Here is a theory you could have:

• The world runs on oil right now, demand for oil is high, the price of oil is high, and getting oil out of the ground is lucrative.
• In X years — pick a number — the world will not run on oil, because the environmental effects of burning oil are bad, and eventually, through some combination of better green-energy technology, consumer demand and government regulation, the world will stop burning oil.
• Therefore the oil-drilling business will produce a series of cash flows that is large now and will, over the next X years, decline to zero.

You don’t have to believe this theory, but something like it seems to be pretty popular. In particular, environmental, social and governance investors often express some version of this; they talk about the need to transition to green energy and question the long-term viability of fossil fuels.
I suspect that many oil-and-gas executives and investors don’t believe this theory, but what if they do? If you are the chief executive officer of an oil company, and you believe this, what should you do about it? What is the best way to create long-term value for your shareholders? Here are three imaginable answers:

1) Do what you’ve always done. Drill lots of oil, acquire new leases, explore the deep ocean, make long-term investments in drilling technology, keep being an oil company, hope it all works out.
2) Pivot to renewables.[1] Drill oil for now, but make your long-term investments in green energy; build wind farms or drill geothermal wells or whatever, so that in X years, when the world stops using oil, you will be able to sell whatever it does use.
3) Drill the oil you’ve got, but plan for decline. Stop making lots of new long-term investments in oil fields. Maximize current cash flow, and spend it on stock buybacks. Eventually, in X years, your cash flows will be zero, and you will close up shop gracefully. But in the meantime there is money coming in, and rather than waste it on drilling new oil fields, you give it back to shareholders.

Answer 1 seems wrong, on this theory: If you make long-term oil investments, and oil is doomed in the long term, then your investments are wasteful. You are taking profits that belong to shareholders and wasting them on inertia.
Answer 2 seems fine! The idea here is that you are an energy company, not an oil company, and your expertise in energy makes you best positioned to find the energy of the future.[2] You have geologists and engineers and energy economists and a lot of money; you might be better at developing green energy than some inexperienced green-energy startup would be. I think this is debatable — if you are an oil-company CEO, and you grew up around oil, you might be biased against green tech and more comfortable with oil — but certainly possible.
Answer 3 also seems fine! The idea here is that your company got into business, 100 years ago or whatever, to do a thing: drill oil. You did the thing successfully and it made a lot of money. Now the money pours in, but the thing is in decline; there is a natural lifespan to your business, and the end is visible. Rather than fight embarrassingly against the end, you take the cash that is still coming in and you give it to your shareholders.[3]
What do they do with it? Buy groceries or yachts, I suppose, but they could also invest it. They could invest it in green energy companies? Here the idea is that other companies — green-energy startups, utility companies, I guess oil companies other than you — will be better at building green energy than you are. (Or: The idea is that your shareholders will be better at allocating capital to green-energy projects than you, an oil-company CEO, are.) You are an oil company, your employees and equipment and expertise are all optimized for finding and drilling oil, you have no great advantage in building wind farms and a sort of institutional bias against it. Give the money to shareholders and let them fund the best wind farmers they can find, instead of asking them to trust you to build a wind farm.
Anyway here is a Wall Street Journal report about how oil-and-gas shareholders want Answer 3:

Oil-and-gas companies have built up a mountain of cash with few precedents in recent history. Wall Street has a few ideas on how to spend it—and new drilling isn’t near the top of the list. ...
Even as an uncertain economic outlook has weighed on crude in 2023, making the energy sector the S&P 500’s worst performer, cash has continued flowing. Companies that previously chased growth and funneled money into speculative drilling investments, weighing down their stocks, have instead tried to appease Wall Street by boosting dividends and repurchasing shares.
The cash has helped make up for stock prices that often seesaw alongside volatile commodity markets. Steady returns also buoy an industry with an uncertain long-term outlook as governments, markets and the global economy gradually shift toward cleaner energy. …
President Biden has called on producers to ramp up output in a bid to lower prices at the pump. “These balance sheets make clear that there is nothing stopping oil companies from boosting production except their own decision to pad wealthy shareholder pockets and then sit on whatever is left,” White House Assistant Press Secretary Abdullah Hasan said. ...
“U.S. oil-and-gas producers are less focused on capital spending than they have been in years,” said Mark Young, a senior analyst at Evaluate Energy.
The cash buildup owes itself to other factors as well. Many companies have paid off debt racked up during growth mode, when they dug much of the top-tier territory for wells. While some companies have pledged huge sums to carbon-capture technology or hydrogen production, clean-energy investment has been slowed by lower expected returns and the wait for yet-to-be-finalized regulations in Mr. Biden’s climate package.

