The Number Review: Finding It

March 14th, 2008

This is the fourth installment of a 5 part review of Lee Eisenberg’s The Number. The first installment can be found here, the second installment here, and the third installment here. The reviews appear every Friday afternoon.

The third and final section of The Number is called Finding It, which, since Figuring It didn’t really go into the actual mechanics of figuring out your retirement number in any sort of detail, I kind of thought that this section might. But this book is a book about how to think, and what to think about, much more than it is a book about math. So Finding It turns out to be more metaphorically about “What do you want your retirement to be?” rather than “How to plan for the retirement you want.”

The section basically has two sets of stories - discussing retirement planners and retirement workshops, and the things that are talked about there, and discussing a company that created one of the first “retirement” communities in Arizona, and has become a conglomerate of creating entire cities devoted to seniors. The book questions if that’s what we really want - and obviously, it is what some people want, but it is what you want? Is “the number” about downshifting your life, or is it about finding meaning in your life?

I honestly didn’t really find this section as engaging as the first two sections. I found some of the examples interesting, but I wasn’t very invested in the stories or the outcomes. There were a lot of questions that didn’t seem to ever be answered, and some that I just didn’t feel any connection to. I don’t exactly think this section was necessarily aimed at a higher income bracket than we are in, like I did with previous sections, I guess for me, it just wasn’t asking the questions I needed answered.

Many of my regular readers know I am somewhat of a numbers geek. I like to play with numbers, I enjoy working with numbers, and honestly, it is something that I was born with. I can remember when I was a very small child (about 4 or 5) I would add numbers all day long if left to my own devices. 1 + 1 = 2, 2+ 2 = 4, doubling and doubling to see how high I could get. Okay, so I am somewhat of a nerd. Or a geek. I’m not sure what the difference and distinction is. But, back to the book. The lack of a defined calculation tool beyond the 4% rule discussed in the previous session kind of set me aback a bit. For me, I wanted… well… a number.

Next week, I’ll wrap the book up, including information from the Appendix (could it finally be a calculation tool?) and my thoughts about the book as a whole. Did I take anything away from it? Do I understand why I’m chasing a number any more clearly? And maybe by then I’ll have another book picked out. Maybe.