How to Retire Early and Live Well With Less Than a Million Dollars

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Summary: How to Retire Early and Live Well withLess than a Million Do
Review: A book that could potentially save you a ton of money--as it would have done for me had I implemented its strategy six months sooner than I did. As the title suggests, it's an excellen book for retirement planning, but it's also an invaluable overall investment management tool. Explains the importance of, and steps involved in, a form of asset allocation far superior to the stocks/bonds formulae we're used to. Pakced with useful information yet still a very enjoyable read. The Epilogue alone ("Living through a Crash without Putting a Bullett through Your Head") is worth way more than the price of the book.

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Summary: Rehash of other retirement books
Review: I think this was a good book but I did not learn anything new compared to other books I've read on savings for retirement. It would be a good book for those who are still early in the learning process but could probably be skipped by those with a solid financial investment foundation.

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Summary: How to Retire Early and Live Well--Maybe Not Such a Sleeper
Review: I thought this book was a "sleeper" but I have found that many other people have already found it and had the same favorable experience that I have had. This is a great book! It is simple and no-nonsense. It takes you through what you need to retire in simple terms. Then, it helps you figure out how to get there. It gives you lots of options along the way and demonstrates its points with practical examples. I have read a lot of these kinds of books. This is one of the best!

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Summary: Best Retire Early Book of the Millennium
Review: I thought this book was great and I would highly reccommend it. No book can answer every question and this one is, of course, no exception. Edmunds has actually walked the talk and survived ups and downs in the markets. I think that his advice about investing in multiple non-correlated asset classes is actually quite sophisticated in a Modern Portfolio Theory sort of way. It reminded me of a practical version of the approach advocated by Larry Swedroe in "The only Guide to a winning investment strategy you'll ever need." Although US stocks have been the place to be for a while, they may decline or stagnate and diversification into foreign and developing country stocks and US real estate could once again outperform. In his Amazon review Dr. Grimmel compares Edmund's book unfavorably to several other books on early retirment- all of which have severe limitations of their own. Terhorst used only fixed income assets (Cashing in On the American Dream) in his initial retirement plan. That was a good move at the time, but he did get back into the stock market- after the book was written (I read about this on his web site). "Your Money or Your Life" by Dominguez and Robin is a great book about redefining needs and reducing expenses but the investment advice is wacky (government bonds alone + inflation doesn't matter.) All in all I think that Edmunds has written the best book on this subject.

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Summary: Finally! Someone got it right
Review: Just imagine: retirement advice based on the real life experience of someone who has made it work for himself over nearly 20 years. Mr. Edmunds doesn't tell you to accumulate millions before you retire. He doesn't define "diversification" in terms of products he hopes to sell you. And he won't give you answers in terms only an MBA could understand.

Instead, he identifies 13 different asset classes (yes, 13!) and tells you quite simply which ones work, which ones don't, and how to create a workable portfolio to meet your needs. He uses numerous examples of people with differing needs and objectives, and shows how to apply his principals in each case. (Surely, one of them must be similar to your own...) But the world of finance is not static, so Edmunds goes a step beyond: he gives a detailed method for evaluating that new asset class you just learned about, and determining if it fits your needs.

While no book has all the answers, this one comes mighty close. I recommend it without reservation whether you have retired already, plan to retire soon, or are dreaming of the far-off future. For most folks, retirement is a question of assets rather than age, and this book can bring that dream closer than you might think.

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Summary: Retire Early--Yes you can!
Review: Mr. Edmunds does a superb job at laying down a sound approach to a retire early plan. He speaks from personal experience which gives this book even more value. Edmund's target audience (for whom this book is written) appears to be a middle class worker probably in their mid-30's (or older) with 100K or more already stashed away. Although many readers might not fit this description, the principles laid out are well established but probably not reiterated enough in other literature (simple money making principles might not be glamorous, but, hey, they usually work in bull OR bearish markets). The only section that I found slow was real estate which happens to be the area I'm least educated in.

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Summary: Misleading title, but informative
Review: This book should have been titled _How to Invest in Three to Five Non-Correllated Asset classes_. There is very little information on how to actually retire early. The information on asset classes, however, is solid.

One area which I feel he could have done more with is options and derivatives. He completely avoids - or should I say, tries to scare people off of - them (he basically says, "Don't do it, you will lose...").

Also, several times in the book he kept dinging on his recent divorce. It rarely had anything to do with the current topic and I found it quite distracting.

The epilogue is strange. He tries to get very personal and share some of his feelings about loss, which is admirable, but I found it a little too sappy for my tastes.

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Summary: Retire Early and Survive a Market Crash
Review: This is a good investment book and extremely cheap. The real cover is also much nicer than the one shown here. It is quite realistic. It does not advocate living below the poverty line so your can save up enough to retire early off the meager returns from treasury bonds in a meager retirement. The main focus is investing well during retirement so you can afford to live well in retirement. This in not primarily a lifestyle book but an investing book. Humility in investing is mentioned many times but not living a humble lifestyle. It says many places that if we lose all our nest egg from bad investments during retirement, it does not matter how humble a lifestyle we have, we are going back to work. The concept that we are all sold our asset allocations rather than choosing them is also a big part of this book. Since stocks and bonds generally go up and down at the same time, only a salesperson could have convinced us that buying both is diversification. I have never seen any book or heard any stockbroker or mutual fund representative ever recommend real estate as part of a retirement portfolio. Yet I know people who have made a fortune in real estate and live comfortably off real estate in retirement. This is the first book I know of that thinks outside the box of conventional retirement investment planning. It advocates choosing between stocks, bonds, real estate, international stocks, and several other asset classes. Since I have concerns that the U.S. stock market can continue as it has in recent years, I am glad to know there are other places I can make money to get me to an early retirement. There is also a chapter on surviving a market crash with your nest egg and sanity intact. This is looking like a very timely book. Good book, great price.

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Summary: How to Retire Early and Live Well withLess than a Million Do
Review: This is a remarkable book. It came out in January 2000. We would have all been better off if we followed this advice back then. I only recently bought the book. More accurately than any other investment book of the year 2000, it predicted the future. On page 212 it says, "It is insane to put all your retirement money in U.S. stocks. Why risk the chance of never being able to retire if you are wrong?" In fact, it cautions to not put more than one third of your retirement in U.S. stocks. Chapter 7 suggests that real estate will be a better asset class than stocks for the next decade. Since the day this book was published, this certainly has been true. Babyboomers need to save for retirement, it says. But they are better off saving in undervalued real estate than overvalued stocks. The returns will be higher. In chapter 9, the author states that oil and gas will be excellent investments for the next decade. So far that too is right on the money. There are a lot more excellent suggestions in this book. It cost less than one trade at my discount broker. Damn I wish I bought this book in January 2000. I'm going to buy his REIT report as soon as it comes out....

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Summary: Rehash of other retirement books
Review: This is a weak book that rehashes other books on the subject. Save your money