1. Where are we in the market cycle?

Suppose you retired in October 2007 with a $500,000 nest egg. Those savings were split 60% in the S&P 500 stock index and 40% in the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. You used a conservative 4% withdrawal rate, which gave you some $20,000 in portfolio income during your first year of retirement.

Result? By the end of February 2009, your nest egg would have shrunk to less than $320,000.

What you're seeing here is the impact of the 2007-09 bear market—and a classic example of sequence-of-return risk.

Read the other retirement questions.  Thank you Jonathan Clements of the WSJ.