Product Description

Create a new life plan to thrive in your retirement

"In Your Retirement, Your Way, Alan and John lead the way to a new and dynamic definition of retirement. They begin with this exciting premise: the more you clearly identify your own personal style, the more you will experience a powerful and fulfilling next chapter in your life. With the variety of guides and road maps they provide, including a sample version of the Birkman® (a mini-Birkman®), readers can navigate their way to a more confident phase of life that offers both purpose and renewal."
--Dr. Roger W. Birkman, Chairman, Birkman International, Inc.

After years of focusing on career and family, most of us embark on the next phase of life with only a vague idea of what will make us happy. But you can guarantee yourself a long and successful retirement with Your Retirement, Your Way!

Its revolutionary retirement planning approach combines a powerful self-assessment system based on the Birkman Method®--a personality assessment system used by companies and government agencies worldwide--with sophisticated financial planning tools and step-by-step guidelines that allow you to:

• Define your ideal retirement environment
• Determine where you are now, financially, and where you want to be
• Map out a solid plan for realizing your dreams in the shortest time possible

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #200604 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From the Back Cover

Create a new life plan to thrive in your retirement

"In Your Retirement, Your Way, Alan and John lead the way to a new and dynamic definition of retirement. They begin with this exciting premise: the more you clearly identify your own personal style, the more you will experience a powerful and fulfilling next chapter in your life. With the variety of guides and road maps they provide, including a sample version of the Birkman® (a mini-Birkman®), readers can navigate their way to a more confident phase of life that offers both purpose and renewal."
--Dr. Roger W. Birkman, Chairman, Birkman International, Inc.

After years of focusing on career and family, most of us embark on the next phase of life with only a vague idea of what will make us happy. But you can guarantee yourself a long and successful retirement with Your Retirement, Your Way!

Its revolutionary retirement planning approach combines a powerful self-assessment system based on the Birkman Method®--a personality assessment system used by companies and government agencies worldwide--with sophisticated financial planning tools and step-by-step guidelines that allow you to:

• Define your ideal retirement environment
• Determine where you are now, financially, and where you want to be
• Map out a solid plan for realizing your dreams in the shortest time possible

About the Author

Alan Bernstein, CSW, has been a psychotherapist and career counselor for thirty years.

John Trauth, M.B.A., is a management consultant specializing in financial services.

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Customer Reviews

Mandatory Reading Not Mandatory Retirement
If you are 35 years old, this book will make you think hard. By the time you are 45, this book will be truly important. By the time you are 55, it will be more significant than the rate of inflation, the Dow Jones and the size of your nest egg - combined. By the time....you get my drift.

Most books on Retirement (indeed most self-help books) are prescriptive - and fail to satisfy their readers because of it. Bernstein and Trauth have written a book that provides the reader with a journey of self-discovery, and the means and mechanisms for continued personal growth. Concurrently easy-to-read and deeply thought-provoking, its contents and wisdom will resonate and rumble inside you until you listen - and act.

How to avoid stepping on a banana peel
Alan Bernstein and John Trauth have prepared a fine book that encourages the reader to take a long and truthful look at the most anticipated (and dreaded) phase of life: Retirement. Rather than solely emphasize financial stability as many retirement planning books do, the authors have included self-analysis and critical thinking guides to carefully consider what satisfies and encourages intellectual, spiritual and physical well-being. The book is right on!

Successful Retirement Depends on More Than Money
It seems to me--and I admit the possibility that I may be wrong--that when I retired back around the turn of the century (1999, to be exact), retirement planning books were mostly about money. Yes, financial planning is very important, but it always seemed to me that by the time you reach retirement, you've done it or you haven't. I'd planned in my own conservative way, so I never read those books.

Today, thanks to the self-help book craze, the scope and number of retirement guides seem to have expanded. I'm not a fan of self-help books in general, and I've been retired quite a while, but I still decided to take a look at one of the retirement guides for the new age.

Your Retirement, Your Way, by Alan Bernstein and John Trauth, is subtitled, "Why it takes more than money to live your dream." In thirteen chapters, including "Preparing Psychologically for Change," "Creating Your NewLife Master Plan Summary," and "Determining How You Want to Be Remembered," Bernstein and Trauth cover many of the retirement concerns I've faced, and they provide common-sense guides for coming to terms with these issues.

The authors of this book invite you to create a "personal, customized NewLife Master Plan . . . through a structured process that will give you the power to take your future life into your own hands and create the best possible retirement lifestyle unique to your own interests, personality, relationships, and situation." A lofty goal, indeed!

I especially like Bernstein's "Who Were You? Who Are You? Who Can You Become?" chapter because the author suggests writing down things such as "What I was doing when I was at my best," "Situations in which I've been at my worst," and many more. I promote the same strategy in a less structured way in my own book, Seniorwriting: A Brief Guide for Seniors who Want to Write (Infinity, 2007). "Writing to Discover," as I call it, is a great idea! I'm glad to see it included here.

I was also happy to be introduced to the "Birkman personality profile" (copyright Birkman International, Inc.), a somewhat complex but very interesting strategy used by some psychotherapists "to better understand people negotiating complex transitions."

I tried the included "Birkman Interest and Style Summary" to discover my interest and lifestyle colors: Red (Implementer), Green (Communicator), Yellow (Administrator) or Blue (Planner). My result was blue all the way. That means I like to plan activities, deal with abstraction, think of new approaches, innovate, and work with ideas. It also means that I appear perceptive, agreeable, conscientious, reflective, and creative.

Blue means that my interests include abstracting, theorizing, designing, writing, and originating, and that my fields include writing a book, joining a spiritual commuinity, teaching, and volunteering. My style is insightful, relective, selectively sociable, creative, thoughful, emotional, imaginative, and sensitive, and my preferred environment is cutting edge, informallly paced, organized in private offices, low key, and future oriented. With the exception of "joining a spiritual community," these terms fit me perfectly. If I had not pretty much done so already in my own way, I could have gone on with goals, strategies, objectives, and specific activities and tasks to create my NewLife Chart.

There's much more in this book, including one chapter on financial planning, but the emphasis is on self-anaylsis, facing reality, and planning ahead. This book fulfills its stated purpose to "help you recognize and draw on resources that you may never have recognized . . . to create a truly fulfilling life, custom-designed for you and you alone."

I heartily recommend Your Retirement, Your Way to anyone nearing or even beginning to think about retirement. It's a big step; don't take it unprepared.

Seniorwriting: A Brief Guide for Seniors Who Want to Write