Magazines Offer Retirement Advice Amid Changing Landscape

By Jennifer Hopfinger
June 28, 2006 08:40 AM

Fortune magazine and its offspring Fortune Small Business offer two different takes this summer on how to make the most of your money in retirement.

Fortune's "Retire Rich: Take Control of Your Future" issue is a retirement guide grounded in harsh realities that warn readers they may not have enough money for the golden years. It includes some flights of fancy such as where to retire in style.

Writer Geoffrey Colvin says that retirement's image is undergoing a major and much needed change. "The reality, which the financial-planning brochures and TV commercials rarely suggest, is that a great many working Americans don't really long for a leisure-filled retirement. Which is a good thing, because many of them won't be able to afford one."

The fact that people are living longer is a blessing and a curse because it makes leaving the workforce at the traditional retirement age even harder.

It doesn't help that companies are getting rid of pension plans, which Colvin explores in his story, "The end of pensions." Even if workers saved and invested on their own, what will happen to the market when baby boomers start taking their money out at retirement? Writer Yuval Rosenburg examines the potential asset meltdown in "The boomer bust."

Writer Anne Fisher says the situation isn't as bad as it sounds, considering that surveys show 70 percent of Americans want to work as long as they're able to. In her story, "Get ready for your second act," Fisher introduces readers to five people who left long corporate careers behind to find a new passion -- including a Sprint engineering manager who now runs a motorcycle riding school, a Xerox computer training manager who is now a professional nature photographer, and the former COO of Coca-Cola who now owns a California winery.

To have any chance of ever quitting in the golden years, the right investments are crucial, and Fortune recommends stocks to weather market swings and mutual funds to fuel long-term growth. Writers Ellen McGirt and Andy Serwer help answer the tough question of how much you'll need in retirement.

If you get it all right and you're finally ready to hang it up, writer Ellen Florian Kratz suggests the best places in the country "to make your retirement fantasy a reality."

Fortune Small Business has a different perspective on retirement in "You've Earned It, Now Keep It!"

"Investing is different for small-business owners. The guidelines that financial experts tout make sense for the masses - keep credit card debt low, diversify your holdings, don't put your home at risk - but many successful entrepreneurs break all three of those rules on their first startup," writes Jeff Garigliano. "Business owners are wealthier than the average investor, more self-sufficient, and far more skeptical of conventional wisdom."

So they should take an unconventional approach to personal finance in their later years -- by staying in the entrepreneurial game as investors. Devoting a portion of one's portfolio to investing in other startups enables older businessmen and women to stay involved in the fields they love, apply a lifetime of expertise, and make even more money.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism