Book Look: Spend 'Til the End

Spend 'Til the End: the Revolutionary Guide to Raising Your Living Standard (Today and When You Retire)
by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns

Skim or scour?: Skim

This book gets major props for daring to cause a bit of a buzz in the retirement industry. Coauthor Larry Kotlikoff, an economics prof at Boston University, challenges standard beliefs about how much is needed in retirement (see him battle it out on NPR below). While working on an upcoming article, many people I have interviewed seemed to say "oh Larry" and either brush off the book or respectfully attack it.

However, for people newly entering the work force, this book isn't really worth it. It is focused more on how pre-retirees and retirees can take better advantages of the system. There are a few interesting points though (most of which depressed me). Here are the things I learned from it:


1. Why does our culture force everyone to go to college? If plumbing is your passion, more power to you! Education is expensive.

2. Live in a low tax state (woops, missed the memo).

3. Living with someone is so much cheaper (but you already knew that)!

In general, it's an interesting book to remind the reader that so many different life choices add up to different consequences. But at the end of the day that "adding" needs to be done by a product Kotlikoff sells ... and most of us probably don't have access to.