Do you need an investment adviser?

Once you start living off your savings, high investment fees make it more likely you'll deplete your retirement stash.

NEW YORK (Money Magazine)

Once you determine how much of a saver you are, you have several more decisions to make -- including whether you should pay for the advice of a financial planner.

Decision No. 3: How much help do you really need?

The decision: As you get deeper into retirement investing, you may find yourself at a crossroads: Should you go it alone -- set your own asset allocation, choose funds, monitor your progress, make adjustments -- or do you need professional input? In retirement, can you tackle the tricky drawdown solo?

There's no one right answer. The decision comes down to your comfort level and confidence, plus your ease with the online tools that make a DIY approach easier.

Why it's important: You can pay the skimpiest fees possible by picking index funds yourself.

If you prefer giving your money to an active fund manager in hopes of beating the market, you'll pay another half a percentage point or more a year. And turning your money over to an adviser can add 1% a year to your costs.

Related: Which type of financial planner makes sense for you?

The benefit of holding the line on expenses is pretty intuitive when you're saving for retirement. The less you spend on fees, the more of your gains you get to keep. Over a 35-year career, paying one percentage point less annually can mean a 20% larger nest egg.

Keeping a lid on expenses after you've retired is equally important. By reining in costs you may be able of reduce the chances of running out of money. And you'll be able to draw more from your portfolio every year.

Best move: Take advantage of free asset allocation and investment selection tools in your company's retirement plan or at fund company sites.

Last year the Department of Labor began requiring employers to be more transparent about 401(k) fees, which should make it easier for you to home in on the lowest-cost investments in your plain.

Related: Long-term investing - Keep it simple

Outside your plan, you can turn to online tools like Morningstar's Fund Screener, which allows you to sort funds by their expense ratios. And our MONEY 70 includes ETFs that charge as little as 0.05%.

See more decisions you need to get right

Are you a saver or an investor?

How should you divide your money?

What's the best use of tax-deferred plans?

How much can you draw from your savings?

First Published: February 11, 2013: 10:00 AM ET

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Pharmacist: Most equal job for men and women

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Pharmacists are a fast-growing profession offering a six-figure salary -- and the pay is nearly equal for men and women.

"The position of pharmacist is probably the most egalitarian of all U.S. professions today," Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz wrote in a paper on the subject they published in September.

Women make up slightly more than 50% of all full-time pharmacists, according to Census data collected in 2011. Once you factor in part-timers, they make up around 55% of the profession.

Full-time female pharmacists earned a median salary of $111,000 in 2011, about 92 cents to the dollar of their male counterparts.

Related: 6 jobs with most equal pay for men and women

Yes, there's a small pay gap there, but it can be almost entirely explained by some men working longer hours -- not discrimination.

"Women with children earn less largely because they work fewer hours," Goldin and Katz said in their paper.

Related: Men in female-dominated jobs

It wasn't always this way. Fifty years ago, women made up only about 8% of all pharmacists. What changed?

Your corner drugstore. The pharmacist profession was once dominated by men who owned small stores, but the rise of drug store chains Walgreens (WAG, Fortune 500), CVS (CVS, Fortune 500) and Rite Aid (RAD, Fortune 500) greatly increased job opportunities for women in the field.

A pharmacist no longer had to juggle the responsibilities and long hours of owning a small business. Chain stores offered fewer barriers to entry and more flexible work schedules.

"In the 1950s and 1960s, before the real cultural revolution for women, independent pharmacy owners were a little reluctant to hire women," said Lucinda Maine, CEO of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. "It was just purely, 'you're not big enough to lift these boxes' or 'we're worried about you closing a store at night.'"

Then came the chains ... with longer hours and bigger staffs.

"By the time we got to the 1980s, half of the graduating class was women, and the industry needed them," she said.

The field's professional associations also made an effort to reach out. The American Pharmacists' Association elected its first female president in 1979 and marketed the fact that a woman could have flexibility -- to work part-time, for example, if she wanted to raise a family.

"That was really the magnet," said Maine, who enrolled in pharmacy school at the time. "I can be a health professional. It's a reasonable length of study. The job itself is in a clean, professional environment, and I have some work-life flexibility."

Decades later, that work-life balance still attracts women to the job. Mandee Pierce, 30, is a Walgreens pharmacist in Manhattan. After taking off for a few months on maternity leave, she'll soon be heading back to work with a part-time schedule.

