Lee Eisenberg's The Number uses a hot media topic — the graying of the baby boomer generation — to suggest a different approach to thinking about personal finance and retirement planning. And as long as he's got a hot topic, he's going to use another one — blogs — to help get his message to the masses.
Eisenberg's target audience is baby boomers, who, as Newsweek and innumerable other media outlets tell us, are hitting their 60s. Thus, boomers are starting to think about and confront retirement. The Number is "the amount of money you need to secure the rest of your life." But Eisenberg, a former Esquire magazine editor, takes a different approach. He doesn't crunch numbers or give specific financial and investment advice. Instead, perhaps reflecting what he speculates to be an aspect of the boomer generation, he wants readers "to think about the rest of your life." In other words, Eisenberg believes the Number can only be calculated if an individual has an idea of how they want to spend their retirement. Thus, his focus is on "life planning," not retirement planning.
Although the book urges boomers to essentially think about what they want to be when they grow up, Eisenberg attempts to put some structure to the process. He breaks the book into three parts.
The first part — called "Chasing It" — is predicated on the thought that everyone is chasing the Number, whether we want to admit it or not. As a result, he classifies people into four personality types:
Procrastinators - Those with no plan, no real sense of the Number and "no nothing."Pluckers - Those that have a vague plan and an arbitrary Number.
Plotters - Those that have a plan and a Number but no purpose.
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