Usually, when people talk about someone "going through a stage" they are talking about a 2-year-old or a teen. But there's another age at which people go through a key transitional period, also marked by angst and rebellion: Call it pre-retirement.

It sets in by the time workers hit their late 50s, even though they are told they should work for another decade or so to maximize their retirement security. But it hits for real about five years before an expected retirement date. It's the period that Prudential Financial Inc calls "the red zone" and another insurance company, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, calls "the transitional phase."

Both of those companies talk about that pre-retirement period in the context of selling annuities -- insurance products that offer tax benefits and lifetime income in exchange for large sums of money. But buying insurance or some other financial product is the easy part of retirement planning; the hard work should happen first.

[Related: Planning for Retirement: Plan to Live to 100]

Here are some guidelines for getting through that phase with a minimum of stress and strain.

Get specific about life planning. This can be the most challenging part of the exercise; the rest is just numbers. What are the activities you really care about? Where do you want to travel and need to travel? What kind of lifestyle do you think you will have? There are ways to get help with this. The University of North Carolina at Asheville runs "Creative Retirement Exploration" weekends (http://ncccr.unca.edu/creative-retirement-exploration-weekend). A variety of books and websites claim to be able to help with lifestyle planning. Mutual fund company T. Rowe Price has a new interactive online exercise called "Ready 2 Retire" that walks older workers through some of these questions.

Become a Social Security savant. The program is complicated, but will make a significant contribution to almost everyone who retires in the United States. There are a series of strategies you can use to maximize your benefits, especially if you are married. Couples can tag-team their benefits, claim them and suspend them, defer them and more.

It makes sense to get a good numbers person, an actuary or an accountant, who understands all of this, to help you figure out which strategy is best for you. At least one company, Social Security Solutions (http://www.socialsecuritysolutions) claims to have all of that down to a science. For a fee, it will come up with a comprehensive benefits plan for you.

Do a health-care plan. Private health insurance will change over the next few years, regardless of whether the Obama healthcare reform law is permitted to stand. And it's impossible to predict the future in the way that some companies ask you to. For example, T. Rowe Price asks: "Where would you prefer to receive long-term care? At home, adult day-care center, assisted living facility, nursing home?"

But you can figure out if you're covered for gaps before Medicare kicks in at 65 and afterwards. How is your health? Do you need to be near certain medical facilities? What drugs do you take regularly? Will they be covered under Medicare? What are your personal priorities in a gap-filling policy and how cheaply and reliably can you fulfill them?

Read the original:
Stern Advice: Countdown to Retirement