Laurence Kotlikoff, one of our nation's premier personal finance experts and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Get What's Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security, harnesses the power of economics and advanced computation to deliver a host of spellbinding but simple money magic tricks that will transform your financial future. Each trick shares a basic ingredient for financial savvy based on economic common sense, not Wall Street snake oil. Money Magic offers a clear path to a richer, happier, and safer financial life. Whether you're making education, career, marriage, lifestyle, housing, investment, retirement, or Social Security decisions, Kotlikoff provides a clear framework for readers of all ages and income levels to learn tricks like: * How to choose a career to maximize your lifetime earnings (hint: you may want to consider picking up a plunger instead of a stethoscope). * How to buy a superior education on the cheap and graduate debt-free. * Why it's smarter to cash out your IRA to pay off your mortgage. * Why delaying retirement for two years can reap dividends and how to lower your average lifetime tax bracket. Money Magic's most powerful act is transforming your financial thinking, explaining not just what to do, but why to do it. Get ready to discover the economics approach to financial planning-the fruit of a century's worth of research by thousands of cloistered economic wizards whose now-accessible collective findings turn conventional financial advice on its head. Kotlikoff uses his soft heart, hard nose, dry wit, and flashing wand to cast a powerful spell, leaving you eager to accomplish what you formerly dreaded: financial planning.

Increase your spending power, enhance your standard of living, and achieve financial independence with this "must-read" guide to money management (Jane Bryant Quinn). Laurence Kotlikoff, one of our nation's premier personal finance experts and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Get What's Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security, harnesses the power of economics and advanced computation to deliver a host of spellbinding but simple money magic tricks that will transform your financial future. Each trick shares a basic ingredient for financial savvy based on economic common sense, not Wall Street snake oil. Money Magic offers a clear path to a richer, happier, and safer financial life. Whether you're making education, career, marriage, lifestyle, housing, investment, retirement, or Social Security decisions, Kotlikoff provides a clear framework for readers of all ages and income levels to learn tricks like: - How to choose a career to maximize your lifetime earnings (hint: you may want to consider picking up a plunger instead of a stethoscope). - How to buy a superior education on the cheap and graduate debt-free. - Why it's smarter to cash out your IRA to pay off your mortgage. - Why delaying retirement for two years can reap dividends and how to lower your average lifetime tax bracket. Money Magic's most powerful act is transforming your financial thinking, explaining not just what to do, but why to do it. Get ready to discover the economics approach to financial planning-the fruit of a century's worth of research by thousands of cloistered economic wizards whose now-accessible collective findings turn conventional financial advice on its head. Kotlikoff uses his soft heart, hard nose, dry wit, and flashing wand to cast a powerful spell, leaving you eager to accomplish what you formerly dreaded: financial planning.

This paperback edition is not available in the U.S. and Canada. Many undergraduate texts treat macroeconomics as a set of distinct topics rather than as a unified body of theory and empirical findings. In contrast, this text by Alan Auerbach and Laurence Kotlikoff uses a single analytic framework--the two-period life-cycle model--to explore and connect each of the major issues in contemporary macroeconomics. The model describes the evolution of the economy over time in terms of the behavior of overlapping generations of individuals, each of whom lives for two periods: youth and old age. This versatile framework can encompass most macroeconomic schools of thought through the alteration of key assumptions. The use of one basic model also allows the authors to explore important topics not always addressed adequately in other texts; these include credit constraints, real business cycles, generational accounting, and international capital flows markets.Written in a clear, accessible style, this shortened and simplified second edition provides a systematic way to interpret macroeconomic outcomes, to understand various policy proposals, and to appreciate how individuals and firms fit into the big picture.Not for sale in U.S. and Canada

Rich or poor, young or old, high school or college grad, this book, written by economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff and syndicated financial columnist Scott Burns, can change your life for the better! If you follow the advice in this book, it will raise your living standard (possibly by a lot), improve your lifestyle, and help you spend 'til the end. And it will completely transform your financial thinking, turning every bit of conventional financial wisdom on its head.

If this sounds like a revolution in financial planning, you got it. So do "The New York Times," "The Washington Post," "The Wall Street Journal," "USA Today," "Time," "Consumer Reports," and other top publications that have been featuring the authors' economics-based "consumption smoothing" approach to financial planning.

