I spend a lot of time helping people understand how much money they will need to meet their retirement goals. Today I want to look at this another way: What will $2 million actually get you in retirement? This is an interesting question because a) Many people believe that $2 million is a comfortable amount to meet their retirement goals and b) We can look at the different ways in which a couple can use this $2 million without running out of money.

Retiring before age 60 is but a dream for many people approaching this age. Unfortunately, the average retirement age has increased over the last decade as many folks have figured out that they a) didn't save enough and/or b) couldn't use their home as a cash machine any more.

As I write this Apple's (AAPL) stock is down 42% from its peak of $705 a share. It has been a brutal nosedive for those who recently bought Apple hoping they would see some of the tremendous gains that other investors have over the past four years.

Even with the stock market continuing to go up (and break records) so many still cannot retire when they thought they could. Many investors reduced their equity exposure, or left the stock market completely, and have been sitting in cash or low yielding bonds. This, combined with losses from the crash of 2008 and 2009, has left many people struggling to figure out how they might retire before they’re 65 or even 70 years old.

Many of those thinking about their retirement like to ask if their money will see them through their retirement years and how much they might be able to pass on to their heirs. Unfortunately many people (and some financial advisors) look at investment returns through time as something that is static. They plug in some annual return assumptions and look at the results from there.