更聪明地投资

    当我们都以为会得到11%的长期年回报率时，没人太在乎服务费和费用。现在不行了。需要对“帮手”挑挑拣拣了，“帮手”是巴菲特讽刺那些从我们的投资回报中收取费用的中介的说法。就像他和先锋基金（Vanguard）创始人约翰•博格尔一直鼓吹的：在几十年的投资期限下，千分之一都很重要。某些帮手，比如只收服务费的最佳咨询师，确实物有所值。但在今天的环境下，投资者必须明了，他们实际付费多少？能够得到什么服务？

    聪明的投资也意味着灵活地利用我们的自然偏见为自己服务。行为经济学家已经发现我们在大脑中将花费划分到不同的类别中：比方说，一个用来外出吃饭，一个用来旅游，另一个用在汽车上。这个倾向并不总是理性的，但卡内基梅隆（Carnegie Mellon）大学经济学家乔治•列文斯坦提出，退休人员可以利用它来设立分离的账号，比如“付房租”和“宠孙子”。房租账号需要保守投资，而孙子账号可以激进投资，追求增长。

更聪明地生活

    许多人在退休后的生活恐怕没有期望的那般惬意了，甚至退休前就已经如此，这是残酷的现实。我们不能为此烦恼，必须正视骨感的现实。我们生活的时代有大量的人口因为拥有太多而不是太少而不快乐，这是前所未有的。这就是当下书籍和学术研究的主题“富贵病”。

    到底为什么要退休呢？显然不是为了最大化收入。是为了快乐。数以百万计的人发现拥有更少让他们更快乐。少用多存的主意有点像寿司：最开始需要有个人促使你去尝试，然后你会意外地发现，自己居然爱上了它。而这也正是迎风扬帆所暗藏的快乐。随着条件的改变，到达同样的目标需要新的航路。如果有正确的战略，我们依然可以快乐地退休。甚至比我们自己预期的更快乐。

Invest smarter

    Back when we all thought we'd get 11% long-term annual returns, we could maybe afford to ignore fees and expenses. No more. It's time to get tough on the "helpers," Buffett's sarcastic term for the intermediaries who take bits and pieces of our investment returns. As he and Vanguard founder John Bogle constantly preach: Over decades, tenths of a point matter. Some helpers, such as the best fee-only advisers, are emphatically worth their cost. But in today's environment, investors must know exactly how much they're paying and for what.

    Investing smarter may also mean cleverly using your natural biases in your favor. Behavioral economists have found that we think of our spending in buckets -- one for dining out, say, another for travel, another for car expenses. The tendency isn't always rational, but Carnegie Mellon economist George Loewenstein has proposed that retirees harness it by setting up separate "pay the rent" and "spoil the grandkids" accounts. The rent account could be invested conservatively; the grandkids account could be invested aggressively for growth.

Live smarter

    It's a hard reality that many people will be living a bit less large than they had hoped in retirement, and maybe before. Don't fight that thought. Embrace it. We're living through the first era in history when significant numbers of people are being made unhappy by having too much rather than too little. The term is "affluenza," now the subject of books and academic research.

    Why are you planning to retire at all? It isn't to maximize income. It's to be happy. Millions of people are finding that having less makes them happier. Spending less and saving more is kind of like sushi: You have to be made to try it, but then you may find you love it. That's also the potential exhilaration of sailing into the wind. As conditions change, reaching our goals demands a new course. With the right strategy you can still find your way to a great retirement. It could even be a happier one than you'd expected.