Related: Why secretary is still the top job for women

Pharmacy colleges, which used to require five years of study, reached an equal number of male and female grads around 1984. By comparison, nursing schools have always been dominated by women, and med schools didn't reach gender parity until 2008.

The pharmacy degree is now a six-year professional doctorate program that students can enter straight out of high school. The field's high pay is a selling point.

"For me personally, an important thing was a good return on investment," Pierce said. "In pharmacy you can count on making a good living."

Unlike other "feminized" professions, pharmacist wages have increased even as women entered the field. It avoided the "pink-collar" curse.

"Competition, and a shortage of pharmacists, came into play," Maine said.

She points to the early 2000s, when Walgreens alone was adding a new store nearly every 17 hours. The chain would sometimes hire nearly half of all new pharmacy grads nationwide, she said.

The boom is still going: The Labor Department expects the field to grow 25% between 2010 and 2020, adding about 225,000 jobs. Pharmacists are taking on more clinical roles, like administering immunizations, blood pressure screenings and medication management programs.

"Most people thought of pharmacists as the person behind the counter, counting pills from a big bottle to a small bottle," Maine said. "That never was a very accurate depiction, and is especially inaccurate now. All of our new grads are trained to offer many services."

First Published: February 11, 2013: 5:26 AM ET

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Firefighters, teachers face smaller retirement safety net

Many new state workers — ranging from police officers to street cleaners — will retire with fewer retirement benefits than their current counterparts.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Facing ballooning bills and strained budgets, 45 states have either cut pension benefits or increased mandatory employee retirement plan contributions, or both, since 2009.

While some of the changes and cutbacks impact current state workers and retirees, the most significant ones affect new hires. As a result, those who become firefighters, teachers, garbage men or other public sector workers after the cuts go into effect will end up with considerably smaller nest eggs.

Take California: A state highway patrol officer hired before September 2010 can retire at age 50 after 30 years on the job with 90% of his salary. At an average salary of $100,000, that would translate into a pension of $90,000 a year. But if that same officer was hired this year instead, his annual retirement check at age 50 would total $60,000. That's a $900,000 difference over the course of a 30-year retirement.

In New York, a public employee hired in April 2012 or later will retire with benefits that are roughly 11% lower than someone hired a month earlier, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Pennsylvania, workers hired in 2011 or later will contribute the same chunk of their paychecks to their pensions as those hired before them but will receive about 20% less come retirement.

And in Alabama, state employees hired this year will have to work longer to qualify for retirement benefits that will be roughly 20% lower than those promised to workers hired last year -- although new employees will contribute slightly less out of each paycheck.

Related: 25 best places to retire

Benefits for employees who are already on the payrolls are contractually obligated so major changes would require making an agreement at the bargaining table. Some state laws even bar the reduction of benefits for current employees, leaving new hires as the main targets for cost cuts.

"These people are not at the table; they do not have a voice," Center for Retirement Research Director Alicia Munnell and Rebecca Cannon Fraenkel said in a January report on cuts to teacher pension plans.

Proponents say that the cuts trim excessive benefit levels, especially among top earners who have retired with six-figure pension checks.

"(Pensions) are taking away from the essential services that our constituents need and deserve," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a speech in Albany, N.Y., last year. "We see how they're increasing our tax rates all across this state, money that's coming out of the pockets of people who are working hard trying to make ends meet."

Related: What is a pension?

Many states expanded benefits when times were flush without setting aside extra cash to fund them. When the recession hit, major investment losses combined with plummeting tax revenues created a pension burden that was far greater than many states and cities could handle.

In 2010, the gap between what states had promised in retirement benefits and the amount of cash they had set aside to fund them was $1.38 trillion, according to the Pew Center.

Yet, critics counter that the states' pension cuts could leave millions of future retirees without an adequate safety net. In some states, public workers are exempt from Social Security payments -- making pensions their main source of retirement security.

"For most of our members, their pensions are their life savings," said Steven Kreisberg, collective bargaining director for the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees.

In Louisiana, state actuaries cautioned against switching new workers to a cash balance pension plan -- where payments are largely determined by the performance of invested contributions instead of a percentage of the worker's final salary -- since the change limits benefits for employees who become disabled or for family members of employees who die before reaching retirement age.

