Sally Hass was one of the more memorable and inspiring characters I met while researching THE NUMBER. Sally, you’ll recall, was the indomitable education manager at the Weyerhaeuser Company (Chapter 7, “The Forest for the Trees”), the leader of the company-sponsored, pre-retirement workshop I attended a couple of years ago. At the end of that chapter, Sally reflected on plans for the twilight of her own career, no small detail of which was the 120,000 pound, steel-hulled, full-displacement trawler she and the man in her life – lately arrived – were building by hand. The other day, Sally sent an update on where things stood.

“The pre-retirement planning seminars continue to be a smash hit,” Sally wrote in her note. “Unfortunately, Weyerhaeuser, like other large manufacturing companies, is currently involved in some downsizing and restructuring. For me, this means working with employees who are losing their jobs. As far as many of them are concerned, this is devastating due to a lack of readiness for an early, or unplanned, retirement. The message is clear — none of us knows the hand we might be dealt. Thoughtful and early planning, monitored regularly, is the only answer.”

Then, on a happier note, Sally proudly announced that she and Dan, now engaged, had just the other day launched their beloved Spirit of Balto, whose baby picture I’m pleased to share here. “We plan to sell the big house and move aboard soon,” she said. “And who knows…wedding bells may not be too far off. Let the adventure begin!”

I wanted to pass along word that the Financial Planning Association has asked me to give a general session talk at its 2006 conference, to be held this coming October. The meeting, one of the most prominent on the industry’s annual calendar, draws several thousand attendees from throughout the financial planning universe. The subject of the talk will be an outside-in view of how people like you and me – i.e. clients or prospective ones – view the standards and practices of the planning profession: What do we most need or want from an adviser? What are the biggest civilian concerns about the business? How can a financial adviser best serve our interests? What don’t we like, or understand? I intend to do a good deal of original research and reporting in connection with this talk, and I thought I’d start with you. Please drop me a line with any thoughts, questions, or suggestions you think ought to be brought to the attention of the assembled crowd. You can email me at LeeEisenberg@TheNumberBook.com. Thanks!

I’m doing a lot of traveling these days — a talk in Las Vegas last week, a few days in Scottsdale before returning home, a quick trip to Minneapolis this week, etc. It is a interesting time but, truth be told, there are moments when I’d like to think about something other than retirement funding. For distraction, I pick up a couple of books. One is Kevin Phillips’ “American Theocracy,” a dissection of what has gone haywire politically and economically over the past six years, including how the U.S. now totters on vast layers of debt, from the personal to the national. While Phillips only touches on retirement funding issues per se, the book’s view of the future makes me nervous as a cat. But I finish it dutifully, eager to find respite in the other book I’m carrying, James L. Swanson’s “Manhunt,” the nonfiction thriller about the pursuit, capture, and demise of John Wilkes Booth. Terrific read, can’t put it down. And not a blessed word about variable annuities, pension funds, or Monte Carlo simulations. So here I am, it’s pre-dawn at the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, I’m happily engrossed, a million miles from the moment. And I’m reading furiously, closing in on the end of the can’t-put-down book, have gotten right to part where the Union patrol has surrounded the tobacco barn where Booth has barricaded himself. Suddenly, my cell phone jangles me back to from April, 1865, to April, 2006. The caller is a producer from a national radio network. How she has found my cell number remains a mystery. Why she’s calling is not: this morning, even as Booth was being betrayed by his sorry-assed sidekick, the Wall Street Journal has run a short piece about a new Employee Benefit Research Institute survey. The survey reports that “many workers are counting on traditional pension plans to pay their bills in retirement, even though such plans are fast disappearing. Only 40% of working couples currently are covered by pension plans, but nearly two-thirds of surveyed workers — 61% — expect to get income from such a plan in retirement.” The story goes on to offer all kinds of other grim findings and expert opinions, such as how so many of us assume that we can comfortably live on 70% of our pre-retirement while the real Number, at least according to one quoted financial planner, is around 85%.

Do I have any comment? the friendly producer asks, explaining that her network is preparing a follow-up on the Journal piece. I comment best I can — haven’t had coffee yet — then set aside “Manhunt” for a more relaxed time.

That relaxed time, or so I was hoping, arrives a couple of days later. Airport again — O’Hare. Before cracking open “Manhunt,” I make the mistake of buying the New York Times. Shucky darn! (Midwest foul-mouth expression). On Page C7, there’s a story about how the financial services industry is trying to make friends with millions of “mass affluent” baby boomers who are in need of retirement planning. Again, lots of grim numbers and quotes, including this one from a senior exec at a big financial firm: “The typical working American is on track to replace just 56% of his income in retirement and that only one in five [will] retire with any retirement income plan.”

Nobody calls me for comment this time around. But I do feel obligated to put the Booth book back in my briefcase and work some of the data into a talk I’m to give in a few hours.

As for “Manhunt,” I just now finished it. Not to ruin the ending for you, but Booth got exactly what was coming to him. And so will a great many of us, if you believe everything you read in the papers.

I’m pleased to report that beginning this Tuesday, April 4, there will be a television campaign launched in support of the book — needless to say, quite uncommon for the book biz. The spots will run for about two weeks on Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money” program. This is yet another indication of how terrific Free Press has been throughout this experience, and I’m grateful to everyone there for their enthusiastic efforts. And THE NUMBER continues to resonate with readers — it’s currently #6 on the BusinessWeek list of bestselling business titles.

