
Title : The Complete Guide to a Creative Retirement
Author : Robert Kelley
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Valuable Resource for Your Golden Years
Many friends and family members have told me that they were unprepared for retirement when it came. They struggled mightily with problems that they later found that almost everyone has. So although they had the financial wherewithal to retire, they didn't really know how to spend their time and focus their energies. As a result, they enjoyed the early years of their retirements much less than they had hoped and could have. That's a same because the first few months and years of retirement are likely to be the time when most people will have the most health and financial resources to explore whatever it is that they would like to do.
Mr. Kelley's The Complete Guide to a Creative Retirement is a resource that addresses the issues very well that retired people have told me about. I heartily recommend it to everyone who would like to retire in the next ten years . . . and to those who are recently retired.
The book is organized into two sections. In section one, you are given ideas for thinking about retirement in new and more productive ways. Section two is a resource guide to help those with different orientations (organizers, creative people, socializers, intellectuals, volunteers and caregivers, nature lovers, athletes, and those who would like to keep working past the normal retirement age).
In chapter one, Mr. Kelley compares the frustrations of many retirements that were not planned (such as after being "downsized") with those who had planned creatively for retirement, and found their golden years to be an improvement in their lives.
In chapter two, you will learn the 12 strategies for retirement.
1. Maintain as much of your daily routine as you can.
2. Leave the house at least once a day.
3. Make a daily list of things to do.
4. Plan ahead.
5. Plan your social life.
6. Eat less.
7. Exercise daily.
8. Simplify your life.
9. Pursue your favorite activities.
10. Get better at what you want to do while retired.
11. Join a support group.
12. Lose yourself mentally and emotionally in your activities.
The first section goes on to help you see choices that you may not have considered, explains how to adjust in retirement in your relationships with your spouse and friends, and gives you a planning guide that you can fill out to begin your thinking.
The second section isn't as exhaustive as it might have been, but there are enough ideas to get you started. I'm sure it will stimulate you to come up with even better choices that fit your circumstances best. Don't be afraid to think of yourself as having more than one dimension (you may be an athlete and a socializer).
I also encourage you to share this book with your spouse, family members and friends. They may be able to help you develop better choices after having considered the book.
After you are done, I suggest that you think about how you could help others have a better retirement as well.

Title : How to Retire Rich
Author : James O'Shaughnessey
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Illuminating!!!
A must read for anyone who cares about their financial future. The cloud of confusion that shrouds Wall Street has been blown away. Finally, a simple, easy to understand investment guide that gives actionable advice. Forget about the 5,000 mutual funds that consistently underperform the market. Forget about this year's genius or this year's hot fund. Follow a discipline and stick to it through thick or thin. Thanks, O'Shaughnessy. This book summarizes everything I've learned about investing over the years, but, of course, not yet acted upon. That will change. ----Three things to count in life: death, taxes, and dismal stock market returns without an invesment strategy!----

Title : You've Earned It, Don't Lose It: Mistakes You Can't Afford to Make When You Retire
Author : Suze Orman
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : Every woman's book on pitfalls in planning: Read this FIRST!
I grabbed this book on impulse, knowing that I have a bad track record with money management subjects. I thought it would be laying around gathering dust for awhile...
Was I surprised when I started reading the first page and then plowed right through it in 1-1/2 nights! So easy to read and understand. (The Wall St. Journal series, with all their glitzy colored pictures couldn't do what Suze did with her real-life stories as examples.) Maybe it's the woman's touch, but she got through to me. The whole picture of retirement issues and planning became clear.
I highly recommend this as a first book for financial planning -- it's NOT JUST ABOUT RETIREMENT, it's more about protecting women by arming them with vital information... every woman should READ THIS BOOK BEFORE MAKING ANOTHER DECISION involving money (or before someone makes one for her).

Title : The Inheritance of Loss
Author : Kiran Desai
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : "Mythic battles of past and present, justice and injustice."
Writing with wit and perception, Kiran Desai creates an elegant and thoughtful study of families, the losses each member must confront alone, and the lies each tells to make memories of the past more palatable. Sai Mistry is a young girl whose education at an Indian convent school comes to an end in the mid-1980s, when she is orphaned and sent to live with her grandfather, a judge who does not want her and who offers no solace. Living in a large, decaying house, her grandfather considers himself more British than Indian, far superior to hard-working but poverty-stricken people like his cook, Nandu, whose hopes for a better life for his son are the driving force in his life.
The story of Sai, living in Kalimpong, near India's northeast border with Nepal, alternates with that of Biju, Nandu's son, an illegal immigrant trying to find work and a better life in America. Biju, working in a series of deadend jobs, epitomizes the plight of the illegal immigrant who has no future in his own country and who endures deplorable conditions and semi-servitude working illegally in the US. As Desai explores the aspirations of Sai and Biju, the hopes and expectations of their families, and their disconnections with their roots, she also creates vivid pictures of the friends and relatives who surround them, creating a vibrant picture of a broad cross-section of society and revealing the social and political history of India.
Though Sai's romance, at sixteen, with Gyan, her tutor, provides her with an emotional escape from Kalimpong, it soon becomes complicated by Gyan's involvement with the Gorkha National Liberation Federation, a Nepalese independence movement which quickly becomes bloody. Gyan's commitment to the insurgency offers an ironic contrast with the commitment of his family to the colonial British army in earlier times, just as the judge's hatreds, learned in England, are ironically contrasted with his British affectations in later life.
A careful observer of behavior, with a fine eye for revealing details, Desai brings her narrative and characters to life, illustrating her themes without making moral judgments about her characters-creating neither saints nor villains, just ordinary people leading the best lives they can, using whatever resources are available. Her characters, like people from all cultures, make sacrifices for their children, behave cruelly toward people they love, reject traditional ways of life and old values, rediscover what is important to them, suffer at the hands of faceless government officials, and learn, and grow, and make decisions, sometimes ill-considered, about their lives. Dealing with all levels of society and many different cultures, Desai shows life's humor and brutality, its whimsy and harshness, and its delicate emotions and passionate commitments in a novel that is both beautiful and wise. Mary Whipple

Title : Funny, I Don't Feel Old!: How to Flourish After 50
Author : Carter Henderson
Rating : 5 Stars out of 5.
Summary : A great gift
I gave this book to my mother and father after they turned 55 and they both enjoyed it very much