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Are you looking for the best books about retirement? I curated a list of books I felt would help people of all ages who are thinking or starting to think about or plan for retirement.
It’s never too late or too early to start!
A recent report from the U.S. Federal Reserve found that nearly a quarter of all American adults have no retirement savings or pension at all. Don’t let that be you and if it is, learn what you can do to start correcting it.
THE BEST BOOKS ABOUT RETIREMENT
Retire Inspired: It’s Not an Age; It’s a Financial Number
Retire Inspired is probably one of my favorite books because it goes into why you want to think about retirement no matter your age and inspires you to plan for retirement and what that will look like for you.
In Retire Inspired, author Chris Hogan teaches that retirement isn’t an age; it’s a financial number—an amount you need to live the life in retirement that you’ve always dreamed of.
Whether you’re twenty-five or fifty-five, you can start now. This book will equip you with a plan to make your own investing decisions, set proper expectations with your family for retirement, and build a dream team of experts to get you there.
Check out Retire Inspired.
The Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50+: Winning Strategies to Make Your Money Last a Lifetime
Suze Orman is one of the first people I started following when I first started getting interested in personal finance.
Suze has many books including Women & Money, and The Money Class. Now, in The Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50+, she gives you the no-nonsense advice and practical tools you need to plan wisely for your retirement in today’s ever-changing landscape. You’ll find new rules for downsizing, spending wisely, delaying Social Security benefits, and more-starting where you are right now.
I’ve personally have not read this book yet as I’m not 50+ but I’m adding it to my reading list because I want to share my thoughts.
Check out The Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50+.
How Much Money Do I Need to Retire?: Uncommon Financial Planning Wisdom for a Stress-Free Retirement
How Much Money Do I Need to Retire written by former hedge fund manager Todd R. Tresidder.
The book goes over the five critical assumptions that can destroy your financial security, how to reduce the amount you need to retire by as much as $600,000, strategies to maximize spending today while protecting for the future, and of course how to calculate the amount of money you really need to retire on the first try without software, online calculators, or being a math genius.
Tresidder’s book contains easy-to-understand advice on how to retire wealthy and is another great one to add to your reading list.
Check out How Much Money Do I Need to Retire.
AgeProof: Living Longer Without Running Out of Money or Breaking a Hip
This one is not your typical retirement book but I thought it added that extra layer that many people don’t always think about.
Age-Proof explains the vital link between health and wealth that could add years to your life and dollars to your retirement savings.
All the money in the world doesn’t mean a thing if we can’t get out of bed. And the healthiest body in the world won’t stay that way if we’re frazzled about five figures worth of debt. Today Show financial expert Jean Chatzky and the Cleveland Clinic’s chief wellness officer Dr. Michael Roizen explain the vital connection between health and wealth–giving readers all the tactics, strategies, and know-how to live longer, healthier, more lucrative lives.
Check out Age Proof by Jean Chatsky and Michael Roizen.
How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free: Retirement Wisdom That You Won’t Get from Your Financial Advisor
How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free authored by Ernie J. Zelinski is not only a book about retirement — it’s an inspirational guide on how to enjoy life to its fullest.
What sets this book apart from other retirement books is its holistic approach to the fears, hopes, and dreams that people have about retirement. It goes way beyond the numbers that are often the main focus of most retirement planning books.
Check out How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free.
How to Retire Happy, Fourth Edition: The 12 Most Important Decisions You Must Make Before You Retire
Stan Hinden’s bestselling How to Retire Happy, Fourth Edition, helps you make the right decisions to ensure a happy, healthful retirement. It delivers all the expert advice you need in an easy-to-understand step-by-step style.
The updated version of this book contains brand-new material on health insurance and the prescription drug plan. The facts about Medicare Part A (hospital), Part B (tests, doctors, preventive care), and Part D (prescription drugs) and the author’s personal experiences with the realities of long-term Alzheimer’s care. It also has fully updated material on Social Security strategies
I’ve added this one to my reading list as a must-read as a financial coach and you should as well.
Check out How to Retire Happy, Fourth Edition.
The 5 Years Before You Retire: Retirement Planning When You Need It the Most
The 5 Years Before You Retire: Retirement Planning When You Need It the Most is a comprehensive guide to planning your retirement before it’s too late!
Even though half of all Americans put money aside for retirement, it isn’t until they reach their sixties that many realize that they haven’t saved enough.
