This extract may give food for thought:

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Thanks to better lifestyles, improved nutrition and advances in health care, folks today are living longer than ever. People retiring at 65 face the serious prospect of spending up to three full decades in retirement.

That means investors using an ultra-conservative approach, investing in Treasuries, CDs and money markets, are often taking a bigger gamble with their portfolios – and their retirement lifestyle – than they realize. This is especially true when you consider the thief that robs us all, inflation.

The gold market is signaling higher inflation, too. Gold has been hitting one new all-time high after another lately. And it’s not just a short-term phenomenon. Gold is up more than 225% over the last eight years.

Some consumers shrug and say, “What difference does it really make if inflation bumps up another point or two?” Don’t make that mistake.

With a 4% inflation rate, an income of $100,000 is worth only $70,000 after nine years. After 17 years its real worth is cut in half. After 30 years, it only has the purchasing power of $30,000.

Investors planning for retirement might be unpleasantly surprised to see the $100,000 investment income they counted on generating only $30,000 worth of purchasing power. And that’s before taxes.

So what do you do? First off, don’t let the bears scare you out of the market. Stocks can be nerve-wracking in the short term. And they can always go lower before they go higher. But stocks are an incredible wealth-building machine over the long term. For time periods measured over a decade or more, nothing has beaten the returns generated by a diversified portfolio of high-quality common stocks.

If you want your retirement years to be truly “golden,” common stocks are still your best protection against shortfall risk, the biggest risk you face as an investor.