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Author of The Number: Retirement about More than Money

Lee Eisenberg, author and former editor-in-chief of Esquire magazine, may have earned his biggest taste of fame with his latest book, The Number. Published early this year by Free Press, the 288-page tome is all about figuring out how much money you need to retire. Most people worry that they won’t have enough to live the life they want, and study after study suggests that many of them will be proven right—largely because they failed to save with enough diligence. But in an October speech at the SVIA’s annual forum in Washington, D.C., in October, Eisenberg said people who think hard about what’s important to them might find their financial needs in retirement less overwhelming than they currently imagine.

“If we examine our own lives, chances are the things that really matter fall into three categories,” Eisenberg said. “I want to give something back—to my community, my church, my neighborhood, my clients. I want to fix a broken relationship. Or I really do want to try to write the Great American Novel or learn to play the piano. The dirty little secret is that those things do not cost very much.” More importantly, he added, until you know what you want out of life, you can’t begin to figure out just what your “number” is.

Borrowing on the work of renowned financial advisor George Kinder, Eisenberg suggests that people ask themselves three questions to help them identify their priorities. First, he says, imagine that you have all the money you ever thought you would need—a number bigger than anything you ever thought you would have. Then ask yourself what you would do with that money and how you would live. Next, assume your doctor tells you have a rare and incurable disease, and while you won’t suffer or feel any pain, you have no chance of living more than five or 10 years. Now ask yourself how you would live out the rest of your life. Finally, assume you go to a doctor and get the same news, except that you only have 24 hours to live. Now ask yourself what you regret not doing or not getting to be.

“Kinder will tell you that until you can get somewhat close to an answer for the last two questions that you feel solid and comfortable and even excited about, you’re just doing financial planning around a void,” Eisenberg told his audience. “You’re just projecting acquisitions of nice things for the next 20 or 30 years.”

Eisenberg is teaching an old message: Money isn’t everything.

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