When considering the risks of retirement income, you can look at five major worries you might have about your retirement assets: the potential for outliving one's assets, the threat of rising living costs, the impact of increasing health care costs, uncertainty about future level of Social Security benefits, and the damage of long-term financial security that can be caused by excessive withdrawals in the early years of retirement.
Your ultimate goal is to create a sustainable, predictable stream of income that also has the potential to increase over time. With that in mind, you will have to relate each risk stave, to your retirement situation. For example, if you are in good health and intend on retiring when you are 60, you may want to plan for a retirement of 30 years or more. And when you estimate the effects of inflation, you may decide that after you retire you should continue to invest a portion of your assets into investments with the potential to outpace inflation.
Remember that you do not have to go it alone when developing a plan to addressing these financial risks upon retirement. An experienced financial professional can provide useful information and valuable perspective on your retirement options.