Key Takeaways:
If you’re within 10 years of retirement, market volatility matters more, so a clear, comprehensive plan helps you focus on what you can control instead of reacting to headlines.
Strengthening the “defense” part of your plan—cash reserves, balanced risk, rebalancing, and insurance—can protect your nest egg from early-retirement market damage.
Decisions around savings rate, retirement date, withdrawal order, and Social Security timing work together, so coordinating them can meaningfully improve confidence and long-term outcomes.
So, you’re looking to retire in the next 5, maybe 10 years, dreaming of life after work - whether that be swimming at the beaches of Florida or hiking in the mountains of New Hampshire, caring for grandchildren, traveling the world, or gardening in your own backyard.
You’ve built a nest egg, steadily saving over the years, but is it enough? Will market swings eliminate your security blanket or help you reach your goal?
Well, believe it or not, it doesn’t really matter as much as you think. Uncertain markets should not lead to anxiety; in fact, in some cases, that uncertainty can lead to opportunity.
The financial markets are mostly out of your control. So why not focus on something you CAN control? These 8 steps will help you feel confident in your retirement plan, despite wavering market conditions.
When retirement is still many years in the future, market volatility can be easy to shrug off; you are still in the accumulation phase early in your investment career, and your portfolio has years to recover.
But when retirement is within sight and the distribution phase of your nest egg is right around the next corner, market volatility is more than a nuisance. It can be a real stressor if you haven’t planned properly and taken steps to conserve your portfolio.
If you’re within 10 years of retirement, you are considered a “pre-retiree” and this 8-step “survival guide” could provide tools to help you preserve your nest egg:
- Evaluate Where You Stand
- Turbocharge Your Savings
- Take Control of Your Retirement Date
- Revisit the ‘Safe’ Portion of Your Portfolio
- Assess Your Equity Positioning
- Factor in Withdrawal Sequencing and Social Security Start Date
- Evaluate Anticipated Lifestyle Changes
- Consider Your Insurance Safety Net
Step 1: Evaluate Where You Stand
I know, you probably don’t want to look, and I often encourage clients to ignore the daily headlines and market fluctuations, especially as of late. But knowledge is power, so your first step is to take a close look at where your retirement plan stands today. Will you have enough, or is there a realistic chance that you’ll run out of money during your lifetime unless you take action?
The best way to get your arms around those questions is to sit down with a financial planner who will consider your plan in its totality, including your portfolio, your anticipated retirement date, tax issues, and Social Security timing, among other key variables. It’s critical to consider all of these important issues in the context of a comprehensive plan, which will prevent you from making decisions in a vacuum on any topic.
This type of comprehensive financial planning is a service I offer high-net-worth individuals, and if you hang on until the end of this episode, I’ll tell you how you can take advantage of a free retirement analysis that I offer called The Retirement Navigator.
Step 2: Increase Your Savings
If you’re current nest egg looks like it may fall short of providing income throughout your retirement, one of the best ways to seize control is to scrutinize your budget and find ways to increase your savings. I know that investing more in a down market, particularly during periods of inflation, can be difficult, but if you’re able to invest more when the market is down, you can improve your retirement outlook by adding to your portfolio at attractive valuations. Just think of buying quality merchandise “on sale.” Everybody likes a sale, right?
As you get closer to retirement, you may have paid off your house and helped your children through college, and can now reallocate those funds to your long-term goals. “The empty nest transition,” as financial-planning guru Michael Kitces calls it, provides an opportunity for people in their 50s and 60s to avert a looming retirement shortfall. He estimates that 15 years of saving 30% of income—no small feat, of course—before retirement can help bring a too-small retirement portfolio back from the brink.
At this stage, you can also take advantage of the catch-up contributions allowed by the IRS if you’re 50 or older, investing in tax-sheltered vehicles like IRAs and 401(k)s or 403(b)s.
If you’ve already maxed out contributions to your retirement accounts, health savings accounts also offer tax-free contributions, compounding, and withdrawals and can serve as an additional avenue for retirement savings. Catch-up contributions to these accounts are available to people over age 55.
