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For years, retirement planning has focused on savings goals, market predictions, and the right products.
While they are and will always be part of the puzzle, they're not what clients say keeps them awake at night.
There are four retirement risks that never turn off: Longevity, Inflation, Volatility, and Emotion.
These risks have a combined and compound effect.
Longevity extends the exposure window for inflation, volatility, and emotional mistakes.
Inflation erodes purchasing power, which intensifies anxiety during volatile markets.
Volatility triggers emotional reactions, leading to behavioral mistakes that lock in losses.
Emotion and emotional decisions during downturns accelerate portfolio depletion, exacerbating longevity risk.
This compound effect means we need to retool, or at least rethink, retirement planning and the risks clients actually feel.
The Worries
The authors of a 2024 Financial Planning Association study found a gap between what financial planners assume their clients are worried about financially and what actually keeps them up at night.
And according to the Alliance for Lifetime Income's 2024 Protected Retirement Income and Planning study, there's a consistent gap of about 30% between what financial professionals say they discuss with clients and what the clients say they're hearing.
These findings reinforce why the Longevity, Inflation, Volatility, and Emotion framework is so impactful: it gives advisors a structured way to proactively surface the risks clients are worried about, rather than waiting for clients to raise them.
Longevity: The mathematics of living longer
Increased life expectancy is a welcome development, but it creates significant challenges as retirement costs rise.
The average U.S. life expectancy is climbing, up to 79.40 years in 2025 vs. 77.49 years in 2005.
As people live longer and retirement looks different than it used to, retirees are asking, "How long does my money really need to last?"
Also important to consider, longevity planning goes beyond finances.
It means anticipating health care costs, lifestyle changes, and caregiving needs that may emerge decades into retirement.
With thoughtful strategies, retirees can prepare for risk and build the retirement they've envisioned.
Inflation: The long-term threat to purchasing power
Inflation doesn't hit everyone equally — and retirees are feeling it the most where it matters most: groceries, healthcare, and housing.
At Delaware Life, we analyzed the cost of everyday grocery items such as eggs, milk, coffee, and bread over five years.
The cost of these items increased by almost 50% from 2020 to 2025.
According to Morningstar, nearly 45% of U.S. households will have trouble maintaining their standard of living when they retire, even if they work until 65.
That's a statistic that shows just how much inflation chips away at retirement security over time.
Volatility: When you retire is just as important as how much you've saved
The financial planning profession has long understood that when you retire is just as important as how much you've saved.
Volatility can be sudden and prolonged.
For retirees, the stakes are uniquely high.
According to Morningstar's State of Retirement Income report, nearly 70% of scenarios in which retirees exhausted their savings involved investment losses in the first five years of retirement.
For those nearing or early in retirement, a significant market downturn can dramatically shorten the lifespan of their savings.
When negative returns occur early in retirement, it creates a sequence-of-returns risk, especially with regular withdrawals.
Even portfolios with the same average return can deliver dramatically different outcomes depending on the order in which gains and losses occur.
This double "whammy" can drain savings much faster than expected — even if markets eventually recover — negatively impacting the retiree's peace of mind.
Emotion: Behavioral mistakes driven by market sentiment
Retirement isn't just a financial change — it's an emotional one.
And emotions can derail even the best plans.
Panic selling during a downturn might lead a retiree to cash out at the worst time, and overconfidence at a market high might lead to risky bets.
Most mistakes don't happen during the accumulation years — they happen when clients start withdrawing money, including when markets are volatile.
This is because retirement is deeply emotional, not just financial.
Emotions amplify everything else, which can push retirees toward financial choices that work against their long-term goals.
The advisor's role as a trusted guide
These aren't just abstract risks.
They reflect real challenges many people face once they stop working.
This is where advisors become indispensable.
According to a Vanguard analysis, advisors can potentially add up to, or even exceed, 3% to clients' net returns through the effective implementation of various strategies.
Clients don't need another product pitch — they need a trusted guide who understands how these risks interact and can help them navigate the complexity.
By anchoring conversations in the risks clients actually feel, advisors can help retirees build strategies that work despite these persistent risks.
The Delaware Life L.I.V.E. framework is meant to inspire better preparation and encourage more thoughtful conversations.
Colin Lake is the president and CEO of Delaware Life Marketing.
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