Understanding Retirement Planning provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the real-world applications of retirement planning, as well as an exploration of the opportunities and challenges they will likely face in their career as a retirement planner.

As students progress through the five modules within the anthology, they move from learning the basics of retirement planning to develop knowledge and skills centered around holistic retirement planning. They learn the importance of including the emotional, psychological, and financial needs of clients into their planning and how that consideration makes them more effective. Students also examine social programs and explore solutions that can reduce the potential economic impacts of government policy changes aimed at social programs. Readers are challenged to explore common unconscious biases, cultural expectations, and discriminations to better understand how these factors affect financial and retirement planning. The collection also discusses the retirement-planning challenges faced by all clients, including clients that are generally considered underserved, including older/aging workers, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals and couples.

A comprehensive and enlightening collection, Understanding Retirement Planning is well suited for courses in financial planning.

Heather Castle is a Certified Financial Planner, wealth manager, and the founder and CEO of Castle Wealth Advisors, a company that provides ethical and approachable financial planning and investment management to individuals and business owners regardless of age, sex, or net worth. She is a financial planning lecturer in the Department of Finance at California State University, Northridge. She holds a M.B.A. from the Manderson Graduate School of Business at the University of Alabama.