The 7 Most Important Equations for Your Retirement: The Fascinating People and Ideas Behind Planning Your Retirement Income

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I can trace the origin of this project to a Saturday afternoon in mid-July 2011. I was reviewing some old academic articles and came across the 1965 classic by Menahem Yaari, in which he extended Irving Fisher's model of lifecycle consumption to include lifetime uncertainty. (Equation #4 in this book.) It is a simple, modest and beautiful expression, and I was struck by how relevant that equation still is—45 years later—for retirement income planning in the 21st century. The July weather was pleasant, the day was long, and I proceeded to muse about other noteworthy calculations and equations that are indispensable for retirement income planning. I wondered about the number of such equations, the people who deserve credit for those equations, and when they had actually been discovered. Isn't that what Saturday afternoons are all about? At some point I said to myself: “Hey, perhaps there is a book project here …” And so, after much digging, many conversations with advisors, friends and colleagues, six months later I completed a manuscript.

As I mentioned in the Introduction, this book is really about retirement conversations, and this project would have not been possible without the many conversations I have had over many years. In particular, I am grateful to Narat Charupat, Peng Chen, Francois Gadenne, Huaxiong Huang, Mark Kamstra, David Promislow, Chris Robinson, ...