For most of us, retirement planning does not rank high as a preferred leisure time activity. And it certainly doesn’t qualify as a core competency. 4 out of 10 Americans say they’re saving nothing for the future. Only a tiny percentage has gone to the trouble to work up a financial plan. Of those who have, more than half admit they can’t remember what it said. Maybe it’s hard to concentrate, certainly hard to relax, with all the noise out there. For 76-million boomers, gerontological clocks tick louder and louder. And, day after day, the alarm bells sound, with wakeup calls ringing 24/7. 2006 is just three months old, but it’s shaping up as the Year of the Sleepless Night. Here’s a first-quarter recap:

January 1: The New Year brings with it two key retirement-related anniversaries, but only one, the wrong one, gets much attention. Airwaves are flooded with news that the boomers start to turn sixty in 2006. There are lots of on-camera interviews with leading-edgers, mostly depicted as vital and active, possessed of healthy teeth and gums, and (at least for now) razor-sharp recall of long-ago days filled with flower power and social conscience. An army of graying trailblazers marches by, determined not to go gently into the dusk of retirement, which is now called, more happily, downshifting. 60 is the new 40. Small comfort. The other retirement-related milestone, the important one, goes largely ignored as the Year of the Sleepless Night dawns. 2006 is also when the 401(k) plan turns 25 – yes, the new age of financial self-determination has been staring retirement planning in the face for a full quarter-century. Trouble is, nobody issued much of a press release back then, one that laid out in detail the fact that the retirement game was going to change, that the days of secure corporate pensions and rock-solid Social Security were numbered. Instead, back in 1981, Congress called the new-fangled 401(k)s “salary reduction plans,” not an especially good marketing handle. (Anybody want your salary reduced? — raise your hand.) It was a while before people caught on. When, and if, they finally signed up for them, many workers weren’t sure how to invest their hard-earned salary reductions. Some were sensible and relied on conventional wisdom, kept their eggs in separate and nicely allocated baskets. They did okay. Others, plenty of them, were too aggressive, and rode the tech boom till it busted. Others still were too timid with their salary reductions and, for their prudence, wound up trailing the cost of living. Then there were those unlucky enough to feather their nests with their own company’s stock.

January 5: IBM announces it is freezing the pensions of 120,000 U.S. employees, while making some enhancements to its – yep — 401(k) program. The Year of the Sleepless Night is less than a week old and it has already delivered retirement planning’s “tipping point,” according to a trade publication for accountants.

January 30: The U.S. Commerce Department issues a report that also gets plenty of play: Americans’ personal savings rate has fallen to minus .5 percent, lower than at any time since the Depression. Some economists try to discount the implications, pointing out that Commerce’s numbers don’t take into account a not insubstantial family piggy bank called home equity. As far as retirement goes, this piggy bank could well prove useful, provided boomers will indeed downsize when they eventually downshift: reign in their spending, pay off their debts, settle for one SUV, not three in the driveway, and set up house in a space about the size of their current media room. But the jury is out the boomers’ willingness or fortitude to volunteer for lifestyle relapse. Says the chief economist at Standard & Poor’s, “Americans … have the feeling that it is wimpish to save.”

February 7: General Motors, having lost nearly $9 billion in the run up to the Year of the Sleepless Night, announces that its major cost-reduction initiative will include capping the legacy health benefits for hundreds of thousands of retirees. Starting in 2007, retired workers at the company once famously known as Generous Motors will face higher monthly contributions, deductibles, and prescription drug costs. The U.A.W and millions of former G.M. employees are not amused, nor should they be surprised. Large companies started trimming these costs well before the Year of the Sleepless Night; small companies usually don’t offer retirement health benefits to begin with. Sleep? You gotta kidding. Says a white paper issued by a major financial services firm: “A couple retiring today at age 65 should plan on spending at least $190,000 out of pocket over the course of retirement.” The figure does not include paying for time in a nursing home, in which one out of two people now 65 will find themselves, at least for a while.

April 1: You won’t read it in the paper but it’s a fact: Today is the first day of the new rest of your life. Don’t touch that snooze button. It’s time to get up, get up, you sleepy heads.

This week, THE NUMBER was the subject of an hour-long segment on NPR’s “On Point,” hosted by Tom Ashbrook. For anyone wishing to download the program, please click here.

The news today that Merrill Lynch is offloading its mutual fund business in a deal with BlackRock, a money management firm, may on its face have little to do with how you and I choose to invest our pea-sized Numbers.

According to the Wall Street Journal and other reports, the Merrill transaction — merely the latest in a line of fund-industry consolidations and mergers — has to do with a lot of things bigger than everyday, small-time investors: a somewhat tighter regulatory climate (Spitzer’s Revenge); huge outflows of Big Money out of mutual funds into hedge funds; the vast number of mutual funds out there scratching and clawing for market share; and, not incidentally, paltry stock-market returns of the last few years.

But there’s another explanation that indeed may have to do with us, and it’s a heartening one: the Merrill deal may be a sign that small-time players are slowly but surely getting smart — that it isn’t generally necessary to cough up heathy fees to fund managers who have a hard time beating the market, that we’re opting instead for low-cost index funds or exchange traded funds, which operate more or less on autopilot, and are therefore able to get by on teeny tiny fees and transaction costs (John Bogle’s Revenge). In other words, the reorientation of the fund business may be a sign of advancing financial literary on our part — a damn good thing now that we’re personally responsible for the results (and the cost) of our own long-term financial destiny.

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.