The 7 Best Retirement Books

What do I want (or need) from my retirement? Maybe you want to buy a vacation house on the beach, or travel the world, or just spend time with friends and family. No matter your goals or the path you take, the key steps that preretirees should take to ensure a smooth transition into retirement remain the same. To help you get started, we compiled a list of the seven best retirement books according to Morningstar writers and reviewed titles from recent guests on The Long View.

7 Best Retirement Books

1. How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement, by Christine Benz

In the latest book by Morningstar’s director of personal finance and retirement planning, Benz explores retirement not just from the angle of dollars and cents, but with a more holistic approach. Throughout interviews with 20 retirement experts, Benz asks, what do you want to do, and who do you want to be in retirement? How will you develop a sense of purpose if you’re not clocking in to a job every day?

There is still plenty for the numbers-focused reader as well, including sections on your retirement income style, organizing your portfolio, and managing fixed-income spending.

Here you can read excerpts from the book and find links to the related podcast.

2. Retirement Planning Guidebook: Navigating the Important Decisions for Retirement Success by Wade Pfau

Pfau’s guidebook makes preparing for retirement less daunting, with chapters dedicated to the major decisions that come with this life stage, such as personal retirement income style, Medicare options and Social Security benefits, tax management, and more. The book truly guides readers through monitoring and adjusting their plan to ensure retirement success.

3. Can I Retire?: How Much Money You Need to Retire and How to Manage Your Retirement Savings, Explained in 100 Pages or Less by Mike Piper

Cut the jargon and keep it simple. This short read from personal finance author Piper provides the answers to some of the most essential retirement questions about annuities, Roth IRA conversions, taxes, and more in under 100 pages.

4. Retirement Reboot: Commonsense Financial Strategies for Getting Back on Track by Mark Miller

One of the biggest worries looming over the heads of preretirees boils down to four words: Do I have enough? Miller’s book guides the reader through the biggest questions, decisions, and topics of retirement planning: timing, Social Security, Medicare, savings, and home equity. Readers can put these pages into practice, even if they’re only a few years away from their retirement, to improve their situations (and peace of mind). If you want more tips from Miller, he contributes regularly to Morningstar.com.

5. Keys to a Successful Retirement: Staying Happy, Active, and Productive in Your Retired Years by Fritz Gilbert

Another question in the back of many preretirees’ heads: What will I do with all the free time? Gilbert’s book meshes personal finance with personal life advice to emphasize how retirement can lead retirees to newfound freedom by embracing their mental health as much as their financial health.

6. More Than Enough: A Brief Guide to the Questions That Arise After Realizing You Have More Than You Need by Mike Piper

Piper’s book answers retirement questions for the supersavers who “have not only saved ‘enough,’ they have saved ‘more than enough.’” This introduces another set of financial and nonfinancial considerations, including charitable donations and estate planning.

7. Spend ‘Til the End: Raising Your Living Standard in Today’s Economy and When You Retire by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns

Kotlikoff and Burns go beyond the “rules of thumb”—or rather, “rules of dumb”—to show readers how to spend and enjoy their money in the present while also saving up for the future. The book also includes advice about career planning, finding the right place to live, and the basics of investing.