A solid plan for any project, not just retirement, needs strategies to make it happen. Here are some essential building blocks for a retirement plan.

To get retirement right, you'll have to move beyond the dream stage. This means thinking about what will really be important and meaningful to you in retirement--and what it will cost.

You may have seen articles in the financial press recently about the rise of index-fund investing and the demise of active management (stock picking). This is actually nothing new. Investing has been evolving this way for many years, and is in large part a welcome development: Over time, most active management does not beat the indexes, and is expensive to boot. Low-cost indexing is the way to go for most investors.

If you have ever worked with a contractor, or at least a contractor who is being up front with you, you may have heard something like the following: "You can have the work done cheaply, quickly, and of very high quality--but you can only pick two of these things."

You owe it to yourself--and your retirement--to do better than basing it on a simple spreadsheet. Using planning software such as our WealthTrace financial planner gives you the full picture.