Mr. Bach,
I truly must say that I heard about your book, The Automatic Millionaire, at the most opportune time. I just switched jobs from an urban to a rural school district. Between the drops in rent, bus fares, and other costs, the move dropped the cost of living by over $7000. Hearing about your book on TV was one of those truly lucky breaks. Seeing the snowball effect of compound interest through the book’s text and tables convinced me to put that $7000 difference (about $10,000 pretax) in a 403b account. It is hard to believe the switch between the true costs of rural and urban life, and how a simple switch in location can allow one to be able to increase their retirement savings by $10,000 in a state where the average teacher salary is just over $30,000. Your book was a great set of instructions for how to form the first bit of snowball and start rolling it down the hill, where it will continue to grow bigger over the course of time. Yet, I have found that so many of my colleagues have not even thought about retirement besides looking at the one line appearing on the paychecks. Having seen more than a few with food stamps in supermarkets has truly served as a reminder of the importance of forming a nest egg early.
