The Motley Fool's Money After 40: Building Wealth for a Better Life - Softcover

Gardner, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743284828 ISBN 13: 9780743284820

Verlag: Touchstone, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

With their famous wit, seasoned advice, and impeccable business savvy, the bestselling financial duo explains how to build wealth and security -- and how to afford anything you want when the work is done.

The Motley Fool's Money After 40 is for anyone who wants a stable future free from financial anxiety. You will learn how to fortify your portfolio to weather any economic climate and live the life you want regardless of the market's peaks and valleys.

Applying the principles of commonsense money management, David and Tom Gardner's goal is to help you determine what you will need and want when you retire and to guide you in creating realistic financial goals. From owning the right size home to affording sufficient health care coverage, from sending kids to college to taking that exotic vacation, The Motley Fool's Money After 40 explains how to:

• Organize your finances to preserve the funds you already have
• Master estate planning
• Determine whether you can turn a hobby into a small business
• Finance your children's education and care for aging parents
• Live a healthy, productive life free from fiscal anxiety

Comprehensive and amusing, The Motley Fool's Money After 40 is a one-stop financial guidebook for gilding the golden years.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

David Gardner learned from his father how to invest, and with his brother, Tom, started The Motley Fool in 1993 with a mission to educate, amuse, and enrich. Today, the Fool works to empower individual investors, reaching millions every month through its website, premium services, podcasts, radio show, newspaper column, and more. With Tom they have coauthored several books, including You Have More Than You Think, Rule Breakers, Rule Makers, and The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens.

Tom Gardner learned from his father how to invest, and with his brother, David, started The Motley Fool in 1993 with a mission to educate, amuse, and enrich. Today, the Fool works to empower individual investors, reaching millions every month through its website, premium services, podcasts, radio show, newspaper column, and more. With David they have coauthored several books, including You Have More Than You Think, Rule Breakers, Rule Makers, and The Motley Fool Investment Guide for Teens.

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Chapter One: Why Retire?

What is precious is never to forget

The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs

Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;

Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,

Nor its grave evening demand for love;

Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother

With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

-- Stephen Spender

You don't actually want to retire, do you?

Why?

Just giving up? Or planning to walk away and play with your own toys?

Is it that you're trying to get somewhere or trying to escape where you've been?

You don't actually want to retire, do you?

Listen to what happened to our grandfathers.

A Tale of Two Grandfathers

Our grandfathers were both accomplished and risk-loving entrepreneurs, one in Pennsylvania, the other in Washington, D.C.

Early last century, our Pennsylvania grandfather flew all around the North (occasionally the Great White North) selling saws. He sold his company, the modern-day DeWalt, to AMF in 1949. AMF eventually sold its DeWalt division to Black & Decker, where it remains a treasured brand. He retired at fifty-two. He loved investing and continued to do so successfully but never took another job in his life (he did treat the card game of bridge like a job, becoming a master before he died).

Our Washington, D.C., grandfather played football at Georgetown University, started his own insurance company after college, eventually bought a minority ownership in the Washington Senators baseball team (later the Minnesota Twins), and continued to go to the office every day until at the age of ninety, when his legs wouldn't take him anymore. He never intended to retire.

Did he need to go down to that office every day until the age of ninety? No.

And yes.

He probably did need to, because he loved to. He was a pas-

sionate man with a true Irish temper, and wanting was needing for him.

Both of these men made great impressions on us. But one of them made his impression over the first six years of our lives: Our early-retired Pennsylvania grandfather died relatively young, at the age of seventy-two. We cherish memories of his rascal's grin and propensity for secretly slipping us gumdrops minutes before supper was served. Sad to say, though, that's where the recollections end; we see him from afar, ever with the eyes of little boys.

By contrast, our Washington, D.C., grandfather charmed, influenced, and occasionally scared the dickens out of us for the first thirty-five years of our lives, leaving indelible marks until his eventual death in 2001 at the age of ninety-eight. One of those indelible marks was his lifelong lesson -- born out of and borne out by his longevity -- to stay active and engaged in the deeds of this world.

