I understand, Shawn, not every book works for every reader. (We don’t have to get into how I’ve learned that.) If you want a more complete list of reading material then I’d suggest this thread:
https://www.early-retirement.org/fo...reading-list-with-a-military-twist-46732.html
... and possibly most of the threads on the venerable FAQ subforum:
https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f47/
That subforum was built by the first team of moderators a [-]few[/-] [-]several[/-] (wow, time flies) number of years ago.
Bob Clyatt also used to post here as ESRBob:
https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/members/esrbob-4388.html
and he wrote a good part of WLLM with the crowdsourced feedback of this forum’s members. His example (and eventual mentoring) led me to volunteer to write The Military Guide with more crowdsourced help from the members.
Back in the day, Bob sold his WLLM pitch to Nolo because their founder had written his own book about early retirement. The founder cashed out his equity in the company while Bob was working with the editors, and eventually the new leadership asked Bob to add the phrase “semi-retirement” to the WLLM Workbook. Bob later felt that phrase created more confusion than additional sales, but you might still be able to find the workbook (and its CD-ROM!) in print somewhere.
After publishing WLLM, Bob resumed the art studies he’d enjoyed so much as a young adult. That's turned into a very fulfilling bridge career that he'll never retire from, and you can see what he’s working on here:
https://www.clyattsculpture.com/
There aren't enough of us around for a statistically valid analysis, but every dual-military couple I've ever met who earned at least one active-duty or Reserve pension (let alone two of them) had an estate-planning challenge instead of concerns about their 4% SWR portfolio longevity.
The best community I've found for the discussions on this level of wealth (including estate plans, gifting, and philanthropy) is the Millionaire Money Mentors forum from ESIMoney.
It's a paid forum, and it is not cheap,* but most of the membership is of the "higher earning professionals" demographic. It has a handful of military veterans (including retirees), and you might find more reading recommendations there.
You could start by browsing the ESIMoney posts on retirement books, along with some of the Retirement Interviews. He's only published about 50 of the RIs, compared to nearly 400 Millionaire Interviews, but it's self-sustaining now as more of the MI writers go on to write their RIs.
*(For anyone else who's curious about MMM, the hack for earning a free membership in that forum is writing your Millionaire Interview for John Nardini to publish on ESIMoney. Once your interview is live, then you qualify for a free membership as long as you meet the low bar of a minimal amount of ongoing participation in the discussions. John also cautions that out of every 100 people who contact him about an interview, only ~10 people follow through. I found it to be a challenging exercise in self-reflection and storytelling.)
https://www.early-retirement.org/fo...reading-list-with-a-military-twist-46732.html
... and possibly most of the threads on the venerable FAQ subforum:
https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f47/
That subforum was built by the first team of moderators a [-]few[/-] [-]several[/-] (wow, time flies) number of years ago.
Bob Clyatt also used to post here as ESRBob:
https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/members/esrbob-4388.html
and he wrote a good part of WLLM with the crowdsourced feedback of this forum’s members. His example (and eventual mentoring) led me to volunteer to write The Military Guide with more crowdsourced help from the members.
Back in the day, Bob sold his WLLM pitch to Nolo because their founder had written his own book about early retirement. The founder cashed out his equity in the company while Bob was working with the editors, and eventually the new leadership asked Bob to add the phrase “semi-retirement” to the WLLM Workbook. Bob later felt that phrase created more confusion than additional sales, but you might still be able to find the workbook (and its CD-ROM!) in print somewhere.
After publishing WLLM, Bob resumed the art studies he’d enjoyed so much as a young adult. That's turned into a very fulfilling bridge career that he'll never retire from, and you can see what he’s working on here:
https://www.clyattsculpture.com/
As a dual-military retiree couple, you're quite likely to have more money than you need for the rest of your lives. I speak from personal experience.
There aren't enough of us around for a statistically valid analysis, but every dual-military couple I've ever met who earned at least one active-duty or Reserve pension (let alone two of them) had an estate-planning challenge instead of concerns about their 4% SWR portfolio longevity.
The best community I've found for the discussions on this level of wealth (including estate plans, gifting, and philanthropy) is the Millionaire Money Mentors forum from ESIMoney.
It's a paid forum, and it is not cheap,* but most of the membership is of the "higher earning professionals" demographic. It has a handful of military veterans (including retirees), and you might find more reading recommendations there.
You could start by browsing the ESIMoney posts on retirement books, along with some of the Retirement Interviews. He's only published about 50 of the RIs, compared to nearly 400 Millionaire Interviews, but it's self-sustaining now as more of the MI writers go on to write their RIs.
*(For anyone else who's curious about MMM, the hack for earning a free membership in that forum is writing your Millionaire Interview for John Nardini to publish on ESIMoney. Once your interview is live, then you qualify for a free membership as long as you meet the low bar of a minimal amount of ongoing participation in the discussions. John also cautions that out of every 100 people who contact him about an interview, only ~10 people follow through. I found it to be a challenging exercise in self-reflection and storytelling.)