"Because there is no Social Security coverage, such a member may very well become a ward of the state because he or she has no other available resources," the actuaries wrote.

That plan, scheduled to take effect in July, is now in limbo after a Baton Rouge judge ruled last month that the law was unconstitutional for not receiving a two-thirds vote in the state legislature. State Governor Bobby Jindal plans to appeal the ruling.

Related: Couple plans for the loss of a pension

State pension cuts could also affect the attraction and retention of future public employees and the quality of applicants.

Before the recession, studies showed that public and private-sector workers had roughly equal compensation when both salaries and benefits were considered, said Jean-Pierre Aubry, at Boston College's Center for Retirement Research. "But now, with the cuts, employees should recognize that there is a chance that they might be getting a worse deal than in the private sector" he said.

In their report on teacher pension cuts, Munnell and Fraenkel warned that cutting pension benefits without increasing salaries could hurt the recruitment of quality public school teachers.

"Cutting their compensation is not costless," the report said. "It will almost certainly result in a lower quality of applicants for one of the nation's most important jobs."

First Published: February 11, 2013: 5:47 AM ET

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Millions of credit reports have errors

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

As many as 42 million consumers have errors on their credit reports, and around 20 million have significant mistakes, a Federal Trade Commission study of nearly 3,000 credit reports to be released Monday indicates.

"Errors in credit reports can cost you a loan, a competitive interest rate, a job, security clearance and insurance," said John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education at SmartCredit.com.

Related: Great credit score? Think again

Not all of these errors will impact your ability to get credit, however. About 13% of study participants saw their FICO credit score change once a mistake on their credit report was fixed, and those changes were big enough to potentially result in better credit offers for 2.2% of participants.

The Consumer Data Industry Association defended this 2.2% rate, saying in a statement that overall, the report "shows that 98% of credit reports are materially accurate."

Related: How can my teenager build her credit history?

"[T]he measure of accuracy is tied to the question of when an error has a consequence for consumers, not just when a report contains an error that will have little or no impact on creditworthiness," the CDIA said.

But since the three biggest credit bureaus -- Experian, Equifax and TransUnion -- maintain credit reports for about 200 million consumers, the 2.2% error rate still means millions of Americans are being denied loans or given higher-priced credit due to errors on their reports, said Ulzheimer.

To avoid being deemed a higher risk than you really are, it's important to look at your credit report from all three major credit bureaus to make sure everything is correct. Currently, fewer than one in five consumers check their credit report, according to a separate study released by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

First Published: February 11, 2013: 8:24 AM ET

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Pope fell short in cleaning up finances

LONDON (CNNMoney)

Independent experts say much progress has been made in a short period of time. But the Pope resigns with the Vatican still falling well short of its goal of inclusion on a "white list" of states and embroiled in an embarrassing row with the Bank of Italy.

In 2010, the Vatican created a supervisory body, the Financial Information Authority (FIA), and drafted a new law to make sure all departments met international standards on money laundering and terrorism financing.

But a 2012 report by European anti-money laundering group Moneyval found the Vatican still failing to measure up in seven of 16 key areas. Also in 2012, Gotti Tedeschi was removed as head of the Vatican bank, or Institute for Works of Religion as it is formally known.

In response to the Moneyval report, the Vatican appointed lawyer Rene Bruelhart to head the FIA and lead its push for greater transparency. Bruelhart had previously fulfilled a similar role in Liechtenstein, the principality sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria.

The Vatican has been trying for years to raise its game and throw off a reputation for murky financial dealings that dates back at least 30 years, to the death in London of Roberto Calvi, known as "God's banker".

Calvi was found hanging from a bridge and his death has never been fully explained. He was chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, in which the Vatican bank held a small stake.

Related: Vatican can't take credit card payments

The Vatican bank serves the 500-or-so inhabitants of the world's smallest state, but also thousands of Catholic charities, religious orders and dioceses around the world. It has some 33,400 accounts. Vatican transactions are conducted in euros.

Moneyval found the threat of financial crime at the Vatican to be very low. But it said the bank's global reach, high volume of cash transactions and a lack of information about some non-profit organizations could make it a target for money-launderers.

"Further important issues still need addressing in order to demonstrate that a fully effective regime has been instituted in practice," the report stated.