Step 3: Take Control of Your Retirement Date
When I ask clients when they would like to retire, I usually get a variety of answers, from “I have no idea” to “6 years, 2 months, and 17 days.” I think we all understand the impact on a retirement plan of continuing to bring in a paycheck for as long as possible. Working longer means additional retirement contributions and compounding, delayed portfolio withdrawals, and delayed Social Security filing.
Delaying retirement in a weak market can be especially beneficial because pulling too much from your portfolio during a down market can deplete your portfolio faster.
So, how do you help maintain control over your retirement date? A healthy lifestyle will help ensure (but certainly not guarantee) that health considerations won’t force you out of the workforce sooner than you had hoped. You might also want to consider investing in continuing education and attending conferences, staying current on developments in your field, and keeping abreast of the latest developments in technology. No one, myself included, wants to be that person who needs to ask the younger folks for help in navigating devices, software, and apps. As I’ve said to my wife many times, “Technology is not going away, so we had better get competent at using it.”
Of course, it’s not healthy, mentally or physically, to stay in a job that you hate. If that’s the case, you could consider what Morningstar contributor Mark Miller calls “an encore career,” a later-in-life job that’s more gratifying and less taxing. Of course, it might also pay less than your main career. But earning income from a part-time job can still reduce portfolio withdrawals in retirement, helping your portfolio to last longer than it might otherwise.
Step 4: Revisit the ‘Safe’ Portion of Your Portfolio
A perfect storm for a retirement plan – as the Morningstar article accurately pointed out - is that you retire into a weak market environment and withdraw too much from a portfolio that is simultaneously declining. This leaves less of the portfolio in place to recover once the market rebounds, and can reduce the odds that your portfolio will last for the 25 or 30 years you may need it.
So, how do you circumvent that risk? One way is to delay retirement, which I just discussed. Another is taking only modest withdrawals in those early weak years.
You can also help mitigate market risks with a portfolio designed around your personal risk tolerance and time horizon. When you have a balance of stocks and bonds, you won’t necessarily need to tap into your long-term assets, mainly stocks, when they are down.
Also, I always recommend that clients keep an emergency fund of six months to one year’s worth of living expenses, and if you are looking to retire in the next few years, it’s not too early to begin building your cash reserves beyond the emergency fund level.
Step 5: Assess Your Equity Positioning
In addition to evaluating your portfolio’s mix of stocks, bonds, and cash, you can work with your advisor to take a closer look at the specific positions within your equity portfolio. The rising tide of the market rally from 2009 through 2021 didn’t lift all boats equally, according to Morningstar. Value stocks (those stocks that are perceived to be trading below their intrinsic values and offer consistent dividends from mature companies) trailed at the expense of growth stocks (those stocks that are expected to grow earnings faster than the average company or the overall market and typically reinvest their profits back into the business rather than pay dividends), and international stocks lagged U.S. equities. So, if you haven’t adjusted your portfolio’s equity allocations recently, you may still see a bias toward those areas that have enjoyed a great performance run. A technique we employ all the time with our clients is that of rebalancing their accounts back to their original target asset allocation percentages to mitigate some of what I just spoke about.
Step 6: Factor in Withdrawal Sequencing and Social Security Start Date
Typically, when you begin retirement distributions, you will draw from your accounts in this order:
- Taxable Accounts
- Tax-deferred Accounts
- Roth Accounts
Of course, this is just a general rul,e and I encourage you to get tax guidance and/or financial planning help from an experienced professional to determine what works best for your individual retirement plan.
If you’re repositioning your holdings, as explained a moment ago, you’ll need to be mindful of the accounts in which you hold those assets and the sequence in which you’ll draw from them. The sequence can help you determine where to hold which assets.
For example, you might consider holding more liquid assets in your taxable accounts while leaving the most aggressive, highest-returning assets (usually stocks) in your Roth accounts.
Meanwhile, your tax-deferred accounts can hold a blend of safer, income-producing securities like bonds as well as higher-returning, higher-risk assets like stocks, since they will likely fall into the intermediate part of your distribution queue.
Again, this should be evaluated carefully with an experienced financial planner.
