Grounded Confidence: A Retirement Income Guide for Humans

By Joe Elsasser

In the age of artificial intelligence, there's no shortage of tools for financial planning. AI can build you a plan, point you to the right accounts, even execute a surprising number of the details. What it can't do is sit with you while you evaluate what excites you about retirement, what scares you, what could knock you off course, or even turn you into your own worst enemy. It can't be the hand you shake, or hold. It can't be the "throat to choke" when someone has to answer when a plan goes sideways.
Those jobs are still uniquely human.
Joe Elsasser, CFP(R), has spent the last twenty years at the intersection of software and financial planning. He holds a U.S. patent for his Social Security optimization process, founded the software company Covisum, and has worked alongside some of the sharpest minds in the field. More than any of that, he's spent two decades sitting across the table from real humans trying to answer the same question: am I making the right decision?
Grounded Confidence is his answer - part memoir, part field guide. It walks through the mechanics that actually make a retirement plan work: Social Security, taxes, investment risk, insurance, and the wild cards that stick in the back of retiree's minds. Along the way, you'll meet clients facing the decisions you're facing now, and hear a few stories from Joe's own life, including his own paralysis and recovery.
"Grounded confidence isn't the absence of doubt," Joe writes. "It's knowing what to do with the doubt when it shows up, and knowing you took steps to prepare for what's ahead."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HM9C5SHB
• ISBN13: 9798982030016
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Joe Elsasser
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"