Helping you to help yourself: W. Neil Gallagher's new book provides helpful information about how to prepare for retirement and old age while still providing a heritage for your children.

The Money Doctor's Guide to Taking Care of Yourself When No One Else Will, by W. Neil Gallagher, Ph.D., Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2005, 230 pages, paperback, $19.95. The Money Doctor's Guide is available from Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.

I have to admit that, when I initially glanced at this book, I was leery of reading it. I didn't like the title (too long), and the fact that it was written by a "Money Doctor" aroused suspicion of a potential charlatan. But thankfully my curiosity about "taking care of [myself] when no one else will" impelled me to plunge in. Soon I was glad that I had.

Placed even before the Table of Contents was an intriguing list of Do's and Don'ts. The "Don'ts list" is short and given below; you'll just have to read the book for the Do's:

I don't want to spend my final days in a nursing home.

I don't want to be on welfare (Medicaid).

I don't want my family's health and finances ravaged because of my aging and death.

If you disagree with these three statements, slam the book shut.

How could one possibly slam the book shut after that?

Okay, at times I was tempted to shut it, but in the end, I was glad I read the entire 230 pages. The part of the book that caused my eyes to begin to glaze over was a lengthy section containing information about abuse in nursing homes and about which states have the worst nursing-home care, and that contained tables of trends in various states. I doubt if many people will be moving to a different state to find a better nursing home, but then where else can you find a checklist to evaluate and ferret out the homes with the torture chambers and vicious nurses? Gallagher's main mission, however, is not to help people get into nursing homes, but how to stay out of them.

Ruthless as a tent-meeting evangelist, he exposes all the denials and delays we use to avoid doing what we know we should do. These included not only the eat-disgusting-amounts-of-green-vegetables-everyday-or-die advice and admonitions on bicycling to the chiropractor, but advice on financial information that I should have known.

Do you understand a "Reverse Mortgage"? Me either, but we should. Do you understand the huge difference between a "Bank CD" and a "CD Annuity"? I was aghast that I knew so little about what is explained as a simple investment strategy. Gallagher suggests we "look at the difference." You are the owner of a $100,000 bank CD; you die. The distribution of this asset will require a judge, a CPA, a lawyer, or maybe all three. None of these are eager to do your bidding at this point. With the CD annuity, the funds go directly to your beneficiary. No probate. No court. No CPA. No lawyers. No delay. No possibility of disgruntled relatives suingfor their "fair share."

Where my ignorance most showed was in the matter of "what happens to you when you are old and get really sick?" I figured the Medicare payments that have been extorted from my paycheck, combined with available "Medicare supplements," would be sufficient to take care of me. Au contraire. This government insurance (along with similar private insurance) takes care of you until you are "stable." Whoa, what does that mean? I'm not sure you really want to know, but Gallagher tells you anyway. Hint: it means you shouldn't bother putting any family pictures on the wall by your hospital bed.

For those of us lucky enough to reach an age where we are no longer self-sufficient, Gallagher laid out our end-of-life options. There are many. No doubt the best is what is known as Long Term Care (LTC). It is how you stay out of the nursing home: "You have the money, provided by LTC policy, which pays for your home health care. With home health care, you keep your loved one at home in a safe, cozy, healthy, and familiar environment--with professional care. This is what your loved one needs. This is what you need."

The bulk of the book is devoted to various investment and planning strategies, an area of knowledge where Gallagher's expertise is obvious and that is written in a passionate, yet very clear style. It is very difficult not to continually yearn for more years to put some of his ideas into practice. Some examples: an accelerated death benefit (ACD) life insurance policy that provides cash advances against all or part of the death benefit that can be used for long-term care expenses. A "viatical" (the word relates to a journey ... in this case the final one) settlement where you sell your death benefit at a discount in order to fund long-term care--similar to the ACD, only you do it yourself.

As we all will not be so fortunate as to have taken care of the necessary investing, Chapter 5 is entitled "The Pressure: When It's Too Late to Plan." If you can't avoid Medicaid welfare, then how do you best protect your family? Not a happy story and one that Gallagher strives to avoid, but one that far too many of us must face. Medicaid is a jumble of complex rules with strict financial requirements often resulting in the total loss of family assets. While not ignoring the ethical issue of "cheating Uncle Sam for Mom and Dad," he lays out ways you can legally transfer assets and restructure income to save something of a family heritage.

Gallagher is not a medical doctor, but a Ph.D. from Brown University in an undisclosed discipline, probably of a financial nature. Nonetheless, he is concerned with a disease he sees rampant in the United States. He describes it as "silent and systemic, contagious, and fatal." It is when a person gives up control of his future and surrenders life and death, health and family to government. He calls it the disease of G-S-P.

Government is good.

Society is bad.

People are helpless.

It is to the cure of this malady that Gallagher devotes this book, and very likely his life.