The Number
From Publishers WeeklyEisenberg's arc through life could be used to
define the baby boom. In the 1970s, he coined the term
power lunch; in
the 1980s, he edited
Esquire and invented rotisserie baseball. In the
1990s, he wrote books on finding the good life through golf and fishing, and at
the end of the decade, he joined an Internet retailer. These days, he's thinking
about retirement, particularly about his Number: the amount of money he'd need
to have socked away in order to be confident that his postretirement life would
meet his expectations. Everyone's Number is different, Eisenberg says, and
though his book is not an especially useful financial guide, it isn't really
meant as a how-to. Instead, it provides an illuminating and charmingly written
consideration of an aging generation's retirement worries and of the investment
business designed to profit from them. Heartfelt discussions of goals, health
and health care, "downshifting" to enjoy life while spending less money and the
meaning of postretirement life pepper its pages. Financial planners are
interviewed, partly to get information about savings and investment, but mostly
to explore the meaning of the field and the type of people who practice it. A
few of Eisenberg's chapters feel scattershot, but his perceptive analyses of
real and fictional people's financial hopes and strategies will inspire readers
to reconsider their Numbers and their methods for investing.
BOMC
Alternate.(Jan.) Copyright Reed Business Information, a
division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Price: £12 including UK delivery