Lower your taxes.  Instead of looking at your investments first, begin by taking a look at your taxes and determine a good method to minimize them.  You ideally need to move from growth type of investments to income producing investments, when planning for a flawless retirement.  By simply changing your portfolio’s funds to more tax efficient funds, these distributions won’t hit your taxes that hard and negatively impact your bottom line.

Protect against inflation.  This is by far the biggest risk that many people face in retirement! Things are getting more expensive and costly.  Money doesn’t get you as far as they used to be.  Gas used to be $1 per gallon 20 years ago.  It’s now $3 per gallon.  That is a whopping 200% increase over a period of 20 years.  Did you make 3 times as much as you earned 20 years ago?  It’s even more challenging after retirement.  Every dollar counts.  While you want to invest in funds that preserve the capital, you also need to keep in mind that these funds must earn and at least keep up with the inflation every year.