I’ve got a piece in the next issue of BusinessWeek (out January 29) that recounts how and why in 1999 we decided to pull up stakes and move from New York to Wisconsin. In addition to the personal reasons described in the story, the BusinessWeek feature explores a couple of lessons learned in the seven years between the time we made the move and the completion of THE NUMBER.

The first lesson is that most of us approach retirement planning in one of two ways. Some of us are like the Little Red Hen: we plant our grain early on, knowing that we’ll need more than one slice of bread over the course of the second-half. The rest of us — including me — choose to play financial chicken with the rest of our lives. We put off real planning and hope for the best.

The BusinessWeek story also raises a few questions about the life passage du jour known as “downshifting,” the transition between fulltime work and all-out retirement, an extended phase that seems to be in cards for most of us these days. As I discuss in the book, downshifting can be a terrific time: you can keep yourself busy and productive, yet also have years to explore passions you never got to indulge when you were running the rat race. Downshifting can be tricky, though. If you’re not careful, as I try to explain in the piece, it can just be a fancy excuse to coast. If you get a chance, check out the magazine and share any thoughts.

THE NUMBER has been out for two weeks now, so I thought I’d give a quick update. I spent last week in New York, making the media rounds. At the center of the week were two successive mornings on the CBS Early Show. The first of these segments was devoted to the book’s Field Guide, which meant that I had to explain — in four minutes, talking like the guy in the old FedEx commercial — the differences among procrastinators, pluckers, plotters, and probers. Day two was mainly about three of the Eisenberg Uncertainty Principles: how the old Rest of Your Life is kaput; how the new Rest of Your Life is befogged; and why the biggest uncertainty of all may be our uncertainty over what money is good for.

There were also a series of radio stops in the Apple, including last weekend’s Motley Fool Radio show; and, most jaw-droppingly, a visit to Bloomberg’s new, eye-popping, beyond-the-Starship Enterprise headquarters on Lexington Avenue. Unbelievable — it shows what a guy (Bloomberg) can do with a Number that approaches the stratosphere. Terminal, baby! I finished the week taping a segment for Nightline, which was aired last night.

Thankfully, there are some encouraging sales to report. This Sunday, THE NUMBER will make its debut on the New York Times extended bestsellers list, one slot shy of making it into the pages of the paper.

Then, in the issue after that, on 1/29, THE NUMBER will indeed show up (#13) on the the Times’ nonfiction bestsellers list. The book also sits at #3 on the Wall Street Journal’s business books list as well as #14 on The Journal’s nonfiction list, and is # 3 on USA Today’s business list, all of which makes me feel better about having bought those new suits for the TV appearances.

As for the next couple of weeks, there will be book signings in Chicago, Madison, and environs, then on to Toronto.

And a piece about our move to Wisconsin, the starting point for the book itself, will be published in Business Week, out in late January.

Thanks sincerely for so many encouraging calls and notes these past weeks.

One of the top business stories of the past week was I.B.M.’s accouncement that in 2008 it would freeze pension benefits for its U.S. employees, and offer no pension at all – just a 401(k) plan – to those joining the company from that point on.

Déjà vu all over again? Sadly, yes.

For several years now, any number of companies have iced their existing pension plans – Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, Sears, to name a few– while others have eliminated their plans outright, and not with a whisper but a bang. Last year, United Airlines’ plan — nearly $10 billion in the red, and covering well over 100,000 employees — crashed and burned, making it the biggest pension default in U.S. history. Last year overall, more than seventy of the nation’s 1,000 largest companies froze or altogether ditched their plans, according to consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide.

So, why the big deal over I.B.M.?

Two reasons, one symbolic, the other sobering.

Big Blue, of course, is the iconic Twentieth Century company, having ushered the world into the computer age through countless innovations in chip technology and information handling. That’s the symbolic part.

The sobering part is that I.B.M. is no wounded department-store chain, or some bizarrely named, amalgamated phone company built on the ashes of the old Baby Bells. I.B.M. – no matter that Bill Gates fleeced it when he was still but a recent college dropout – is today financially solid. But, as The New York Times pointed out, its pension freeze underscores how even healthy companies “no longer want to bear the risk or the expense of providing a firm promise of a lifetime pension.”

That risk falls to you and me, as I explain throughout THE NUMBER, even though no one ever bothered to put out a formal press release so informing us. That the old retirement support systems are dead or dying, and that we’re now (help!) firmly in control of our destiny are, in fact, two of the six Eisenberg Uncertainty Principles defined in the book.

Those Uncertainty Principles are beginning to get an airing now that THE NUMBER is finally available in the stores. Articles about the book, and about the ups and downs about the Old and New Rest of Your Life, are to be found in current issues of TIME, NEWSWEEK, and BUSINESS WEEK.

And, next week, on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, January 11th and 12th, I’ll be popping up on the CBS Early Show, no doubt to talk a bit more about how, when it comes to corporate pensions and the brave new world of self-presevation, baby, it’s cold outside.