Table of Contents
- The $214,000 Mistake, How to Double Your Social Security and Maximize Your IRAS Hit #1 in Nine Categories on Amazon
- Will Power Doesn’t Work
- Sudoku
- Recipe: Roasted Vegetable Lasagna with Ricotta Cheese
The $214,000 Mistake, How to Double Your Social Security and Maximize Your IRAs Hit #1 in Nine Categories on Amazon!
by James Lange, CPA/Attorney
Thank you. We could not have done it without you. Our newest book, The $214,000 Mistake, How to Double Your Social Security and Maximize Your IRAs, hit #1 in nine categories on Amazon.
Amazon Best Sellers Rank
Regular Books:
Books > Business & Money > Personal Finance > Retirement Planning
Books > Business & Money > Taxation > Personal
Books > Business & Money > Accounting
Kindle Store:
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Personal Finance > Retirement Planning
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Taxation > Personal
Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > Two hours or more (65-100 pages) > Business & Money
Free Books:
Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > Two hours or more (65-100 pages) > Business & Money
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Personal Finance > Retirement Planning
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Taxation > Personal
We now have six best-selling books. But we have no intention of slacking off. Our publicity efforts are just beginning.
I put a lot of time and effort into creating what I consider valuable content that will help people live more prosperous and comfortable lives. This book has tremendous value for affluent readers…but the book has even more value for readers of moderate means.
Please, request copies to give away to your housekeeper, your favorite waitress, your gardener, anyone you know who you think might benefit from our recommendations. I want these best practices for getting the most out of your Social Security to be widely disseminated and acted upon. As one reviewer said:
“It is the most important numbers game most people will ever play.”
Don’t be shy. I genuinely love getting requests for our materials. We would be pleased to give you as many copies as you like. In addition, we would also be happy to give you as many copies of the DVD we recently produced, New Tax Laws Create Unintended Benefits for Savvy Retirement Plan Owners Who Act Quickly, or for that matter our flagship book, Retire Secure!, or our dedicated Roth IRA conversion book, The Roth Revolution.
And, just in case you missed it…Tim Grant from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette came to my office, interviewed me for over two hours, and published a lengthy article. Here is the link, http://bit.ly/The214kMistakePG, if you want to read the article.
But, here are four short excerpts that I feel really capture the spirit of the book:
“Mr. Lange…calculates that someone who waits until age 70 to file will break even by age 82 with the person who started collecting at age 62.”
“Assuming they both live to age 95, not only will the person who waited until age 70 be earning close to double the amount of monthly income as the earlier filer, he also will end up collecting $214,000 more over his lifetime than someone who starts collecting at age 62.”
“Even if we make a wrong call and we die early, we’re dead. And dead people don’t have financial problems,” Mr. Lange said.
“That is a really important point. We should not fear dying for financial purposes. We should fear being old and broke. That’s the legitimate fear.”
Once again, I would like to thank you for making our book a #1 best-seller. Now we are going to do everything we can to get this information into the hands of people who can really use it.
Will Power Doesn’t Work
by James Lange CPA/Attorney
Willpower Doesn’t Work by Benjamin Hardy is an intriguing book that I would highly recommend. It debunks many ideas we hold about how a lack of willpower is the reason we fail to make permanent changes in our life—changes that we want to make.
This isn’t totally new ground, but he argues that “willpower is actually holding you back.” So, what does work?
He says that if you think you need willpower to achieve something, you are not addressing the deeper internal conflict: you don’t know what you want, and you haven’t committed to it. Once you really decide what you want and commit to it, the issue of willpower is no longer relevant. He quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”
Ok. So, how do you assess your level of commitment? He says commitment requires:
• Investing upfront
• Making it public
• Setting a timeline
• Installing several forms of feedback and accountability
• Removing or altering everything in your environment that opposes your commitment
Change your environment. That was an idea that resonated with me. He says, “the best use of your choices is consciously designing environments that facilitate your commitments.” Envision what you want your future to look like and take steps to make that enhanced future happen. Willpower doesn’t enter the equation—or at least a lot less.
