Mark Evan Chimsky - Not Your Mothers Retirement: Secrets forTodays Women to Live Fully During the Best Years of Life

When I was in the early stages of developing Not Your Mothers Retirement, one glaring fact caught my attention: Huffington Post reported that according to research by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, only 29 percent of women have made saving for retirement their top financial priority. Without starting to plan years ahead of time, retirement can creep up on us and all of a sudden its too late to start saving enough or making well-thought-out decisions in advance about the future. Suddenly, the future has become the present. Most women say that they are too busy caring for others kids, spouses, partners and just trying to balance (or as my friend Aliza Sherman says, juggle) work and home life to find time to think about their own needs. As Catherine Collinson, president of the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, told Huffington Post: As women, were so busy with our priorities day to day whether they be family or work or some form of caregiving that women are shortchanging themselves when it comes to planning for the long term. We could learn a lesson from flight attendants, who, when theyre demonstrating the deployment of oxygen masks in an emergency, tell us: put one on yourself first, or you wont be able to help your loved ones.

When it comes to retirement planning, you dont need an emergency to start putting your own needs front and center. You do need time. And thats the reason for this book. Our aim is to provide valuable advice and recommendations to women in their 40s and 50s so that they can take action when it can still make a big difference. My hope is that youve bought this book for that very purpose: to jump-start the retirement-planning process so you can have the kind of retirement you really want. And the reassuring message here is that you can make that happen.

And before I go farther, a word about the word retirement. I know, for many it just doesnt apply any longer. Certainly, more and more of you are not retiring from the workforce, but are choosing to pursue a different kind of job or career path, using conscious intention to find work that is personally meaningful and fulfilling. Nowadays, the entire concept of retirement is radically different than it was in the past. Thats why Im calling this book Not Your Mothers Retirement. Choose another word that feels more appropriate to you. Redefine it, reinvent it, retire retirement, forge a new vision (and word) for your next chapter. Whatever you call it, I like to say that the later years are no longer just about recreation but about re-creation. Its your turn to identify what you want to do with your life and who you want to be.

Recent surveys reveal that one of the things that women fear most about retirement is not being able to make ends meet having to live on the edge, or even outliving their money. A 2013 study on Women, Money, and Power from the Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America revealed that 49 percent of women worry about becoming a bag lady in their retirement years. (Whats interesting is that 60 percent of the women concerned about this were the primary breadwinners of their households.) The image of the bag-lady retirement apparently looms large, a nightmare that causes 4:00-in-the-morning sleeplessness. So, why does this specter haunt women in increasing numbers? Researchers say its because the safety nets are becoming fewer and fewer and also because a lack of preparation leads to fear, and worries of worst-case scenarios can trump action. But you know that doesnt have to be the case. Thats why you took a proactive step and are seeing what the 20 experts in this book have to say.

And what a collection of contributors this book contains! As I developed this project, I set the bar high I wanted to include experts in their fields who would provide practical tools and information that could help women to create a successful retirement for themselves down the road. I plowed through studies and Web sites and talked to a wide range of women to find out what was of uppermost concern, and then, based on this research, I mapped out ten essential areas I wanted to address: housing, finances, work, travel, health, caregiving, volunteering, education, spirituality, and living solo. And then I went about finding writers who could provide guidance on how to make all these aspects of ones later years as rewarding as possible.

In Not Your Mothers Retirement, youll find illuminating essays on housing options by the award-winning writer Sally Abrahms and Kathryn McCamant, the architect who introduced the concept of cohousing to the United States. M. Cindy Hounsell, president of the Womens Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER), and Julie Jason, a respected adviser in retirement investing, provide essays that will help you hone your financial literacy and take action to save wisely for your retirement.

Read the essays by Marci Alboher, the expert on encore careers, and Nancy Collamer, a prominent career coach, to learn about pursuing a career with purpose in your later years. And for those whod rather play than work, youll enjoy the information-packed essays on unique travel opportunities that wont break your budget, by travel mavens Akaisha Kaderli and Nancy Thompson.

And when youre done exploring the world, think about expanding your horizons in other ways, such as taking lifelong-learning courses. Kali Lightfoot, executive director of the National Resource Center for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI), and Nancy Merz Nordstrom, a proponent of learning later, offer a smorgasbord of ideas and topics that will hopefully intrigue and inspire you either to take a course or teach one!

For those of you who, like my friend Lenora, say that what scares you most about retirement is not being able to be of use; feeling like I wont have a purpose, the essays on volunteering by Shirley Sagawa, a pioneer of the volunteer movement, and Dawn Angelo, a volunteer-advocate, will offer you a wealth of fascinating ideas to consider.

Statistics show that many women will become caregivers in retirement either of partners or parents or both. To prepare you to find ways to help others while also paying attention to your own well-being, read the enlightening essay by Paula Solomon, a noted coach and family caregiver herself.

If you want to keep active in retirement, there are practical essays by Elizabeth OBrien, a savvy MarketWatch.com columnist on retirement, and Moira Lanier, a popular fitness expert, that will show you how to get in shape now so that you have a healthy retirement later.