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You can look at the span of your retirement years in the following way:
Go-Go ... Slow-Go ... No-Go
 Go-Go: These are the early years of retirement. A client couple recently sent me their autumn travel itinerary. In twenty-two days they toured many regions of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland and Austria.
The newly-retired are excited with their freedom and good health and eager to enjoy life. It's not uncommon for one spouse to continue to work part time.  Slow-Go: Here the limitations of aging begin to appear. The retiree tires more easily; arthritis often makes movement painful and not moving becomes a tempting alternative. Work for compensation becomes problematic. 
No-Go: This is the period of severe restrictions of activities to the point of being home-bound. Of course, some folks do not enter this phase or remain in it only briefly, but it is critical to good planning that the retiree prepare for this eventuality.
One of our more conscientious client couples was so taken by this concept of stages in retirement that they prepared a chart of their planned activities and were kind enough to share it. Click here to see it.
The Smile I have read some recent research by one of the stars of our industry, Michael Kitces ( www.kitces.com), which shows that spending in retirement on average may actually decrease in the go-go and slow-go phases, and increase in the no-go phase. So the corresponding graph of spending by age is shaped somewhat like a smile. Click here for the full article.  The idea is that as we slow down we naturally spend less, and that this trend continues until the no-go period, when we spend more on medical needs and so-called "long term care." This could be great news for retirement income planning. In our practice we now plan for expenses to increase due to inflation. A lifestyle that costs 70K annually today at age 65 will cost almost 150K at age 90. According to the new research, as long as we take care of the no-go years separately we can plan for flat or even slowly reducing expenses in the go-go and slow-go years.
You can solve the problem of medical or long-term care either through insurance or a contract with a Continuing Care Retirement Community. (Please see these prior DeVol Financial newsletters: The ABCs of CCRCs and Staying Home.)
Other Thoughts
The Society of Actuaries, expert in the science of risk management, has prepared a series of briefs addressing in layman's terms various retirement risks and considerations. Here's the index to these briefs: One of our concerns is that many of us plan on "working until I drop." Here are several articles that examine the viability of that plan: | 