The Bank of Italy cited the Moneyval report when it moved to close down credit and debit card payments at Vatican shops and museums at the end of last year, leaving tourists dependent on cash to buy souvenirs and tickets for attractions such as the Sistine Chapel.

Interviewed by an Italian newspaper shortly after the central bank's action, Bruelhart expressed surprise and said the Vatican had implemented all measures required by the European Union, and in some cases adopted even tougher standards.

First Published: February 11, 2013: 9:12 AM ET

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Stocks hover below recent highs

Click for more market data.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were all down between 0.2% and 0.3%.

Markets have had a good run so far in 2013. The Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 are both up nearly 7% and near their all-time highs, while the Nasdaq has gained nearly 6%.

The big advance came after officials in Washington resolved some of the nation's fiscal problems and punted on others. Investors have also welcomed some upbeat economic news, such as improvement in the housing market, and corporate earnings that beat analysts' modest expectations.

So far, two-thirds of the companies in the S&P 500 have reported results for the fourth quarter, with 70% of them beating forecasts, notes Oliver Pursche, president at Gary Goldberg & Company. Overall, the results are "painting a healthy picture for corporate profitability," he said.

There are still a few large corporations scheduled to report this week, including Coca-Cola (KO, Fortune 500), General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) and PepsiCo (PEP, Fortune 500).

On the economic front, the main event this week will probably be Wednesday's retail sales data. Economists expect modest improvement in sales during January, according to estimates from Briefing.com.

With earnings season winding down and the economy continuing to grow at a modest pace, stocks are headed for a period of "consolidation," said Dan Greenhaus, market strategist at BTIG in New York.

"We had a nice rally to start the year, and I wouldn't be surprised if we trade sideways for a while," he said.

Related: Fear & Greed index still in 'extreme greed'

U.S. stocks finished higher Friday, with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 logging their sixth straight week of gains.

In company news, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) disclosed late Friday that executive chairman Eric Schmidt plans to sell 3.2 million shares of his stock in the company, worth about $2.5 billion. Shares of Google were lower.

Shares of Tesla Motors (TSLA) fell more than 3% in early trading after the New York Times published a scathing review of the Model S sedan over the weekend..

Related: Stocks we love

European markets were mixed in afternoon trading. Euro area finance ministers will meet Monday evening in Brussels to discuss, among other things, a financial rescue for Cyprus. Exchanges in Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong were closed for holidays.

Related: Nikkei sprints ahead on Abe fever

With the G-20 meeting set to be held this week in Moscow, there are reports that finance ministers are discussing releasing a statement on exchange rates to try to calm concerns that developed economies might engage in a currency war, sparked by Japanese efforts to lower the value of the yen.

First Published: February 11, 2013: 9:41 AM ET

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Make your money last all through retirement

NEW YORK (Money Magazine)

Once you determine how much of a saver you are, you have several more decisions to make -- including how to safely draw down your retirement savings.

Decision No. 5: How much can you draw from your savings?

The decision: After you stop working, you'll have to figure out how much you can safely take out of your retirement portfolio each year -- a daunting task.

Why it's important: The conventional strategy is to start with a modest withdrawal rate -- typically 4% or so -- and then adjust for inflation annually.

Doing that usually means you'll have an 80% or so chance that your savings will last at least 30 years.

Related: 3 tips for tapping your nest egg

When it comes to tapping your retirement accounts, however, you're walking a fine line: You don't want to run out of money -- even a 4% withdrawal rate can deplete your savings quickly if the market dives right after you retire.

You also don't want to be so frugal that you end up with a huge balance you could have enjoyed earlier. Follow the 4% regimen strictly and see your investments perform well, and you could wind up late in life with as much money, if not more, than you started with, which means you would have scrimped more than was necessary.

Best move: Recalculate your withdrawals every year to take into account your current account balances and the fact that your nest egg doesn't have to support you for as long.

Morningstar estimates that annually adjusting the amount you pull from savings rather than simply upping your initial draw by the inflation rate can increase the amount of spendable income you pull from your portfolio by nearly 9%.

Related: Get help meeting your financial goals

"It's the single most effective way of boosting your income during retirement," says Morning-star's Blanchett.

