I spend a lot of time helping people understand how much money they will need to meet their retirement goals. Many people rack their brains and do lots of research trying to come up with assumptions for inflation, rates of return on investments, and many other items that go into a retirement plan. But too many of these same people only spend a few minutes thinking about their life expectancy. This is unfortunate because a person's life expectancy can be the biggest factor changing the outcome of a plan.

When I look to add dividend paying stocks to my retirement portfolio I always look for companies that have a long history of paying dividends as well as a history of solid growth in those dividends. It's even better if the company has shown it can weather recessions by not cutting its dividend when the economy goes south.

The word "retirement" means different things to different people. Some people look at it as the year in which they will quit working full time and will take on a part time job while relaxing a lot more. It can also mean the year in which people take their social security and/or pension.

With both stocks and bonds gyrating wildly again many of us are reminded of just how volatile the markets can become. This also convinces many people that they cannot risk being invested very heavily in equities as they approach retirement.

Bond yields have finally starting moving up as the Federal Reserve has begun hinting that they might reduce the amount of bonds they have been buying. The ten year treasury yield is now at 2.12%, which is nearly 0.50% higher than we saw a year ago. Of course, we have a long way to go to reach the 5% level we saw in 2007.