Everything You Need To Know About Saving For Retirement

Ben Carlson knocks this one out of the park! I first found Ben through the Animal Spirits podcast and have found his insights on all things markets and finance very useful. He also explains things very well that the everyday person can understand. Therefore I decided to pick up this book and I'm sure glad I did. While the book is relatively short (most chapters are just a couple of pages) Ben does an excellent job of explaining everything you need to know about retirement. The overall theme is to keep it simple and don't overcomplicate things. Even though I felt I had a pretty good grip on my own retirement, I find it reassuring that many of my current financial practices are what Ben teaches in this book. Thank you Ben for all your great writings and podcasts!

Ben Carlson is one of the best financial writers around. This book touches every aspect of personal finance and I felt it appropriate to give to my children in the hope that they would cherrypick some of the advice which attracted at least enough of their interest to read beyond the chapter headings. Ben proves that you don't need to produce a weighty tome to impart basic, sensible, and extremely useful financial advice.

My perception of this book was that the presented information was too 'in the weeds' for beginners, but common knowledge for more experienced readers. My intent on purchasing this was to find another title to to send to my, now adult (20's), children to motivate their saving for retirement. I am not an investment professional, by the way, just a nerd with some financial curiosities. As a listener to Ben Carlson's podcasts, the subjects were familiar enough I could, I swear, hear his voice sometimes. This was a well written book, I'm just not sure who the target audience would be.

As a beginner to retirement saving, I recommend this book. I would say I have an elementary background on finances - I know enough of the basics, but still working to understand them deeper. I agree with another reviewer that there is not really any new information here. For me the value of this book comes from the explanations. For example, we’ve heard everywhere that time is your greatest asset, but Carlson illustrates compounding savings in a simple way that solidifies why it’s important to start early. He doesn’t just tell you to start early. Carlson talks about why a lot of financial advice fails to motivate change - it makes people feel bad about themselves; Human behavior is a risk factor to growth, so Carlson writes in a way that gives people the understanding needed to make the decisions, without shaming them. And the book, while only 100ish pages, did not leave me feeling empty. I felt like I got a complete review of the important pieces to retirement saving, and I’ve picked up another separate book to allow me to dive into the details. This is not a book with explicit tips and tricks, but you could pull useful information out of here to apply to your daily life. I want to stress that I found the usefulness in the explanations and how he demonstrated concepts. For example: It wasn’t the extremely overused “don’t buy that $8 coffee from Starbucks, it’s a waste of money! Put that money into your savings!” tirade but instead it was, “when I started out working, I didn’t make enough to max out my 401k, so I started with $5/day and scaled it up until I could get to a double digit percentage of my income going into retirement. Start where you are and work to get at least 10% of your income into your retirement savings.” Instead of the frequently used “Buy index funds and ETFs because blah blah gains” it was more of “People get overwhelmed trying to figure out what to buy. That’s why Target Retirement Funds are great, and Indexes are great. But really, putting away money consistently is more important than choosing the right investments because of a cool thing called cost averaging.” I hope this helps. I am very happy to have this book in my possession.

I have been reading Ben's blog a Wealth of Common Sense for a few months now and am an avid Animal Spirits fan. This book is right up my alley. The use of personal stories and insights makes this a very relatable addition to the financial literacy landscape. Great and down to earth writing makes for a quick but powerful read.

Actually , I was able to do most what this book said I should do. Or, at least most of it.Live under our means, stay working, save, invest carefully. Now retired, I can spend my time doing what I want.Thanks Ben.

I love Ben Carlson's unambiguously intelligent, easy to approach and mature advise. I read his columns and listen to his podcasts. I ordered 3 copies, for myself and two other family members for Christmas and none of us were disappointed. It's a great book.

Americans are woefully unprepared for retirement so this book will help many people. It is practical and intelligently written, and easy to read in a very few hours. The only constructive criticism I have is that for the 2% of Americans who have done significant work and planning towards retirement, it is rather basic and doubt this audience will learn much.

If you are already into saving and financial planning, probably you won’t get any mind-blowing insights from this book. However, the book delivers what it promises, is straightforward and simple (took 2 days to read) and it is overall a good read.

Très bon livre pour comprendre l’intérêt d’investir le plus tôt possible et de façon diversifié. Les informations fournies sont dans un contexte américain mais sont applicable en France, excepté les informations lié au compte, mais on peut facilement faire un lien avec nos PEA, PER, assurance vie, CTO, etc..Je recommande si vous commencez à vous intéressez à ce sujet, comme le livre Simple Path to Wealth de J. L. Collins.

No solid content!

Thought it was average book - quite basic and for the price, I personally think there are better books such as from Morgan Housel or even Ben’s own other books on similar topics.

Brilliant read for all levels of financial literacy. Would highly recommend to all. Simple to understand with easy to follow examples.