As a practical matter, though, recalculating your withdrawal rate this way can be quite complicated. So unless you're working with a financial planner capable of doing the number crunching for you, your best bet is to go to an online tool like T. Rowe Price's Retirement Income Calculator every year, plug in your most up-to-date information, and adjust your withdrawals up or down as necessary.

With a decision this big, you don't want to blindly stick to the 4% rule or any other rigid system for spending down the hard-earned rewards of your years of careful planning, saving, and investing.

See more decisions you need to get right

Are you a saver or an investor?

How should you divide your money?

How much help do you really need?

What's the best use of tax-deferred plans?

First Published: February 11, 2013: 10:07 AM ET

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How to use your retirement plans to lower your taxes

Having your retirement savings in a variety of accounts gives you more flexibility in managing your withdrawals and your tax bill.

NEW YORK (Money Magazine)

Once you determine how much of a saver you are, you have several more decisions to make -- including how to best take advantage of tax-deferred plans.

Decision No. 4: What's the best use of tax-deferred plans?

The decision: When it comes to your 401(k), IRA, and Roth IRA, you potentially face two decisions. One is divvying up your investments between taxable and tax-advantaged accounts. The other is when to tap each type of account.

Why it's important: You have virtually no control over what happens to tax rates. But you can reduce the drag that taxes can have on your investments.

Regardless of how Congress may change taxes in the future, you'll almost certainly continue to face different tax rates on different types of investments. All gains in 401(k)s and traditional IRAs are taxed at ordinary income rates when withdrawn (a top rate of 39.6% in 2013); outside of these plans, you face lower rates on long-term capital gains and dividends (a max of 20% in 2013).

Related: Middle class tax breaks on the line

You can minimize the tax man's take by keeping investments like stock index funds, stock ETFs, and dividend funds in taxable accounts to take advantage of long-term capital gains rates and holding bond funds and actively managed stock funds that trade a lot in tax-deferred accounts.

In retirement, the idea is to blunt the effect of taxes by tapping your nest egg in a tax-efficient manner. The traditional advice is to pull money from taxable accounts first, where you'll presumable pay the lower capital gains rate, then move on to tax-deferred accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs, and finally Roth IRAs. The balances in your tax-advantaged accounts will have more time to compound tax-free.

Best move: While these strategies can be effective -- Morningstar estimates that following both in retirement can up your income by roughly 8% -- stay flexible. In fact, says David Blanchett, Morningstar's head of retirement research, "you should maintain your target stocks/bonds mix first and then allocate your assets as best you can for tax efficiency."

Related: The other way to invest in a Roth IRA

Similarly, you don't want to be too rigid about withdrawals. In some years, for example, you may be able to sell taxable investments at a loss and use that loss to offset taxes on your 401(k) or IRA withdrawals. By liquidating taxable accounts early in retirement, you lose that flexibility. And once you reach age 70½, you're required to draw at least some money from your IRA and, unless you're still working, your 401(k).

Besides, you can't know what the tax system will look like down the road. Having savings in a variety of accounts that receive different tax treatment gives you more leeway for managing withdrawals -- and your tax bill -- later.

See more decisions you need to get right

Are you a saver or an investor?

How should you divide your money?

How much help do you really need?

How much can you draw from your savings?

First Published: February 11, 2013: 10:03 AM ET

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How to divvy up your retirement nest egg

You can capture solid returns while minimizing risk with a relatively simple stocks/bonds mix.

NEW YORK (Money Magazine)

Once you determine how much of a saver you are, you have several more decisions to make -- including how you invest your portfolio.

Decision No. 2: How should you divide up your money?

The decision: Once you've amassed a portfolio worth more than five figures, you may wonder whether you should branch out from plain-vanilla stock and bond funds.

To hear some advisers tell it, you can't have a truly diversified portfolio unless you spread your money among virtually every asset class, sector, and subsector under the sun: hedge funds, currency, single-country funds, precious metals, exotic ETFs.

Why it's important: You can capture more than enough of the benefits of diversification -- solid returns while minimizing risk -- with a relatively simple stocks/bonds mix.

Related: Betting your retirement on stocks

Start by making sure you own a broad swath of U.S. stocks and bonds. Then add developed and emerging foreign markets.

For inflation protection, you might pick up some real estate and TIPS. Adding more to this basic blend isn't likely to appreciably boost your performance.

