. And, as you’ll see, many of them have decided they really don’t “need” that much to be happy.

At age fifty-four, I’ve been a practicing cheapskate most of my adult life, although I’ve fallen off the wagon a few times along the way. Having grown up in the rural Midwest, in a family that viewed spending money as an option of last resort, I was raised in a culture that knew the value of a dollar and placed a premium on thrift and frugality. Heck, we were proud of our ability to pinch a penny until Lincoln cried. In fact, rumor has it that the Yeager family crest bears the inscription “Spartium Homo Erectus,” which, of course, is Latin for “Cheapskate Who Stands on Two Feet.”

We were by no means poor. But with two sets of grandparents hardened by living through the Great Depression and loving parents who taught us that many of the best things in life truly are free, I learned the value of “thriftcraft” at a young age. It’s little wonder that, with my upbringing, for a career I settled in the nonprofit sector--where stretching a buck is a job requirement--and spent twenty-five years as a CEO and fund-raiser for a number of national nonprofit organizations in Washington, DC.

Because I practice what I preach when it comes to frugal living and smart money management, at the age of forty seven I was able to “functionally retire,” or--as I’ll talk more about later--become “selfishly employed.” Selfish employment is when you have at least enough financial security and independence to be able to do whatever the heck you want to do for a living, regardless of how much you might, or might not, earn from doing it. So that’s when I became the Ultimate Cheapskate and started writing about money (and, specifically, spending less of it!), based on my own life experiences and the financial lessons I’d learned as a nonprofit manager.

That was seven years and three books ago, and during that time I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic of retirement and talking with a great many of my Miser Advisers about it as well. Miser Advisers? Oh, those are fellow frugal folks living all around the world who keep me supplied with tips, stories, and ideas about enjoying life more by spending less--my sort of “bargain-basement brain trust.” You’ll meet some of them shortly.

What occurred to me was that we cheapskates have some rather different views and approaches to retirement from those of most people, just as we do on lots of things in life . . . well, at least those things involving money. While no two cheapskates are alike--nor are their visions or plans for retirement--I found in my conversations and research that many of us share certain common strategies when it comes to achieving our retirement dreams, whatever they may be. I found that there really is a “cheapskate way to retire better, earlier, and happier.” Particularly in light of the impact the current economy is having on most people’s retirement plans, I thought that sharing what I’ve learned on the topic in this book might help people gain a new, more positive perspective on their own retirements.

Because I don’t write traditional personal finance books, I always feel compelled to give readers a few words of advance warning about what to expect. As I often say: I don’t write books about how to get rich; I write books about how to get happy, perhaps with what you already have. That seems to me to be the real key to enjoying life, particularly when it comes to enjoying retirement, when many will be living on a fixed income.

So by way of warning, if you’re looking for a book about retirement investing--particularly magical ways to hatch an ostrich-size retirement nest egg overnight without working or planning for it--this isn’t that book. The good news is, most books written about retirement focus almost exclusively on investing, so go pick up one of those books instead. Of course, these days, a lot of those tomes should be reclassified from nonfiction to fiction, given the experience of countless folks like Doris and Chuck Wye, who followed their advice like a rooster chasing a hen around the barnyard, and with a similar outcome. That’s right, they got screwed.

No, while this book offers lots of practical advice on how it’s possible to free up money you didn’t think you could and thereby have more to set aside for retirement, other than a few anecdotal stories about how different cheapskates have in their own lives invested their retirement nest eggs, this is not a book about investing. This is a book about what I believe is the more important side of personal finance and retirement planning: the spending side.

Few people have...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Crown
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0307956423
• ISBN 13: 9780307956422
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar