Ready…Set…Retire! Financial Strategies for the Rest of Your Life

Foreword by Ben Stein

Ray Lucia doesn't look like a financial type. He's not a thin, anemic looking guy with suspenders, horn-rimmed glasses, and flinty blue eyes. Nor does he sound like a financial type. His voice is rich, sonorous, and alive, like that of the rock singer and guitarist he is. (He has the "battle of the bands" award to prove it, handed to him by a member of The Who.)

Ray's sounds and message are never boring, never number crunching, never dry statistics. When he talks, it's more like Pete Townshend singing. Maybe a bit frank, but not boring in the slightest.

What comes out of Ray when you meet him and listen to him is the exact opposite of what comes out of most gurus of financial planning: Ray is as warm as they are cold, cold, cold. Ray is a people person, and he exudes concern about people in this country like an old fashioned country priest. He may know more than you do about (financial) salvation, but he's never going to hold it over your head. He's going to help you with what he knows because he cares about his people, those who come to him for advice and counsel.

And, wow, does he know a lot! He knows about investments, about their track records, about their future prospects, about how they're taxed, and about how they should be held. He knows about retirement vehicles – his specialite de la maison – of every description. He knows them so well that when I talked to him, I – who have studied this area for decades and have written books about it – am staggered by my own limitations. (He never makes me feel bad about them, though.)

Ray knows about rules, about taxes, about ways to stick it to the tax man and save your family first. He knows about how to guard your future by accumulating savings in different forms, how to make sure you don't outlive your money, and how to provide a cushion for your retirement future against inflation by maximizing your returns from stocks while keeping liquid in the short and medium run. His strategy is called "Buckets of Money®." It's the future, and it works.

The easy way to say it is that there's almost nothing Ray doesn't know about retirement planning. And he knows this above all: that people do not care how much they know until they know how much you care. Ray cares. He's already rich and has a beautiful wife, so he's not in it to pay his bills. He's in it to help, and help he does...at his seminars, in his money-management work, and in his book about retirement. Presented in ht e same readily accessible, war, and caring way Ray conducts his life, in expository paragraphs, conversations, and give-and-take, Ray tells us what we need to know in every possible dimension. This book is Ray on printed page: a rock star of personal financial, available to you, understandable by you – optimistic, upbeat, and right on target.

I wish I'd written it. I didn't, but Ray did, and now it's your job – and your pleasure – to read it. You really can't consider yourself ready to prepare to retire until you've read this book. Go ahead. Be good to yourself.

~ Ben Stein

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