And remember, Social Security start date factors in here, too. A comprehensive financial plan can help you determine the optimal date for claiming Social Security.
Married couples should take special care to strategize about Social Security together, with an eye toward increasing their total lifetime benefits from the program. For example, if one spouse is younger and will gain a larger benefit from a spousal benefit than his or her own benefit, delaying receipt of benefits can be particularly advantageous. But if you decide to delay Social Security, that could mean that you’ll need to withdraw more from your in-retirement accounts earlier on, which may influence how you position those accounts.
See the tangled web we weave… There are no easy answers here.
Step 7: Evaluate Anticipated Lifestyle Changes
The discussion about retirement planning often focuses on savings, but spending is an equally important factor.
Begin thinking now, early in your pre-retirement years, about how you want to spend your golden years. This will help you determine your planned in-retirement spending. If it looks like you might have a shortfall, you can potentially find ways to trim your retirement costs. Housing expenses are typically one of the largest expenses, both before and during retirement, so finding ways to trim them, either through downsizing or relocating to a lower-cost part of the country, can be particularly effective. The name of the game is to start the planning process as early as possible, especially if you’ll be selling a home or purchasing a new one.
Step 8: Assess Your Insurance Safety Net
Building out a safety cushion is essential at this life stage; that’s your insurance against a bear market. But it’s also essential to ensure against other risks that you couldn’t fund out of pocket. The usual insurance recommendations apply for the years leading up to retirement: property and casualty, personal liability, and health and disability, of course.
If your children are grown and off your payroll, it’s also wise to revisit your need for life insurance at this stage. While life insurance can make sense in some instances, you may have less of a need for it once your dependents are grown. You may decide a traditional policy still makes sense in your situation, or you may seek out alternative options. At a minimum, make sure you have a plan.
In a nutshell: Making sure you have a plan is the essence of all 8 of these pre-retirement survival steps.
I always encourage you to take part in the financial planning process to pursue a confident financial future and, in turn, feel optimistic and proud about your accomplishments.
For those who don’t have a plan in place, I am currently offering a free “Retirement Navigator” through this website. Please visit the homepage to learn more. The Retirement Navigator is a complementary retirement guide for prospective clients that will demonstrate your personal retirement income projections, tax planning opportunities, and investment optimization. There is no obligation, so please check it out.
We also always offer complimentary initial consultations. If you’ve diligently saved over the years and have accumulated investment and retirement assets AND you understand that the success of your retirement is too important to be managed by yourself, and you value experienced and professional guidance, please reach out.
Knowing that I’ve provided education and a plan for my clients has allowed me to turn a personal challenge into a gratifying journey.
Content for this episode was derived, in part, from a Morningstar Wealth article, published May 1, 2025.
John Gigliello is a registered representative with and securities are offered through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advice is offered through Private Advisor Group, a registered investment advisor. Private Advisor Group and Albany Financial Group are separate entities from LPL Financial.
This information is not intended to be a substitute for individualized legal advice. Please consult your legal advisor regarding your specific situation
Albany Financial Group and LPL Financial do not provide tax advice or services. Please consult your tax advisor regarding your specific situation.
All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.
Rebalancing a portfolio may cause investors to incur tax liabilities and/or transaction costs and does not assure a profit or protect against a loss.
All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.
John Gigliello, CFP®
John Gigliello, CFP®, is a fee-based fiduciary financial planner in Albany, NY, serving individuals age 50+ with comprehensive planning and investment management, centered around proactive and advanced tax planning. John earned a Certificate in Financial Planning from Boston University and, more recently, successfully completed the rigorous CFP® Certification examination to become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™. John earned the Accredited Investment Fiduciary® Designation from the Center for Fiduciary Studies®, the standards-setting body for Fi360. The AIF® designation signifies specialized knowledge of fiduciary responsibility and the ability to implement policies and procedures that meet a defined standard of care. John currently serves on the Albany County Investment Advisory Board, having been appointed by a unanimous vote of the County Legislature in January 2019. In this position, John advises the county on a strategy for making the best use of money available for investment.