Rick Rodgers - Dont Retire Broke: An Indispensable Guide to Tax-Efficient Retirement Planning and Financial Freedom

Praise for Dont Retire Broke

Dont Retire Broke is not only an easy read, its an important one! Whether youre just beginning to plan for retirement, in the middle-stages, or nearing the finish-line, Dont Retire Broke offers great tips and strategies to ensure your long-term success. And, as if not more importantly, the book also covers all the classic mistakes one can make while planning, with real-life lessons that are sobering yet helpful and can save you thousands. While one can never plan enough for how to manage the rest of their life, this bookand the opportunity to learn from a master like Rick Rodgersprovides a tremendous foundation on which to build. I highly recommend it!

Tom Baldrige, president and CEO, The Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Don't Retire Broke explains how best to maximize your wealth before and after retirement, gives you real life examples of those who could have made better decisions and then gives a defined set of choices for our circumstances. I find it especially thought provoking for small business owners, who make retirement decisions based on very little knowledge or expertise in these matters, and often find themselves at retirement age still trying to determine how best to utilize the funds they have accumulated for retirement. Tax laws are complicated and Rick has done a great job in making this book easy to read and understand for the layman...this book has something for everyone...no matter their financial status.

Gerard L. Glenn, past chairman of the board, SCORE Association, SCORE Foundation

An Indispensible Guide to Tax-Efficient Retirement Planning and Financial Freedom

RICK RODGERS

Copyright 2017 by Rick Rodgers

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

DONT RETIRE BROKE

EDITED BY JODI BRANDON

TYPESET BY PERFECTYPE, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

Cover design by Rob Johnson/Toprotype

Front cover/spine image by Lightspring/shutterstock

Back cover image by Sergey Nivens/shutterstock

Printed in the U.S.A.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

CIP Data Available Upon Request.

This book is dedicated to my wife,
Jessica Rodgers.

In Dont Retire Broke, Rick Rodgers builds on the strength of his first edition while preserving all of the style and impact of his earlier release. The goal remains the same: Use the investment tools available to maximize your wealth by investing in ways that minimize your tax liability now and in retirement.

My first meetings with Rick were the result of my business as an educator. Eventually, our conversations circled around to his business in wealth management, a subject in which he is well versed. Rick understands that we all want to maximize our wealth, though most of us dont have enough technical expertise to preserve what wealth we have and maximize investments through sound decision-making. Reading Dont Retire Broke confirmed my suspicions that I am no exception to this modern-day phenomenon. Rick is a well-known and well-respected wealth manager with an impeccable record of success and ringing endorsements. We are fortunate that he is willing to explain the complexities and intricacies of tax law and the impact they have on investment strategies for the sole purpose of maximizing our assets and minimizing tax liability.

Tax laws are complicated and ever changing. Each of us wants to ensure that we take advantage of every legal means at our disposal to secure the maximum investment of our assets at retirement; but how many of us are achieving that goal, especially with continually changing tax laws? How do we keep pace with all of the modifications that make new opportunities available to us? Rick does an excellent job in demonstrating the myriad of options one has and the implications subtle decisions can make in our retirement portfolio. No two cases are alike. For example, a very simple decision which everyone has to make, but a decision with significant impact, is when to start taking Social Security benefits. Rick methodically takes the reader through the implications of this decision in a very understandable way, complete with graphics and charts. Ricks examples clearly demonstrate that everyones situation is unique, and early in Ricks writing it becomes abundantly clear how beneficial this book is to improving the quality of ones financial life.

What makes this book credible and comprehensible is the style in which Rick presents the material, which has the scholarly content to be used in college-level investment courses and is yet readable for the lay person. Concepts are rooted in a full understanding of tax law, supplemented with real case studies and easily understandable Ricks Tips. After reading the book, I recognized that my own three-legged stool was quite shaky, and I have made the same mistake as have many others: attempting to maximize pre-tax investments by building 401(k) type accounts to reduce current tax liabilities and failing to think long-term by not balancing my investments through Roth IRAs. Through the case studies one begins to see how minimal changes in investment decisions can make sizeable differences in your retirement and, thus, your quality of life.

No matter the magnitude of your wealth, there is something in Ricks book for everybody. You probably know people in situations similar to those Rick describes throughout Dont Retire Broke who would benefit from the material contained in these chapters. This book reminds us all that retirement planning must start early. We can all benefit from reading this book early in our career and using it as a reference in succeeding years to reexamine our investment plans. Fortunately, it is never too late to adjust our strategies. I know I have.

John M. Anderson, Ph.D.

President, Millersville University

Millersville, Pennsylvania

Frank Richardson, Army veteran and business owner

In September 2002, Frank Richardson died of natural causes in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Frank was a good man who served four years in the United States Army and fought for his country in the Korean War. He then spent 25 years building a successful wholesale lumber business in Lancaster. Frank worked hard to improve both his own life and the lives of others around him, employing 1,000 people in the townpeople like you and me who got up every morning, drank coffee, took their kids to school, and built lives.

Unfortunately, Frank didnt work as hard to ensure all of his assets would be available to future generations. In general, he mistrusted financial advisers and never made time for them, a lesson he learned from watching his father follow an advisers advice yet still lose the family farm during the Great Depression.