Many people can tell you their portfolio balance. Far fewer can tell you what else determines whether their retirement actually works. That's understandable. The balance is the number on the statement. It's concrete, and it feels like a score. But judging retirement readiness by that one figure is a little like judging your health by your weight—useful, and nowhere near the whole story. A framework published in the Journal of Financial Planning offers a wider...

What do you do when you earn well and have generally dialed in the fundamentals: save, invest, reduce debt, stay protected? The challenge was never knowing what to do. It's knowing what to do first, and in what order. That's a harder question than it looks. Each of these priorities is sound on its own. Max out the retirement contributions. Pay down the balances. Build the cushion. Put money to work in the market. But...

Retirement used to mean a short, quiet final chapter. For many people today, it's something else entirely. For much of the last century, retirement followed a fairly predictable pattern: work for decades, retire around age 65, and slow down. Today, that picture looks very different. Retirement has evolved from a brief final chapter into something much larger—a stage of life that may span decades and offer more choices than ever before. When Retirement Was Shorter...