Book Review: New Rules of Retirement

New Rules of Retirement: What Your Financial Advisor Isn’t Telling You is written by two practicing financial advisors, Warren MacKenzie and Ken Hawkins with more than 45 years experience between them and it shows. Convinced that the financial services industry is short-changing clients by focusing too much on saving and investing and not enough on planning for their retirement, the authors have taken a holistic approach and discuss health, housing, spending patterns, work etc. in addition to purely financial matters. Canadians who are close to retirement will find the first part of the book to be an invaluable, practical guide to the issues they should plan for in retirement.

If like me, you are in your asset-gathering phase of your life and decades away from retirement, you’ll find the second half of the book, which discusses investment process and portfolio construction to be of interest. The topics covered will be familiar to our readers: the importance of an investment process, diversification, paying attention to fees, the advantages of passive investing, benchmarking etc. The chapter on DIY investing shows how an investor can construct a portfolio out of just four ETFs (XBB, XIU, IVV and EFA) — it’s easy to construct, simple to maintain, tax-efficient and anyone can do it.

The book is exhaustively researched and peppered with facts, figures, worksheets and anecdotes. Each chapter ends with a list of actions to take now and a summary of the concepts discussed in that chapter. The book is available at Chapters and Amazon for about $17. The New Rules of Retirement website has excerpts from the book, author biographies and a long list of useful resources. [Update: You can also browse through the book here.]

Giveaway: Ken Hawkins has kindly provided an extra copy of the book to giveaway to our readers. Just leave a comment to this post before 8 PM on Friday, January 23, 2009 and I’ll pick a winner at random. The usual rules apply: (1) One entry per person. (2) Canadian residents only. (3) If you subscribe via e-mail, click on the heading to visit the website, scroll down to the end of the page, type in your comment under “Leave a Comment” and click “Submit”.