Retirement Calculator: How much money do I need to retire?

If you are looking for a straightforward information about retirement readiness, this is a good place to start. This book is a quick read, but provides a fairly comprehensive and balanced overview of financial planning considerations before and after retirement. Reading the book from cover to cover takes only a few hours. However, Jason cites many good references that are readily available on the internet, so those interested in the gory details can get those. The author believes that the foundation of a retirement plan is coming up with a budget or cash-flow model and the book is a good companion for the retirement calculator software that he developed. Topics like asset allocation and withdrawal strategies are discussed without making any definitive recommendations, but this is what you might expect considering that personal considerations will vary. Jason gives you information that will help you make your decision. If you read this and feel that you need more help, there is a good discussion about the benefits of a financial advisor and what you should look for if you decide to go that route.

Jason writes the book in a manner that gets you thinking how you should be setting up, and continuing, your retirement. It is not investment advice, it is a workable flow to make you more confident in setting up a plan on what your income sources will be in retirement and figuring out what what you are spending. That is the baseline of all planning. What's your spending. What will your income be. You may have gaps to fill but you will know where you stand and can make more informed choices on spending adjustments and continued income sources.

For several years I have listened to Jason's podcasts (Sound Retirement Planning) and used the Retirement Budget Calculator. Both are excellent! "Retirement Calculator" is a super easy-to-follow book with a wealth of practical information on Financial Planning. I am a Certified Financial Planner (CFP), and I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

A good book for someone learning the basic building blocks for retirement. As a retiree, lots of good info to review too. Easy reading.

The book is really good for helping plan retirement. The calculator is amazing.

Jason's book will help you make some of the decisions that will help you in your retirement future. He has been an invaluable source of information for us.

Disappointed! I have listened to Jason's Podcast for over 3 years, where he discusses great Retirement Topics. This book is good for people starting to learn about retirement and Jason covers several topics that are important to understand as you embark on your retirement planning. Some sections are too basic, like Social Security and Medicare. Other sections are worthwhile, like understanding Retirement Withdraw Strategies and "10 questions to Ask Before Hiring a Financial Advisor". If you are a subscriber to his Retirement Budget Calculator, then this book is a good companion. If you are not a subscriber, you can input information in the Free version, but all the strong tools to answer the question on the book's title are reserved for paying subscribers, besides the 4% rule discussion and the rule of 25 times your annual spending. I felt this book was a sales leads generator to send readers to the Retirement Budget Calculator and try to convert them to paying customers once they have invested inputing all the data for the analysis.If you are a subscriber of the software, go ahead and buy the book, if you are not a subscriber, then there are other Retirement Calculators available on the Internet. A suggestion is to provide a 7 or 14 days trial period of the premium version for those that purchase the book and that way they can assess if the Retirement Budget Calculator paying version is for them. Once you see value in the results you see, you might want to continue to have access to the results to modify the input data as you get closer to retirement.