The middle fifth of the population only gets 16% of its income from retirement funds and 0.5% from public assistance, and the richest fifth only 4% and 0.1%, respectively.

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At that bottom end of the scale, retired and unemployed Americans rely far more on safety nets: the lowest-earning fifth of the population gets 48% of its yearly income from retirement funds like Social Security, and 9% from public assistance programs like food stamps.

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Remember, the exercise then, as now, was to build a portfolio with an allocation that looked just like Vanguard Target Retirement Income (VTNIX), but using better funds.

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As tables 1 through 3 show, it may be necessary to have some retirement funds allocated to traditionally riskier investments to help support income through retirement.

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It certainly makes one question the folks who are advising her, even considering the fact that these days many Generation-Y members have their retirement money parked in super-safe money-market funds and supposedly safe fixed-income instruments, despite a 30-year or greater investment time horizon.

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Giving further evidence to this truth: the lower down on the income scale a person is, the more likely they are to tap into their retirement funds.

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