Books

November 2005

The Good (Retired) Life

The New Retirement: The Ultimate Guide to the Rest of Your Life by Jan Cullinane and Cathy Fitzgerald. Rodale. 486 pp. $19.95.

How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free by Ernie J. Zelinski. Ten Speed Press. $16.95.

Playing a round of golf, reading a bestseller under a beach umbrella or splurging on a Parisian shopping spree may be a satisfying way to spend a day, a week or a even a month of your retirement. But, if you’re looking to pack a lot more meaning and more than a little adventure into the next 30 years, you might want to peruse these two top-selling retirement books for some sound advice and creative ideas.

In The New Retirement, Jan Cullinane and Cathy Fitzgerald tackle the basic questions of what to do during your retirement and where to spend it. Their book is chockfull of worksheets and checklists to help you determine whether you’re ready to retire, whether to relocate and even whether you have the right skills to make a success of that long-dreamed-of bed and breakfast.

The authors, former teachers, advise readers not to turn off their work ethic after they earn those gold watches. They say surveys of baby boomers nearing retirement age show 80 percent plan to keep working, at least part-time. For retirees with enough income, they encourage volunteering.

The book proves especially thorough in helping you decide where to spend your retirement. Cullinane and Fitzgerald give a report card to each community they recommend, grading them on climate, cost of living, health care, transportation and things to do. As you might expect, Florida ’s coastal communities rank among their favorites but so do Reno, Nevada (Perhaps you’ll find a new career at its professional bartending school!) and Asheville, North Carolina.

Ringed by the Blue Ridge and the Great Smokies, Asheville is also a top pick of Ernie J. Zelinski, author of the lively How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free . It’s a city of 68,000 with several colleges, upscale restaurants, bookstores, coffeehouses and a tradition of attracting writers and musicians. It’s also the home of the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, which offers a variety of options for learning, leadership and community service.

Wherever you live, Zelinski says, you need good time management skills. Otherwise, after a couple months basking in the glow of retirement, you might wake up one day and ask, “Now what?”

Zelinski, who semi-retired 25 years ago when he was 30 and near bankruptcy, doesn’t offer lots of financial advice. He contends that your physical and mental well-being and your ability to make new friends and keep old ones play bigger roles in a happy retirement than the size of your bank account.

Seize this chance, he says, to create a new identity not defined by your job. His graphic organizer, dubbed the “Get-a-Life Tree,” connects activities you’ve enjoyed in the past with ideas for the future. To help you grow your own tree, he lists 300 activities, from scuba diving to writing a fairy tale.

If you’re uncertain about your future, Zelinski’s upbeat attitude may inspire you to discover a new passion or purpose. Choose something fun, he says, something you’d do with or without pay. Some suggestions, like nude model-ing, may make you laugh; others, like being a blackjack dealer in Las Vegas, may pique your interest.

Both The Ultimate Guide and Happy, Wild and Free are books you’ll refer to as you move through different stages of retirement—from the very active to the slightly more sedentary. If you follow the authors’ suggestions, you certainly won’t be bored.                 

—Mary Anne Hess

Short Takes

Unbelievably Good Deals and Great Adventures That You Absolutely Can’t Get Unless You’re Over 50, by Joan Rattner Heilman. Contemporary Books. 324 pp. $14.95

While you’re being Happy, Wild, and Free, you might as well get some bargains. This book may be able to help. You’ll get tips on discounts for everything from college courses to all sorts of travel. In fact, travel is the main—although certainly not exclusive—focus of this guide. Stretch those pension dollars around the world! It even helps you plan intergenerational trips with your children.

Aging Well, Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development, by George Vaillant, MD. Little, Brown. 373 pp. $14.95

If getting a great deal on an Alaskan safari isn’t your idea of joy, maybe you’d like to learn from the accumulated experience of hundreds of men from Harvard, women from California, and white men from Boston, studied through their adult lives and brought together by one of Harvard’s most accomplished and certainly most persistent researchers, George Vaillant. This is probably the longest-running study of aging in the world, following more than 800 people over five decades. Vaillant’s conclusion: your lifestyle choices have more impact on whether you have a satisfying life than either genes or money.

If getting a great deal on an Alaskan safari isn’t your idea of joy, maybe you’d like to learn  of hundreds of Harvard men, California women, and white Boston men, studied through their adult lives and brought together by one of Harvard’s most accomplished and certainly most persistent researchers, George Vaillant. This is probably the longest-running study of aging in the world, following more than 800 people over five decades. Vaillant’s encouraging conclusion: Your lifestyle choices have more impact on whether you have a satisfying life than either genes or money. running study of aging in the world, following more than 800 people over five decades. Vaillant’s conclusion: your lifestyle choices have more impact on whether you have a satisfying life than either genes or money.