I should add that, like, pure-play wind-farm companies might have another advantage over oil companies in building wind farms: Their cost of capital might be lower. ESG investors tend to reward companies with good ESG scores (like green-energy companies) and penalize companies with bad ESG scores (like oil companies). This can have the (intended) result of lowering the cost of capital of green companies (lots of ESG investors want to buy their stock) and raising the cost of capital of polluting companies (nobody wants their stock). We talked a few weeks ago about a paper on “Counterproductive Sustainable Investing: The Impact Elasticity of Brown and Green Firms,” by Samuel Hartzmark and Kelly Shue, arguing that this has the effect of making polluting companies more short-term-focused: If your cost of capital is high, near-term projects are worth relatively more and long-term projects are worth relatively less, so you will focus on the short term. Hartzmark and Shue argue that in particular this means that polluting oil companies who get little love from ESG investors will decide to drill more oil to maximize short-term cash flows, but it does also suggest that polluting oil companies might decide to do less oil exploration and other long-term oil-focused investment, and spend more of their cash flows on stock buybacks. Your model could be something like “ESG lowers the cost of capital of green firms and raises the cost of capital of polluting firms, to encourage green firms to invest more for the long term and encourage polluting firms not to plan to stick around.” And then a lot of stock buybacks from oil firms would be a reasonable ESG outcome.
I should also say that the specific story here — oil companies are buying back stock rather than drilling more wells — does not require either an ESG perspective or a long-term view that oil is on the decline. “Last time oil prices were high, oil companies overinvested in drilling, and then prices crashed and investors lost money” is also a perfectly reasonable explanation.
One thing that I think, though, when people get angry about stock buybacks generally, is that there are probably a lot of industries like this? “We do a business, it makes money, we have a lot of money, but eventually this business will end and we won’t be good at whatever replaces it, so we might as well give the money back to shareholders so they can recycle it, instead of naïvely reinvesting in a business that can’t last forever,” is probably the right way to think about things a lot of the time!

I have it in my Schwab account and there are times when I want to move distributions from other funds into VWINX, but the $75.00 fee discourages that if the amount is not significant. That is the reason to look for another fund that is no-load.

+1 Thank you @Bobpa. It makes perfect sense put that way.
I don’t even own VWINX because Fido would hit me with a fee. From following the board many years I respect it for what it is. Has a good reputation. What I don’t do, generally, is sell a good, but underperforming fund, to buy another good, but outperforming, one. Generally, that will cost you longer term.

I probably wouldn’t replace it. All investments go through periods of overperformance and underperformance. The two alternatives you mention certainly have stellar records. INPFX gained over 38% during the 3 years from 2019 thru 2021. The likelihood of a repeat anytime soon would seem slim. That kind of outperformance leads me to suspect it is a riskier / more aggressive fund than VWINX.
If you are still spread equally across 5 different funds (per some of your earlier posts), you should be able to continue holding VWINX during a period of underperformance. Eventually, it may make up lost ground - either by outdistancing many peers during favorable markets or by declining less than them if the bear market resumes.
@Sven summed it up pretty well …

”Since everyone’s situation is unique with respect to withdrawal needs., RMD, and investment horizon, the question is more on financial planning rather than a “drop-in” replacement with a different asset allocation fund.”

It’s hard to come up with a better low-cost alternative than the highly regarded VWINX. Lots of good suggestions, In the end, it’s your decision. But changing horses mid-stream not always wise.

"Hover over the date field"... been here lord knows how many years and didn't know that. Never too old to learn.

Covering 11 years of total returns, there is not much different in the 3 you noted. Yes, they will travel slightly different paths during a 6 month or 1 year time frame, but this is the nature of management investment choices and market valuations during such periods. The largest spread over the entire time frame is 5.3% more return for WBALX vs VWINX. As noted previous; have you a serious reason to desire changing funds ?
VWINX , INPFX , and WBALX chart from May 18, 2012 to May 5, 2023.

Rummaging through old posts uncovered this from last November … Never out of date.