In fact, stocking up on a dozen or more different assets may work against you. One reason is the phenomenon that asset-allocation expert William Bernstein refers to as "overgrazing" -- as more and more investors plow money into a newly discovered alternative investment, the lower its expected return.

Related: Investing in TIPS - Can retirees beat inflation?

"The first ones in get sirloin, but the latecomers get hamburger or worse," says Bernstein. Many nontraditional assets also come with hefty fees.

As you pile on more investments, monitoring and managing them become harder.

"If you've got upwards of 20 different investments in 401(k)s, IRAs, and taxable accounts, you're talking about a blizzard of trading every time you rebalance," says Wealthcare Capital Management CEO David Loeper.

Best move: The simplest way to create this mix is by using index funds or ETFs from our MONEY 70 list. Aside from simplicity, they have the advantage of certainty: These funds strictly follow defined benchmarks, so you know exactly how they'll invest.

Most important, though, resist the urge to jump onto the alternative investments bandwagon. Says Bernstein: "Wall Street needs to sell them, but you don't need to buy them."

See more decisions you need to get right

Are you a saver or an investor?

How much help do you really need?

What's the best use of tax-deferred plans?

How much can you draw from your savings?

First Published: February 11, 2013: 9:54 AM ET

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5 retirement choices: Get 'em right, live well

From the years you spend tending your portfolio to the time when you get to enjoy sweet success, you face choices about your retirement investing.

NEW YORK (Money Magazine)

What may surprise you are which decisions matter most, according to researchers at Morningstar.

They are not the kinds of choices you may obsess about, like whether to buy Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) stock or where to find the next hot emerging market.

Rather, the most crucial decisions involve more fundamental issues, like how you manage your 401(k) plan. The idea of making savvy choices applies to all phases of planning.

So, based on what I've learned writing my Ask the Expert column, I came up with these five big decisions you need to get right before and after you retire.

1. Are you a saver or an investor?
2. How should you divide up your money?
3. How much help do you really need?
4. What's the best use of tax-deferred plans?
5. How much can you draw from your savings?

Decision No. 1: Are you a saver or an investor?

The decision: When you sign up for a retirement plan or use an online calculator to track your retirement progress, you must decide how much to save and how to invest those savings. It may seem counterintuitive, but your savings rate is by far more crucial.

Related: Your future self thinks you should save more

Why it's important: Even though history shows that tilting a portfolio toward equities generates higher returns, loftier gains are hardly guaranteed -- witness the 3.4% annualized loss you would have suffered by investing in the S&P 500 index from March 1999 to March 2009. And investing too aggressively leaves you more vulnerable to downturns like the near 60% drop in the 2007-09 bear market.

Ratcheting up the amount you sock away is a surer way to improve your chances of achieving a secure retirement. Increasing how much you save every year has a much bigger impact on your eventual retirement security than investing more aggressively does. The reason: While shifting more savings to stocks enhances return potential, it also increases volatility, which dilutes the effectiveness of a stock-heavy portfolio.

Related: Long-term investing -- Keep it simple

Saving more has another benefit: You can afford to invest more conservatively. By saving 20% a year for 30 years -- a high bar, for sure -- you can trim stock holdings to 60% and still have the same high chance of success you would have with an 80/20 mix.

Best move: Aim to save 15% or more a year. You'll improve your odds of retiring in comfort and be less vulnerable to the vagaries of the markets.

See more decisions you need to get right

How should you divide up your money?

How much help do you really need?

What's the best use of tax-deferred plans?

How much can you draw from your savings?

The most powerful tool you have

The amount you save is more crucial than how you invest. Plus, counting on high returns to overcome paltry savings can be costly.

With 70% in stocks and saving....	Chance of money lasting
10%	54%
12%	62%
15%	73%
If you instead keep saving 10% but increase stock stake to...	Chance of money lasting
70%	54%
80%	57%
90%	59%
And that aggressive portfolio carries a higher risk of a big hit.
Stock allocation	2007-2009 bear market loss
70%	-33%
80%	-39%
90%	-45%

NOTES: Assumes salary of $50,000 at 35 and $55,000 saved, retiring at 65 with 75% of income, and money lasting until age 95; 50/50 stock/bond mix after retiring. SOURCES: T. Rowe Price, MONEY research

First Published: February 11, 2013: 9:51 AM ET

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