In my case, I have already written how I hired a trainer who comes to our house three days a week. Cindy, my wife, and I consciously designed our environment to support our commitment to do weight resistance exercise three days per week. We invested in a trainer, made it public, built in a timeline, we’re accountable to the trainer, and we set up the room to exercise in. We employed the same technique with diet. We hired a chef with the directive to shop and cook nothing but the healthiest food for me, Cindy and our daughter, Erica. If there is no junk food in the house, I must eat healthfully or eat less, both of which are good options. It isn’t about willpower. We’ve removed options and limited choices; we’ve “created an environment that makes your [our] goals inevitable.”
Hardy gives lots of examples. Though “change your environment” could be taken to an extreme, like changing where you live, Hardy gives lots of more “do-able” examples. You could do things in different places like taking your laptop to a coffee house but without the charger. That forces you to get done what you need to do in a finite amount of time. That falls into a category he calls “forcing functions,” where you turn a behavior you’d like to do into something you have to do.
Hardy also talks about our over-connected society and the importance of getting away from email, our cell phones, our beepers and always having to be on call. This isn’t just for younger generations. This is for us. Even when I get together with my buddies to go for a walk, one of them has his cell phone on all the time and takes every call. It isn’t like he is a doctor on call a limited number of hours per month. While he considers always being available great customer service, I see his behavior reducing his potential for happiness.
Hardy talks about addictions, even ones that aren’t crippling. We are addicted to certain behaviors that contradict our goals—too much social media taking time away from things that are important to us, for example. So, we have to approach making changes like we are overcoming an addiction. I have been on a dairy-free, sugar-free and gluten-free diet. It is pretty easy for me because we don’t have any of that food at home. But, I did get in the habit of eating this high-calorie coconut ice cream substitute. So, I just stopped buying it and it is neither in my house nor at the office.
Hardy includes a chapter about eliminating unneeded stuff. Several years ago one of the hot books was The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondō. Of course, I bought that book too. I interpreted Kondō to say you should basically take everything out of your house and dispose of everything unless you have a good reason to keep it. I never went that far, but I did do some decluttering, and Hardy suggests I do some more. Disorganization and clutter sap energy.
If you read the book, you will identify plenty of ideas that you recognize as valuable, but you won’t be willing to do them. For instance, Hardy advocates time of reflection/prayer and gratitude and journaling in the morning. It’s all I can do to work-out first thing in the morning three days a week and drag my butt to work for my first meeting that usually starts at 10:00 a.m.
On the other hand, developing a morning ritual and/or purposefully stating your goals and intentions for the day while your energy is fresh, is an objective I can get behind.
If you do read it and enjoy it, please drop me a line. Or, if you have a book you would recommend that has been influential in your life, please share the title.
Roasted Vegetable Lasagna with Ricotta Cheese
Serves: 6
Prep. Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 55 minutes
Who says you can’t enjoy comfort food while nourishing your body? This recipe will quickly become a family favorite! If 6 servings are too large for your family, this dish freezes well.
• 1 small eggplant, very thinly sliced lengthwise
• 1 zucchini, very thinly sliced lengthwise
• 1 yellow summer squash, very thinly sliced lengthwise
• 1 bell pepper (any color), seeded and cut into large squares
• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 cups Ricotta cheese
• 1 large egg, beaten
• ½ teaspoon dried oregano
• Pinch of freshly ground black pepper
• 1 (15-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
In a large bowl, combine the eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, and bell pepper with the oil and salt and toss well. Spread the vegetables in a single layer on two baking sheets and roast until they start to brown and caramelize around the edges, 20 to 25 minutes, rotating the sheets half-way through the cooking time.
Remove the baking sheets from the oven and set them aside to cool. Lower the oven temperature to 350°F.
While the vegetables are cooling, whisk together the Ricotta cheese, egg, oregano and black pepper in a medium bowl. Spread one-fourth of the mixture in the bottom on a 9-inch square glass baking dish, then spoon ½ cup of the crushed tomatoes on top. Cover the tomatoes with a layer of one of the types of vegetables. Continue to layer the remaining. “cheese,” tomatoes, and vegetables until everything is used up, finishing with tomatoes.
Bake the lasagna for 30 minutes. Allow it to cool for 5 minutes before serving.