“Have you noticed how easy it is to tell yourself that you would be comfortable with a 10% drop in the value of your portfolio until you are seeing it losing $50,000, $100,000 or $150,000 or more . Dollars seem to have a greater impact on your tolerance.”

I decided a long time ago it’s best to view asset allocation in terms of percentages. So, theoretically, it doesn’t make any difference whether you’re managing $50,000, $500,000, or $5,000,000 when designing a portfolio and maintaining the desired allocation among different asset classes. There are some caveats: Fees tend to be higher for lesser amounts invested. And some lucrative investments may not be available for smaller sums. In that sense, dollar amounts may well influence investment decisions.
As @Bobpa correctly notes, looking at dollar sums can be gut-wrenching during falling markets as money seems to be “flying out the door”. More important, this can lead to hasty knee-jerk reactions we later regret. Another thing I noticed is that dollar sums appear to gain in importance once distributions begin. Up until then (during the working years) they’re largely “numbers” on a chart. However, once you begin spending those funds on real goods and services, your perspective changes. Suddenly you’re looking at “real” dollars in terms of what they can buy.
Post is from November 5, 2022, just a few weeks after the S&P dipped below 3,590 on October 12. That was its low for all of 2022 and lower than where it ended 2020. (Thanks @Yogibearbull for helping on the date.)

4% in PFF in the taxable. Another E ticket. No need for me to sell. I can *enjoy* the ride.
After 40 years in NORCAL, their small stake in PG&E is more concerning.

Steve retired about 11 or 12 years ago and moved from Minnesota to Maine. At the time of his recent death he was, I think, in California. So he's been out of the loop for more than a decade.
There's an argument that his departure was good for the fund, at least in the sense that the new team had an opportunity to step back, review their model and refresh it. In particular, they concluded that the historic allocation model - with something like 130 component industries - was too rigid. Implicitly the size of the fund was controlled by things like the "industrial air gases" industry. The original model said you had to have the option to take a meaningful position there but the industry group was so small that the fund had to turn away assets to keep from growing beyond the constraints imposed by its smallest potential components. The team, my understanding is, reviewed and revamped to buy themselves some flex.
For what that's worth, David

• Trading halted in shares of two more US lenders as fears of banking crisis mount
• Regional lenders such as PacWest and Western Alliance are not seen as systemically important and more consolidation is ahead
Following is a current report from The Guardian:

Shares in two more US regional banks have been suspended. Regulators moved in to halt trading in Los Angeles-based PacWest and Arizona’s Western Alliance on Thursday after they became the latest victims of an escalating crisis that began with Silicon Valley Bank in March.
The message from central banks and bank supervisors is that this is not a rerun of the global financial crisis of 2008. That may be true. With the exception of Switzerland’s Credit Suisse, European banks have escaped the turmoil. It is specific US banks that are the problem.
There are a number of reasons for that: the business models of the banks concerned; failures of regulation; the large number of small and mid-sized banks in the US; and the rapid increase in interest rates from the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve.
Luis de Guindos, vice-president of the European Central Bank (ECB), remarked on Thursday that “the European banking industry has been clearly outperforming the American one”. Although he will be praying his words do not come back to haunt him, he is broadly right. European banks, including those in the UK, do look more secure than those in the US – primarily because they tend to be bigger and more tightly regulated.
Despite being the 16th biggest bank in the US, Silicon Valley Bank was not considered systemically important and so was less stringently regulated than institutions viewed by federal regulators to be more pivotal. Many of its customers were not covered by deposit insurance and were heavily exposed to losses on US Treasury bonds as interest rates rose. The other banks that failed subsequently have tended to share many of the same characteristics: they were regionally based and are vulnerable to rising borrowing costs.
Unless the Fed rides to the rescue with cuts in interest rates, the options are: amalgamation, regulation or more banks going bust. The response of the US authorities suggests little appetite for a laissez-faire approach.
According to official data, the US has more than 4,000 banks – an average of 80 for each of the 50 states. The number has fallen by more than two-thirds since the peak of more than 14,000 in the early 1980s, but there is certainly room for greater consolidation. In an age of instant internet bank runs, customers will be attracted to the idea that big is beautiful.
The US authorities certainly do not seem averse to further amalgamation. When First Republic ran into trouble, it was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and its deposits and assets were sold to one of the giants of US banking – JP Morgan Chase. Inevitably, there will be more takeovers and fire sales of assets as alternatives to bank failures. It is reasonable to assume that in 10 years’ time the number of US banks will be considerably smaller than it is today.
What’s more, the banks that remain – including those that are not taken over – are likely to be more tightly regulated and more closely supervised. Even if the Fed, the ECB and the Bank of England are right and a repeat of the global financial crisis has been averted, lessons are already being learned.

