Practical Guidance for Navigating Your Financial Journey
Written from a lifetime of experience, What Would Dad Do? provides stories, examples, and discussions of financial topics you’ll encounter as a young adult and throughout your life and into your retirement years. For example, calculating how much you need in emergency savings, the amount of life insurance to buy, doing a Roth conversion to save on taxes in retirement, and why the details of your liabilities are more important than your net worth. Each volume covers topics that you'll encounter in the Early, Middle, or Later years. Taken together, they provide the complete financial education everyone needs.
The first book covers ages 20 through 40, teaching you essential money management tasks and habits, including budgets, spending, real estate, insurance, transportation, debt reduction, healthcare, and maximizing your work benefits. There’s even a chapter that explains the concept of money and interest. I’ll get you started saving for retirement without an investing education. And you'll learn how to perform an Annual Financial Physical to stay financially healthy. Money skills you’ll use throughout your life.
The second book covers ages 30 through 60, or The Middle Years. You’ll learn the basics of investing: terminology, how stocks, bonds, and mutual funds work, how to set up an account, and understand the risks and rewards that come with investing. I’ll explain the challenges to overcome to be a successful individual investor and how to build portfolios addressing your risk tolerance and goals. The second volume will help you climb up the retirement hill, creating a plan using my Retirement Checkpoint tool, monitoring your progress along the way. Finally, I’ll lay out the pros and cons of hiring a financial planner and show you the real cost so you can make an informed decision.
The third book in the series covers ages 50 and above, The Later Years. Nearing retirement, this book provides considerations for both early and late retirements, along with guidance on how to prepare before calling it quits. Includes evaluating how much to safely withdraw, taxes, housing, investing for income options, when to claim Social Security, and how the Medicare program works. And, how to climb a smaller hill to retirement to make up for lost time. You’ll use my Retirement Yearly Plan tool once you retire to stay on track every year. Additionally, a focus on old age ensures that your plan covers this expense. Finally, how to create an Overall Plan for your family when you’re gone.
