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Practical, plain-language companions to the film — from the Financial First Aid Kit to the chapter-by-chapter class booklets.
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The essential companion to the film — a practical, plain-language kit for getting your retirement paperwork, questions, and priorities in order.
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The Safe Money Guide
An insider's guide to annuities covering how they work, fixed versus variable, payout options, tax treatment and qualified versus non-qualified contracts.
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Women: The Disadvantaged Retirement Sector
Uses the author's food bank volunteer experience to show how widowhood cuts household income and reshapes a woman's retirement overnight.
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Longevity Risk: Outliving Your Money
Explains why a retirement that now runs 20 to 30 years puts savings at risk of running out, using Social Security life-expectancy data to show how badly most people underestimate their own lifespan.
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Maximizing Retirement Income With Annuities
A comprehensive guide to using annuities to build income streams in retirement, walking through fixed, variable, indexed and immediate contracts and what each one is designed to do.
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What Medicare Doesn't Cover
This guide explains 30 common services Original Medicare generally does not cover, including routine dental, vision and hearing care, long-term custodial care, certain prescription drugs, and medical treatment outside the United States. It also highlights important coverage exceptions and explains how Medicare Advantage, Medigap, supplemental insurance, and assistance programs can help fill these gaps and reduce out-of-pocket expenses.
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Maximizing Social Security Benefits
Covers how benefits are calculated from your 35 highest-earning years, how full retirement age works, and how claiming timing can swing lifetime income by $50,000 to $100,000 or more.
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Building Guaranteed Income for Life
Addresses the hardest financial transition most people face: converting a lifetime of savings into a monthly paycheck that cannot be outlived.
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The IRA Tax Trap
Shows why a traditional IRA or 401(k) balance is not entirely yours — every dollar is taxed as ordinary income on withdrawal, not at capital gains rates.
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Avoiding Probate and Preserving Privacy
Describes what probate actually costs a family in time, money and privacy, and why dying intestate hands asset distribution to state law.
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Sequence of Returns Risk
Explains why a market downturn in the first years of retirement does permanent damage that the same downturn would not cause during your working years.
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Controlling Investment Fees
Breaks down expense ratios, advisory fees, commissions and the costs buried inside product structures, then shows how a 1% annual difference compounds into hundreds of thousands over a retirement.
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Inflation Risk: Protecting Your Purchasing Power
Makes the case that 3% inflation quietly cuts a fixed income's purchasing power by more than half over 25 years. Covers why healthcare inflation hits retirees hardest and what income sources keep pace.
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Safe Money Allocation: The 100 Minus Age Formula
Introduces the 100-minus-age rule as a starting point for splitting a portfolio between growth and safe assets, along with the 110 and 120 variants used for longer lifespans.
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Beneficiary Planning: Tax-Free Funds and Legacy Strategies
Argues that legacy planning matters for anyone with assets to pass on, not just the ultra-wealthy, and covers the SECURE Act's 10-year distribution rule for non-spouse beneficiaries.
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Fixed Indexed Annuities: Income Guarantees Explained
A plain-language explanation of how an FIA protects principal from market loss while crediting interest tied to an index, positioned as middle ground between CDs and market investments.
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Planning for Long-Term Care
Lays out the odds and the costs — a roughly 70% chance of needing care, a three-year average duration, and a national median over $120,000 a year for a private nursing home room.
