What retirement planning advice do I have for people who make an average salary in America and have little to no retirement savings?

A reader posed this question in the comments section of a recent post I wrote that provided retirement planning advice for a hypothetical 65-year-old woman who earned $75,000 per year and had accumulated $500,000 in retirement savings. The reader pointed out that most workers in the U.S. make less than $75,000 annually and probably don't have that much saved up for retirement.

Having no retirement savings is a challenging situation that will require resilience and creativity. Read here to see how you might "retire" with no savings.

How much can you safely withdraw from your retirement savings each year? That's a critical question for the millions of working Americans who'll be retiring with 401(k) balances and little or no benefits from traditional pension plans.

You can gain valuable insights into this critical task from a recent study that analyzed various drawdown strategies. Read here for details.

As if equity investors didn't already have enough to worry about, one of the new concerns getting a lot of attention recently is that the baby boomer cohort -- just now starting to retire -- will fund their retirement by selling equities. The "conventional wisdom" is that this supposed sell-off will result in a stock market bust. Fellow CBS MoneyWatch blogger Larry Swedroe has written an excellent post about why this concern may be overblown.

In the years to come, it should be easier to generate lifetime retirement income from your 401(k) plan, thanks to some recently enacted regulations from the Treasury Department. These rules cover qualifying longevity annuity contracts (QLACs), also known as longevity annuities or longevity insurance.

My first post on the topic describes how these annuities work and provides an example. My second and third posts offer examples of how these annuities can be part of an overall retirement income strategy.

 Money for Life

Turn Your IRA and 401(k) Into a Lifetime Retirement Paycheck

My latest book answers two of the most important financial questions you'll ever face:

How much money do you need to retire?

How can you generate reliable income from your retirement savings that lasts for the rest of your life, no matter how long you live and no matter what happens in the economy?

Addressing these questions is one of the most critical challenges facing the retirement industry today. 

Money for Life is an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand book that outlines specific action steps and includes illustrations and graphs to reinforce the main points. It describes in simple terms the three methods you can use to generate a "retirement paycheck" from your retirement savings. It explains the pros and cons of these methods, as well as their many varieties and permutations. One critical element is the amount of the retirement paycheck you'll be able to generate, which can vary widely depending on the method you choose to generate retirement income.

This new book is available in both print and e-book format.  It complements my other published works on retirement planning -- my book, Recession-Proof Your Retirement Years; my DVD, The Quest for Long Life, Health and Prosperity; and my retirement planning website, Money for Life.