@jafink63- Well sir, you did all of the right stuff on your way to retirement. Obviously you paid attention to your expenses, and saved adequately as you were able. Likely some degree of luck was also involved... it certainly was with us.
With respect to how you choose to place your investments, I'd say that since you're still quite young in your sixties, your current scheme seems quite reasonable to me. Even if the next few years are turbulent, you still have plenty of time to recover. We, in our eighties, are looking at a much more conservative approach, thus the choice of income instruments.
Carry on!

To me, the question isn't just of efficacy, but whether the government can force these pharamaceutical companies to lower their drug costs? Somehow I don't think a year's worth of this drug costs $25,000 to $58,000 to manufacture. I wonder what the profit margins will be on it, even after factoring in the R&D costs? If it's effective even somewhat, that matters. One thing I would add is the current annual cost of a private room in a nursing home is $108,408: https://health.usnews.com/best-nursing-homes/articles/how-to-pay-for-nursing-home-costs It is sad but true that the most expensive nursing home patients are ones with Alzheimer's as they can be physically healthy otherwise, but still be mentally unfit to care for themselves, becoming both a danger to themselves and others. So, unlike most elderly patients, they can end up in nursing homes for many months or even years. As strange as this sounds, the medicine, if it works, would be cheaper.

Certainly if every Alzheimer's patient on Medicare in the US received this drug, Medicare would be bankrupt very quickly. Part B premiums increased 14% in anticipation of the costs of Anduhelm two years ago, before CMS and FDA wisely decided to limit it's use to clinical trials.
It is too early to decide if donanemab is cost effective, but at $25000 to $58,000 ( initial projected cost of Anduleum) a year, shouldn't we wait to see some data on cost reductions before wholesale approval?
The limited information Lilly released ( press releases have a bigger effect on the stock price than a peer reviewed scientific article!) indicates it "stabilizes" cognitive decline, but does not reverse it. No information on how long this lasts. Hopefully a year of treatment will provide long lasting benefit, but there is no data.
It is also not benign. 35% of patients had brain swelling and/or bleeding and at least three died. This is a common problem with these drugs. There may be ways to predict who is at most risk, but this is not a well tolerated medication.
This country needs to have a serious discussion of the goals of Alzheimer's treatment and how many Billions of Medicare money we can afford to pay for it. But, of course it is unlikely this will occur. The Alzheimer's lobby said the FDA was "ignoring" Alzheimer's patient's medical needs when it put up "barriers at every turn" to prevent patients from receiving a drug that reduced the decline in a cognitive test by few points.
The tortured course of Anduleum should be a warning of how aggressive the pharmaceutical industry, academics and patient advocates will be to force approval of drugs that show any possible benefit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aducanumab

IBM core business has changed over the years and now they are largely a IT service company. Colleagues I know who work there are now working elsewhere. Many companies are looking at AI as a way to reduce headcount, that adds to the the bottom line, i.e. bonus for the executives such as Arvind Krishna.

I don’t post here much, but I do follow the website each day.
So, in turn we are both turning 60 this year. I am military retired and work part time. My spouse works full-time for an insurance broker doing accounting procedures. I have been doing my own investing over the years and mine is at Fidelity and hers at T Rowe Price. I started hers at TRP when she was a green card holder and is now a dual citizen and has been this way for 20+ years.
We are both in generally good health. I have my aches and pains left from the military though which are covered by the VA. Our medical insurance is through Tricare and the other insurances (dental, eyes, car & house) comes through her work at discounted price. We purchased long term care insurance a few years ago for a cheap price for $4k a month if we ever need it.
Our current medical insurance is through Tricare (Humana Military). When we turn 65 will have to get Medicare as primary payer and Tricare for Life becomes secondary payer. We will continue to get our drugs through Medicare/Tricare
So, my wife has suggested to me that I get an advisor to manage what we have so it lasts throughout our lives and have a good time traveling seeing friends and family. Not so quick, wifey, I think I’ve done a good job of investing and saving.
Even took money out of Roth IRA and paid off the house, and this still leaves us over $1/2m to have a good time with.
My military retired check covers all the bills including the insurance coverages, plus some left over. Her pay and my pay collect in savings accounts for vacations, household repairs etc.
So, the odd question everyone has about their portfolio is what to do with it. Where do I put it? I had posted a thread under What is Pension worth: Old_Joe had mentioned to create a new thread in other investing in what to do with your portfolio now. We don’t have anyone to leave our money too, so now it’s time to spend it. But where do we put it.
So here I am:
Her’s
PRWCX – Capital Appreciation
PRHSX – Health Science
PRFDX – Equity Income
TREMX – Emerging Europe, bought it when price tanked 2.60 share
PRSVX – Small Cap Value
His
VWENX – Wellington
FSMEX – Medical Tech & Devices
TRMCX – Mid Cap Value
FIEUX – Europe Fund
FSCOX – Small Cap Foreign
FXAIX – S&P 500 Fund

