THE NO-COMPROMISE RETIREMENT PLAN • iii
savers one at a time, this book is my way of helping savers across the country. Many people have their own doctor, their own CPA, or even their own attorney. So why not have your own actuary to advise you? Through this book, you can.
Actuaries and Retirement An actuary is someone who uses math and statistics to analyze the financial consequences of risk. You’ll find our fingerprints on almost all insurance and financial products. Have you ever won- dered how your health insurance company determines your pre- mium each year? At some point in the process of designing the policy, an actuary had to calculate the cost of covering your risk of getting sick, getting injured or dying. If the insurance policy pro- tects your property, such as your home or car, an actuary had to crunch the numbers and predict the odds of your home burning to the ground or your car being involved in an accident. Wherever you find risk, you’ll find actuaries. Actuaries certainly have a stereotype: We’re the geeks of the math world. As one comedian put it: “Actuaries were invented so accountants would have somebody to make fun of.” In a way, we are geeks. Actuaries love numbers. The thing about numbers is they don’t lie. They are absolute. If Johnny has an apple stand and sells five apples a day for three days, he will have sold fifteen apples. Case closed. There is no way to spin that. Life may be complex and fraught with a multitude of problems and uncertainty, but logic is simple, and numbers are starkly pure. There is a rare, sweet harmony to math. The English words “actuary” and “actual” stem from the same Latin root, which connotes “a state of fact” or “that which is real.” When analyzed correctly, numbers can tell us much about life, es- pecially its financial side. Take Johnny and his apple stand, for
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