Book Review: How to Retire Happy, by Stan Hinden

I'm only 49, but I'm already thinking about retirement. I'm wondering what I can do now to make retirement as pleasant as possible. So I went to one of my favorite places, the library, to see what I could learn. I found Stan Hinden's book "How to Retire Happy: Everything You Need To Know About the 12 Most Important Decisions You Must Make Before You Retire."

It is well written and an easy read. It is full of useful and helpful advice. As I read I put a marker on each point that I wanted to go back and read again; when I got through I had 17 places marked. Like I said How to Retire Happy is just chock full of useful information.

Stan Hinden retired from Washington Post where he was financial reporter and columnist; after retirement has kept writing a syndicated column called "Retirement Journal." The man clearly knows what he is writing about. In his book he gives professional advice based on his personal experiences. There are 12 chapters covering each one of the important decisions he feels we just have to make before we retire. At the end of chapter he gives reliable references so we can do more research on the topic he just discussed.

The 12 most important decisions that Mr. Hinden says we should make are:

Am I ready to retire?

Can I afford to retire?

When should I apply for Social Security?

How should I take my pension payments?

What should I do with the money in my company savings plan?

When do I have to take money out of my IRAs?

How should I invest during retirement?

What should I do about health insurance?

What should I do to prepare for serious illness?

Where do I want to live after I retire?

How should I arrange my estate to save on faxes and avoid probate?

How can I age successfully?

Some of Stan Hinden's tips that caught my attention:

Page 20: He points out that when doing our retirement budget we need to consider that we might need "a secondary insurance or medigap policy to cover some of the expenses that Medicare does not."

Page 21-22: When you retire you need to make a special effect to have withholding to be taken out of your pension and Social Security checks or you will be filing quarterly estimated income tax reports.

Page 23-24: He points out that although your retirement budget will be different from your pre-retirement budget, it probably won't be that different. He gives an example of buying clothing. You would think after you retire that you won't need to allot so much money to clothing anymore because you don't need business clothes, however you will need more casual wear. And he says now that he and his wife have more time they spend more money on going out to shows and meeting friends for a meal.

Page 69: He writes about The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC); a government agency whose job it is to help you locate your pension funds from that company you left years ago and can't find where it went.

That's all I'll tell you that I found. I'll let you read the book for yourself so you can discover on your own Stan Hinden's advice for a pleasant retirement.

To learn more about Stan Hinden visit his website: http://www.stanhinden.com