@hank, M* now backs out the shorting- and leverage-related expenses from the ER, and calls it adjusted-ER. Years ago, M* controversially stated only the adjusted ER, and argued vigorously about it, but since it started its own asset management business, it changed its practice to include both adjusted and total ERs. As far as the SEC is concerned, the total ER must be stated, but optionally, an adjusted ER (with explanations) may also be included.
There are historical reasons why the SEC has required inclusion of these costs in the ER and one of these was that the OEFs campaigned for this in the 1940s because there were concerned about the unfair advantages that CEFs may have due to leverage.
@JD_co, I missed that 4.74% -1x (inverse) SP500 position in the holdings.

International Business Machines Corp. Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna said the company expects to pause hiring for roles it thinks could be replaced with artificial intelligence in the coming years. Hiring in back-office functions — such as human resources — will be suspended or slowed, Krishna said in an interview. These non-customer-facing roles amount to roughly 26,000 workers, Krishna said. “I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period.” That would mean roughly 7,800 jobs lost. Part of any reduction would include not replacing roles vacated by attrition, an IBM spokesperson said.
Story
ISTM one of these AI gizmos ought to be able to run a mutual fund better than a human can - perhaps consistently outperforming the S&P. (Not to mention… a lot more cheaply)

Tastyworks is by Tom Sosnoff, JJ Kinihan, and others who helped build ThinkorSwim (which ThinkDesktop was/is fantastic) back in the day. They've been around forever and Tom is a recognizable name who knows his stuff, especially when it comes to options. Tasty seemed far too gimmicky to me when it launched it a bunch of years ago, fwiw saying. Do you need to use their service? No. But I'm curious to see what they're doing now, so thanks for the link.
I've heard of WeBull but that's pretty much it -- just the name recognition.

@jafink63... I would suggest that you-
• 1) Sit down and map out your total annual dependable income from all sources.
• 2) Do the same for all of your predictable and repeatable annual expenses. Hopefully the income will exceed the expenses. Will it be necessary to draw down your retirement accounts to meet those expenses? If so, an additional level of careful planning will be necessary. Consider that inflation is certain to increase your expenses, but not necessarily your income.
• 3) Consider what resources you may have for unanticipated expenses- primarily health care. Would an illness requiring expensive or extended health care be covered by insurance?
• 4) If it looks like your retirement income will cover your expenses, and you have decent health care coverage, then (and only then!) can you look forward to spending down your retirement savings.
• 4) With respect to "where do we put it", I'm sure that you will get many responses from the folks here at MFO. My personal input: I believe that we are heading into a period of financial system instability which will likely take a couple of years to sort itself out.
During that period you should want to keep your savings as safe as possible. I suggest consideration of laddering fairly short-term (3 months to 2 years) FDIC insured Certificates of Deposit, or similar maturity Treasury instruments. These types of instruments are easily available through brokerages such as Fidelity or Schwab. We personally use Schwab, but many MFO posters would also recommend Fidelity.
For more information about these types of investments you might take a look at the "New to Brokered CDs" thread, and also the "Best Returns on Currently Available CDs or Treasuries Maturing 2024 to 2025" thread.
Best of luck in retirement- I can testify that my wife and I are certainly enjoying ours.

