How Much Money Do I Need to Retire?: Uncommon Financial Planning Wisdom for a Stress-Free Retirement

I am a qualified actuary and data scientist and "How Much Money Do I Need to Retire?" is both one of the best books I have read on retirement planning AND one of the best books I have read on the dangers of applying pure data science principles to financial modelling.Tresidder starts by explaining many of the financial and statistical principles I first learned about in my actuarial and data science training. Then, in the space of just 200 easy-to-follow pages, systematically explains how these principles can fall apart when applied to an individual - something I had not previously considered, despite applying these principles professionally for my entire career.Most data science techniques are based on statistical averages and the assumption that the past (as reflected in your dataset) is a good indicator of the future. Yet, no dataset can adequately capture all aspects of the past, and "statistics don't work when you're a sample size of one".The solution is to start with the financial truths and then bring quantitative discipline to them, rather than the other way around (as is often the case in data science), and Tresidder shows the reader how to do just that.If you are interested in planning for your retirement, I recommend this book for its unique, yet practical, perspective on financial planning - even if you live outside the United States, where this book was first published (I live in Australia and found the vast majority of the information still relevant to me).But if you are a data scientist, I recommend this book even more strongly, as it is the only book I have ever read that provides a detailed discussion of how data science can be applied to making long-range, extremely small sample predictions in a highly uncertain environment.

The book does a good job of helping answer the question many pre retirees have. It was an easy and informative read.

This book is extremely frustrating. I bought it as I'm 1/2 way through my nest egg FIRE journey and looking forward to hanging up my corporate job. I wanted to get some good budgeting guidance to validate my plan. This book is written to blow up plans, with scare tactics about interest rates and valuations that rely on historical data, while downplaying the role of historical data related to rates of return. There were years, with bad political decisions and poor global integration, that did have inflation spikes, but to plan for 3% forever inflation seems worse than planning for 10% ROI annually; it's simply not realistic when the Fed & Government want to prevent that from happening. Worse, this is all done to lead into the conclusion of the book, which basically is "start a business and buy real estate for cashflow to never worry about nest eggs"... this is stupid. Why? Because if I wanted to start a business, it's safer to keep my job. Real Estate is also a full time job and headache. The point of retirement is to enjoy it, have leasure and time to travel. if I'm tied to a small business and real estate, then why bother retiring. Keeping a basic job seems easier than the complicating factors of businesses and real estate. Most new businesses fail anyway, so it seems like horrible advise to use faulty logic to scare the reader into starting a business, buying annuities (yack!) and real estate. I wanted to know how much money I needed, and in the end, this tried to distract me into continuing working, but only for myself, with all the risk of being a middle aged single proprietor. I think I'll keep my job a few more years and make sure my nest egg is solid, and avoid all the work and headache of real estate and business ownership. I'm surprised he didn't recommend Franchises at one point!

Excellent book for review. The author gives several well explained models for retirement as well as pros and cons of each. He also links to his online calculator for inputting your own details.Not just the “standard “ stuff either, lots of other off the beaten path ideas to think about. I’ve been working on my retirement plan and have come across plenty of resources; this one was a solid add.

This book is designed for a 20 or 30 year old to advise them on how much money they need to retire on. As a 65 year old who just retired it was not as useful. My important takeaway was the destructive factor of inflation. Easy to read and helpful hints.