A plan to produce retirement income "in virtually any IRA or 401(k) plan" is the subject of a new study from the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Society of Actuaries, "Viability of the Spend Safely in Retirement Strategy."

The strategy, a plan design innovation that defined-contribution plan sponsors can adopt to help older workers decide such things as when to retire, how to get access to their retirement savings once they have and how much it's safe to spend once they've left the day job behind, is a retirement income menu that complements the investment menu they should already be familiar with.

"DC plan sponsors are in a perfect position to help their older workers who are intimidated by these retirement planning decisions," says Steve Vernon, FSA, research scholar at the Stanford Center on Longevity and one of the study's coauthors. "We've demonstrated that plan sponsors can move ahead with implementing retirement income options in their plan, which will help them manage an aging workforce. There are effective solutions that are feasible to implement today; there's no need to wait for the 'perfect' solution to be invented, which doesn't exist."