Live it Up without Outliving Your Money!: 10 Steps to a Perfect Retirement Portfolio

"Paul Merriman's new book is a rich and meaty guide to achieving real retirement security. It's full of wise, easy-to-follow advice that will stand the test of time."
—Knight Kiplinger, Editor in Chief, Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine and The Kiplinger Letter

"Read, Live It Up! Not only does Paul Merriman know the secret to making your money work as hard as you do, he loves helping people achieve their goals and dreams."
–Paul B. Farrell, author of The Millionaire Code, The Winning Portfolio and The Lazy Person's Guide to Investing

An educational and motivational guide to retiring without running out of money

No one understands this better than Paul Merriman. For four decades, Merriman has helped and watched people manage their money—both before and during retirement. Now, in Live It Up without Outliving Your Money!, Merriman distills what he has learned into a sound, time-tested approach to creating a portfolio that will fulfill your unique retirement needs.

Based on Merriman's popular retirement workshops, Live It Up without Outliving Your Money! offers ten straightforward steps to creating and maintaining the perfect retirement portfolio. From determining how much you will need to live on after retirement to recognizing and controlling the expenses of investing, the easy-to-understand strategies outlined within these pages can help you regain confidence in your retirement plan.

Stay current! visit www.wiley.com/go/paulmerriman

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Title is misleading - great book, 2007-11-26
When I read the title to this book, the first thing I thought was "sounds to good to be true". But to my surprise, the book has a tremendous amount of actionable information. I've read 10+ books on asset allocations and investing during retirement and this is by far the most complete. My only complaint is the hardsell on mutual funds by one particular company. But this was only done in a couple of chapters and does not diminish the vast majority of the books contents.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

The Guiding Merriman, 2007-08-16
The most complete book for understanding the whats and hows of retirement planning and investing for retirement. Complete with data to support the ideas the author presents.


3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Review of overall subject matter , 2007-05-30
One of the best references on the subject of retirement & Investing I have read so far. Step by step method for securing income during retirement. Intruduces a number of strategies Investors don't want you to know about. I have recommended this book to several of my friends who are also close to retirement. For those close to retirement, it should be front and center in their libraries. A lot of facts backing up recommendations. Short read.



12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

Easy to Read and Excellent Advice, 2007-03-21
I found Merriman's writing style easy to read. He does an excellent job of covering the basics of investing including asset allocation.

Merriman's suggestion of holding 50% foreign stocks and 50% U.S. stocks was a little surprising to me. I was not expecting such a high allocation to foreign stocks. Vanguard, for example, suggests no more than 20% foreign stocks. Merriman makes a compelling case for holding 50% foreign stocks, but past performance of foreign stocks relative to U.S. stocks does not necessarily mean future performance will be the same.

Another surprise was no mention of REITs. For a book published in 2005, I expected to see at least a 10% allocation to U.S. REITs.

The last surprise was his recommendation of DFA funds compared to Vanguard funds. He tries to make the case the 1% of assets fee per year to a DFA advisor is more than offset by the superior performance of a DFA fund portofolio compared to a Vanguard portfolio. Most of the extra return is not due to lower DFA expense ratios, but the fact that DFA offers more asset class choices than Vanguard. I'm a big Vanguard fan, plus manage my own portfolio.....so I'm not sold on the DFA approach.

Over-all an excellent book.

I would suggest companion books to supplement this book including:
The Richest Man in Babylon
Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor
The Millionaire Next Door
The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition
Index Mutual Funds: How to Simplify Your Financial Life and Beat the Pro's
The Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get On With Your Life
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing
Wealth: Grow It, Protect It, Spend It, and Share It
All About Asset Allocation.


6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

Better Book Than Most Books Offering Financial Advice, 2007-01-21
Merriman's book offers readers a review of different portfolio options with a focus on the risk of each portfolio. Most books and discussion of investment options fail to consider risk and thereby mislead readers into thinking that one can simply repeat the strategy that produced spectacular investment returns in a prior year.

This book provides example portfolios that were constructed using the most convincing economic theory to-date developed by leading financial and economic scientists at the highest regarded economic schools in the world (Chicago, Stanford, Yale). The probability of having greater portfolio returns than most people by receiving the average return of many asset classes (financial markets) is higher when investors follow the relatively low risk options Merriman provides.

I highly recommend this book to readers of all knowledge levels. I also highly recommend the firm Merriman Capital Management for its low fees, excellant customer service, and access to the mutual funds of Dimensional Fund Advisors. The portfolio returns of DFA funds have far exceeded the portfolio returns of most actively managed funds and even passively managed funds from Vanguard and Fidelity in all of the last 5 years including 2006.

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