He who did not retire, never thinking to do so, died at ninety-eight.

God bless them both.

What Are You Living For?

We're certainly not here to suggest one family's recent history proves that working long equals living long. Leaving the working world does not automatically reduce one's life expectancy! That said, we tell the story because we do believe you increase your chances for extended happiness with the approach you take to the future when you're fifty-six or sixty-six -- every bit as much as twenty-six or sixteen!

So we should reframe our thinking.

That's a necessity, given the regrettable but pervasive associations that the word "retirement" has in our society. Most people, of course, use it to refer to those days after the conclusion of formal full-time work: "Congratulations to Bob, who is retiring today following thirty-seven years of postal delivery" -- or "To Susan, who is retiring after two decades of leading this august organization."

Do we really want to say this? Because here's the way it comes out: "So long, Susan," we think -- bye-bye, Bob. "Retirement" carries heavy baggage, with its implications of departure and resignation. Standing there with a drink in your hand lifted for a retirement toast, it's hard not to think, "Their worthwhile days, their recorded life and times, are over." Do Susan and Bob want to be written off this way?

They probably don't think anything of it. Given the constant use of this word "retire" -- which we'll avoid using ourselves as much as possible in this book -- Bob and Susan are probably subconsciously falling into the same thinking, which is what happens when you're constantly exposed to a given word and its underlying concept without questioning its claims on you.

Listen, retirement is exactly what we should be trying to avoid in our lives, unless we're talking about the ultimate retirement. Up until that point, we should focus on the present and the future, asking what more we can learn, who else to help, how better to live day to day, all the questions that have always been asked and answered by human beings looking to improve their lots.

So let's please agree not to refer to any period of our lives as "retirement." We should almost always shoot for its exact opposite: engagement. Engagement will make you forget to ask yourself, "What are you retiring from?" Engagement asks the very much more relevant and interesting question: "What are you living for?"

This is a fine question for so many people to ask at (more) frequent intervals of their lives; your harried authors are again reminded of this even as we write and suggest it. The great thing about heading toward the second half of your life is that not only are you old enough to recognize the importance of asking "What am I living for?," but you're also young enough to fully exploit all of the opportunities wrapped up in the answers.

What are you living for?

If you've been traversing these past few decades asking yourself when you will retire, replace any fantasies of escape with something much better: the answers to that key question. Because another synonym for "retire" is "withdraw" -- which provides the perfect play on words when we recognize that withdrawal is exactly the condition so often faced by those who leave the working world only to discover that disengaging from its society can be a hollow experience.

Why retire?

For Further Thinking

Boxer George Foreman on why he came out of retirement:

Tom: After a ten-year retirement, you decided to fight again. You came back in 1987. Why did you come out of retirement?

George Foreman: For ten years I stood as an evangelist. I had this dynamic experience back in '77 after my last boxing match as "The George Foreman." I lost. I had a religious experience in the dressing room. I had a vision, and in a split second I was dead and alive again. On my hands and on my forehead, I started screaming because I saw blood. "Jesus Christ has come alive in me!" Of course, they rushed me to the emergency room. (Laughter.) But I will never forget that experience, to have a vision of death and life again. And I had a second chance to live. It changed me. For ten years I couldn't even shadowbox. But something happened. I got broke. I wish I had been a golfer, believe me. But because I was a boxer, that was my only profession, and I had to come back. Of course, the high point was to regain the title in 1994, [when I] defeated Michael Moore. It was unbelievable, because people tell you, look, you are a middle-aged man."

David: How old were you then, George?

Foreman: I was forty-five years old. The oldest man to ever become heavyweight champ of the world.

David: Have you ever thought about breaking that record?

Foreman: I do. I think...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Touchstone
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0743284828
• ISBN 13: 9780743284820
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; AA Utrecht; 3584; Niederlande