"Spend 'Til the End" substitutes economic wisdom for the "rules of dumb" that currently pass for financial advice. In the process it indicts the investment and financial-planning industry for giving most people saving and insurance targets that are much too high and then convincing them to invest in risky mutual funds and expensive insurance policies. The result is that most people are scrimping and saving during the years when they could be spending and enjoying their money -- and with no sure payoff.

Easy to read, this book is packed with practical and often shocking advice on whether to work, how to pick a career, which job to take, where to live, what sort of house to buy, how much to save, when to retire, which kind of retirement account to use, whether to have kids, whether to divorce, when to take Social Security, how fast to spend down your assets in retirement, and how to invest.

What determines savings? The question is timely and important. The U.S. saving rate is less than half that of Japan, Germany, and other developed countries, and the imbalance in saving rates across countries is responsible, in large part for the imbalance in international trade. This book examines a number of important determinants of wealth accumulation, including retirement bequests, and precautionary saving motives, demographics, the tax structure, social security, and insurance institutions. Using a blend of theory, empirical research and simulation methods, it reaches some surprising conclusions about what determines savings.Kotlikoff notes that most of U.S. wealth is due not to life cycle saving for retirement but rather to bequests and other intergenerational transfers. The process of passing wealth from one generation to the next may be explained, in large part, because of imperfect annuity arrangements.In addition to life span uncertainty, the author points out other types of uncertainty such as uncertainty about future medical expenditures can greatly stimulate saving. Fiscal policies, such as unfunded social security, can dramatically alter a country's wealth, although the process can take many years. Unfortunately, Kotlikoff observes, official fiscal deficits are intrinsically unreliable for measuring the government's stance of fiscal policy. He also concludes that the baby busts currently underway in the United States, Europe, and Japan are likely to improve overall economic welfare despite their detrimental impacts on social security systemsLaurence J. Kotlikoff is Professor of Economics at Boston University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Discover how the global financial plague is poised to return, and what can be done to stop it

This is not your father's financial system. Jimmy Stewart, the trustworthy, honest banker in the movie, It's a Wonderful Life, is dead.?And so is his small-town bank, Bailey Savings & Loan. Instead, we're watching It's a Horrible Mess with Wall Street (aka the Vegas Strip) playing ever larger craps with our economy and our tax dollars.

This book, written by one of the world's most respected economist, describes in lively, humorous, simple, but also deadly serious terms the big con underlying the big game?the web of interconnected financial, political, and regulatory malfeasance that culminated in financial meltdown and brought us to our economic knees. But it also proposes an amazingly simply solution?Limited Purpose Banking to make Wall Street safe for Main Street.This book, as well as the financial fix described within it, have received rave reviews from a veritable who's who of policymakers and economics, plus five economics Nobel LaureatesWritten by a leading economist whose insights on this topic are unparalleledOutlines the first and only proposal to fundamentally fix our financial disaster for good

"Jimmy Stewart Is Dead" will fundamentally change the way you think about the economy, financial markets, and the government.

For anyone with an interest in pensions--workers and employers, personnel directors, accountants, actuaries, lawyers, insurance agents, financial analysts, government officials, and social scientists--this book is required reading. Now, without the aid of a pension specialist, anyone can determine how their particular pension plan stacks up against the average. Using virtually all available government sources (including computerized data unavailable in print) and their own extensive surveys, the authors present a comprehensive description of the structural features and financial conditions of U.S. private, state, city, and municipal pension plans. The introductions to the hundreds of tables explain and highlight the information.
The picture that emerges of the typical plan and its significant variations is crucial to all those with a financial stake in pensions. The reader can compare pension vesting, retirement, and benefit provisions by plan type, plan size, industry, union status, and many more characteristics. With this information, workers can evaluate just how generous their employer is; job applicants can compare fringe benefits of prospective employers; personnel directors can judge their competitive edge.
The financial community will find especially interesting the analysis of the unfunded liabilities of private, state, and local pension funds. The investment decisions of private and public pension funds and their return performances are described as well.
Government officials and social scientists will find the analysis of pension coverage, the receipt of pension income by the elderly, cost-of-living adjustments, and disability insurance of special importance in evaluating the proper degree of public intervention in the area of old age income support.
Pensions in the American Economy is comprehensive and easy to use. Every reader, from small-business owners and civil servants to pension fund specialists, will find in it essential information about this increasingly important part of labor compensation and retirement finances.