The Million Dollar Difference
Discover How Simple Yet Powerful Strategies Can Make a Massive Impact Your Wealth
Touting the services of trusted financial planners, The Million Dollar Difference is a retirement guide in which narrative examples lead the way.
Anna Knight’s financial planning guide The Million Dollar Difference explains how to achieve a well-funded retirement.
By profiling two couples in their early fifties, with the same family sizes, lifestyles, and resources, and both looking forward to early retirement, the book demonstrates what enabled one family to come out ahead of the other by several million dollars. Though they didn’t discuss it with each other, both couples handled their finances in different ways to provide for their retirements, fund their future goals, and leave legacies behind.
To compare and contrast these decisions, the book details each couple’s expenditures, assets and liabilities, taxes, and visions of what they would like their retirements to look like. One couple chooses a do-it-yourself approach, accepting periodic suggestions from their bank’s financial services staff. But they miss a critical calculation oversight that would leave them out of money by the age of seventy-nine. A certified financial planner would catch such an error, the book intones: the more financially secure couple does their research, interviews several financial planners, and hires one with good recommendations.
Using these stories as a jumping-off point, the book suggests strategies for accelerating and securing one’s own financial well-being, and shows how a financial planner can help. A strong planner, it says, will not only suggest powerful portfolio-building strategies, but will share useful information about retirement planning. From this perspective: talking about one’s finances can open doors to people, strategies, and actions that facilitate financial abundance.
Alongside advice about what to look for in a financial planner, the book lists ten important questions to ask potential planners, including what services can be expected and how they will be paid. An abundance of options are interrogated, and there’s coverage of what pitfalls to avoid. Helpful suggestions for protecting one’s assets and minimizing taxes also play in.
The book’s clear graphics are a benefit, as with an illustration of the emotions that arise during the investing process that pinpoints where poor decisions are made. Also beneficial is the book’s glossary of terms—and the fact that its salient points appear in bold print.
The Million Dollar Difference is an edifying financial planning guide that encourages working with a professional to reach retirement in an extraordinary way.
Reviewed by
Kristine Morris
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
