Book excerpt: There are nine key reasons people fail at retirement—and they’re not what you think. Are you working to avoid these major retirement fails? Every day, people just like you, people who have worked hard and saved carefully for retirement, make decisions that will eventually crack their nest egg. Just because you added to your 401(k) or IRA plan every year, invested wisely, and amassed significant savings, you are not necessarily home free. Ready or not, your decisions all along the retirement path can positively or negatively affect your financial future. In Retirement Fail, top financial advisor Greg Sullivan shares the insights he has gained over his thirty-five-year career in wealth management to help you identify potential pitfalls and learn how to safeguard your hard-earned retirement assets. Because, contrary to what most people think, it is not poor portfolio performance that usually busts your retirement accounts. Rather, it’s the emotional decisions you make that can cause major problems. Whether it’s buying a vacation home that is beyond your reach, subsidizing your adult kids to a degree that is ill advised, or passing on the umbrella insurance your advisor recommended, the choices you make have an enormous effect on whether you’ll be able to enjoy the comfortable retirement you’ve dreamed about. Retirement Fail: Lays out the nine common hazards that trip up otherwise well-prepared retirees, encouraging you to think through your decisions and set a course aligned with your values and your ultimate goals Goes beyond traditional financial advice, using personal stories to illustrate how others have become mired in—or solved—these financial dilemmas Creates a valuable framework you can use to chart your path or begin conversations with your advisor, so that you can act to protect your financial independence The numerical side of financial planning is one thing—the far more difficult task is looking at the way the decisions we make impact our own future and those around us. Whether you are working with a financial advisor or are going it alone, Retirement Fail shows you the points you need to pay attention to and helps you figure out what your priorities are—and what tradeoffs you may have to make in order to achieve them.