John H. Graves

This book was a lot better than I had anticipated. Whereas many books in this genre of retirement planning are vague, and subscribe to the conventional wisdom of just purchasing an index fund, the author does an excellent job in covering many of the bases - creating your own stock portfolio, especially with dividend-paying stocks; the advantage of bonds and the disadvantages of bond mutual funds; master limited partnerships, etc. Obviously in a book of this size it's impossible to give detailed, or personal, advice, but Graves does a creditable job. Highly recommended for all - not just those about to retire.… (meer)

I wish I'd known this was aimed at a person about to retire. I'm in my mid-thirties and was hoping to find ways to adequately prepare for retirement, rather than reaching the age and discovering I should have done things differently. With that said, it does a decent job of covering the basics, from stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, annuities, etc. In spite of the title, he begins hedging about actually being able to reliably make 7%, saying it's the high end and an ideal. It makes the title come across as misleading. The writing was dry, and the author frequently wrote odd phrases that seemed out of place. I noticed them enough to become a distraction. In short the book has good information, but nothing that I haven't read elsewhere (I've read heavily in the investing and personal finance category). If you're about to retire and haven't read anything, this might be a good fit, otherwise I'd look elsewhere.… (meer)

The author does a great review of the details of some financial products. You probably don't get that level of detail elsewhere. However, I didn't really know before getting the book that it was so heavily slanted towards Baby Boomers. The financial advice is primarily geared towards those within a few years of retirement, and the language of the book often says "we" when referring to boomers. While the information in the book seems solid, that one quirk pretty much turns me off. I've got a few decades yet before I retire and my generation will certainly not be considered boomers. Not to mention that advice for us will be quite different.… (meer)