I don’t post much here and I do follow every day.
So in-turn, we are both 60 this year, I am military and disabled retired through the Air Force. I’ve been this way since I retired in 2008. I worked full-time job for 10 years after I retired, but since then I’ve worked part time of volunteered. During the time I worked, I was plowing money into my retirement accounts and built up sizable portion for which we’ve just sat on and let it grow.
My spouse still works full time doing accounting stuff, but next year she’s dropping a day and still gets her vacation pay etc, which will work great for us.
We don’t have anyone to leave our money too, so now it’s time to spend it. But where do we put it. We have family in US and England, so there will be traveling involved, mainly airfare and food. So many friends all over the place. Where does some one start. Lol
This was our 13th move around and the last time we bought a house. I took a chunk of money from Roth and paid off the house, which still leaves a very large portfolio to spend. I don’t know if I get could get used to rental unless it had private back yard for small dog.

This following Paragraph in this month's Commentary provided by @CharlesLynnBolin or @lynnbolin2021 seems worthy of further discussion here on the board.
Thanks for sharing your personal experiences and decision that you have made.
@CharlesLynnBolin wrote:

The Modern Wealth Survey for Charles Schwab by Logica Research shows that of the participants, Americans believe that it takes a net worth, including home equity, of $774,000 to be financially comfortable and $2.2M to be wealthy. FatFIRE Woman has an interesting Net Worth Calculator. The concept behind FatFIRE is “Financial Independence, Retiring Early,” but with enough to have a good quality of life. The calculator shows that the median net worth of households in the 65-year age group is $189,100, including home equity, while ten percent of households at age 65 have a net worth of $2.3 million or higher. Pensions are often not included in net worth calculations and greatly distort comparisons.

We spend our working life depending on work income to provide the funding source for our "cost to live" a quality life. If we are lucky (and maybe a bit frugal) we also squirrel away some of our work income for retirement. The above paragraph captures where most of us (65 and older) are at. If we are at the median or below, we are probably still working (if that is even possible). Using a SWR (Safe Withdrawal Rate) of 4 % this "median net worth of $189K" would barely provide $600 per month ($189K*.04/12month) of "safe withdrawals" from somewhat "uncertain and illiquid sources" (our investments & home equity values).
@CharlesLynnBolin last line:

Pensions are often not included in net worth calculations and greatly distort comparisons.

Whether one will receive a pension, an annuity, a Social Security benefit or some other form of monthly/yearly income stream these "payments" are often difficult to quantify in terms of their worth in one overall portfolio or as part of one's net worth. After 40 years (25 - 65) of accumulating a retirement nest egg and living in a home, I personally struggle to think of these two assets as the first place to turn for income in retirement. In fact, I have often thought of my investments and my home's equity as the last place to seek income (withdrawals).
As important as our portfolio and home value is, it might be better for us to find alternative and additional income solutions to help meet income needs in retirement.
Social Security:
Most of us will receive a Social Security Benefit. Spend some time crunching numbers regarding SS strategies.
Annuities / QLAC:
Increases in Interest rates may now be making annuities more attractive. Annuities are a topic on to themselves. For example, a QLAC is an annuity that you set up early in retirement, then dispersed later in retirement at a higher payout.
Our Home/Vacation Property:
Aside from home equity, a home could be rented for inflation adjusted income in retirement. Rent part of your home and have this rental income help with expenses or provide funds for you to travel in retirement. Consider running a part time business out of your home.
Reverse Mortgage Line of Credit:
Consider setting up a reverse mortgage early in retirement. This allows the reverse mortgage's line of credit to grow over time. Then, later in life, you can access this reverse mortgage line of credit and make much larger payments to yourself. This strategy (setting up a reverse mortgage early in retirement (age 62) and letting the line of credit grow) reminds me of how a QLAC (purchased early in retirement then dispersed later in retirement at a higher payout) works. There is a cost to setting up the reverse mortgage similar to any mortgage.
how-does-the-line-of-credit-for-a-reverse-mortgage-work/

Pension:
Some pension plans have features that allow funds (retirement savings) to be added to one's pension so provide a higher pension payout. Spend some time understanding what is offered at retirement. What's a Pension Worth? It could be a lot:
what-is-a-pension-worth
Part Time / Volunteer Work:
Retirement might be the best time to work at a passion that either pays you an income or provide you a productive way to spend your time.
Some of these income payments have little or no death benefit (SS might provide a burial benefit), some have a diminishing cash value (upon death), and some die with the beneficiary, some have a date certain end date, but all provide a partial solution to a retiree's income needs and might help you sleep better at night.
Love to hear what others have planned and implemented for their retirement income.