With The Five Years Before You Retire, you’ll hone in on what you need to do in the next five years to maximize your current savings and create a realistic plan for your future. This book guides you through each financial, medical, and familial decision, from taking advantage of the employer match your company offers for your 401k program to enrolling in Medicare to discussing housing options with your family. Covering every aspect of retirement planning, these straightforward strategies explain in detail how you can make the most of your last few years in the workforce and prepare for the future you’ve always wanted.
Whether you just started devising a plan or have been saving since your first job, The Five Years Before You Retire will show you what you need to do now to ensure that you live comfortably for years to come.
Check out The 5 Years Before You Retire: Retirement Planning When You Need It the Most.
How to Make Your Money Last: The Indispensable Retirement Guide
Will you run out of money in your older age? That’s the biggest worry for people newly retired or planning to retire. Fortunately, you don’t have to plan in the dark.
How to Make Your Money Last teaches you how to squeeze a higher income from all your assets—including your social security account (get every dollar you’re entitled to), a pension (discover whether a lump sum or a lifetime monthly income will pay you more), your home equity (sell, rent, or take a reverse mortgage?), savings (how to use them safely to raise your monthly income), retirement accounts (invest the money for growth in ways that let you sleep at night), and—critically—how much of your savings you can afford to spend every year without running out.
Check out How to Make Your Money Last: The Indispensable Retirement Guide.
The Smartest Retirement Book You’ll Ever Read
The Smartest Retirement Book You’ll Ever Read promises to help you find simple strategies to maximize your retirement nest egg, steer clear of scams that rob you of your hard-earned savings and goes into how to ensure that your money lasts longer than you do.
This one is already on my bookshelf.
Check out The Smartest Retirement Book You’ll Ever Read.
Everyday Millionaires: How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth—and How You Can Too
Here is another book by Chris Hogan and it follows along the same lines as his book Retire Inspired that I mentioned above.
Everyday Millionaires will show you how ordinary people (like you and me) built extraordinary wealth—and how you can too. You’ll learn how millionaires live on less than they make, avoid debt, invest, are disciplined, and responsible!
This book is based on the largest study EVER conducted on 10,000 U.S. millionaires—and the results will shock you. You’ll learn that building wealth has almost NOTHING to do with your income or your background. It doesn’t matter where you come from. It matters where you’re going.
I love that this book inspires everyone to become millionaires even before the normal retirement age. A must-read!
Checkout Everyday Millionaires.
The Automatic Millionaire, Expanded and Updated: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich
The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach is one of my all-time favorites still.
The Automatic Millionaire starts with the powerful story of an average American couple–he’s a low-level manager, she’s a beautician–whose joint income never exceeds $55,000 a year, yet who somehow manage to own two homes debt-free, put two kids through college, and retire at 55 with more than $1 million in savings.
Through their story, you’ll learn the surprising fact that you cannot get rich with just a budget! You have to have a plan to pay yourself first that is totally automatic, a plan that will automatically secure your future and pay for your present.
What makes The Automatic Millionaire unique is that it works for anyone even those of you who hate budgets and just want to set it and forget it when it comes to money.
Check out The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach.
TAKE ACTION
I don’t think reading one book will get you ready for retirement but reading many, planning, and taking action will.
- Choose as many books to read or to listen to as you can.
- Take notes! Don’t just read or listen to books. You need to actually take action and start to implement what you’ve learned.
I haven’t read any of these so I’m adding them to my Christmas list. I’ve heard Suze Orman talk on the Dr. Phil show and it was really cool. She talked about how you treated money was related to how much you would make because of your respect for money. Basically, if you kept your wallet neat and pretty you respected money and would make more. So, basically, I’m destined to be poor because my wallet looks like a bomb went off in it!
Hi Heather! Thank you for stopping by the blog! I’m with you on the wallet that looks like a bomb went off in it(my purse too sometimes)!LOL We are definitely NOT destined to be poor. 🙂 Oh and I don’t know if you checked out my blog post on Cheaper Alternatives to Audible but I go over options that will allow you to read ebooks and listen to audiobooks (my favorite) for really cheap and even free with a 30-day free trial. Just a thought in case you wanted to get a headstart on your reading!
So many great titles I am not sure which one to start with. I am planning to retire next year so I hope I can do it. Thanks for this great list.
Great list, as someone who retire in April 2019, it’s never too early to start reading any of these!
This is a great list! I read The Automatic Millionaire years ago. It’s a great feeling to be completely debt free. Thanks for sharing!
These all look great. I’m not there yet, but I guess it’s time to start thinking about the big R. Great post!