Are your dreams of retirement gone?
No. No. Don't let that happen.

You can get there. The question is, when you do, will you Sink or Swim? That's what my friend Frank Armstrong III asks in his new book, The Retirement Challenge (FT Press) that he's written with securities attorney Jason Doss.

Frank, a certified financial planner and investment manager, and Doss, who represents clients who have disputes with the financial services industry, have put together a plain-spoken guide that respects your basic intelligence about your own money.

They give you the facts to support your own decision-making. But when a choice is a bad one, they say so.

I first got to know Frank because a long time ago he published a very good investment book online, for free, that anyone could download. "My marketing technique was to supply lots of useful information to the masses. It worked," he says in a new release. He manages more than $400 million.

He's honest, he's straightforward like a former fighter pilot would tend to be and he makes sense.

An example from the book is their discussion of whether to pay off a home mortgage in retirement. Lots of people want to do this. Frank then discloses that if you were his client, you'd be withdrawing your money from his firm's accounts and therefore he'd earn a smaller fee for managing it. So his financial incentive would be to say no, don't take the money.

But he lays out the pros and cons for you to choose. "The answer to whether you should pay off the mortgage depends on how comfortable you are with financial leverage and how much leverage you are willing and financially able to bear."

Credit card debt? Get rid of if Annuities inside an IRA? No. If you're living paycheck-to-paycheck before retirement, don't take a lump sum distribution for your pension.

Good, solid stuff. Excellent book.

The only thing I don’t like about this volume is its online companion web-stie, which comes across as gimmicky. Every web user has preferences and this site to me isn’t as easy to use as it should be.