When you're early in your working years, or even not so early, it can be tough to conceptualize how retirement might happen. Let's try to sharpen that focus a bit. Here's a list of things to do if you anticipate retiring five years out or less.

Recessions are difficult to predict, but it is a good idea to know how a recession might impact your investment portfolio and your retirement plan.

There's a generally accepted way of withdrawing from investment accounts in retirement. Sometimes there are reasons to handle those withdrawals differently, such as when using a bucket strategy.

The main reason that treasuries do well when stocks don’t is that the market usually predicts that the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates to fight off a recession or an impending recession. Another reason is what is called “flight to safety”, which means a lot of investors are moving their money out of stocks and into less volatile, much safer treasury bonds.

A general rule of thumb when it comes to taking money out of qualified tax-deferred retirement accounts, such as regular IRAs and 401(k) plans, is this: Postpone withdrawing from them as long as you can. In other words, if you have other sources of retirement income or investment principal you can use, you should almost always use that first.