New Delhi, April 6 -- With the swaying equity markets, dull precious metals, longer life span and escalating prices of goods; managing finances has never been as perplexing for those approaching retirement as the current war-stricken phase.

Inching closer to retirement means gradually shifting investments from an aggressive phase of higher equity exposure to a conservative yet wealth preserving phase and providing enough stability to the portfolio through heavy fixed-income investments.

But currently, it is risky trying to redeem equity investments as one might end up with an overall smaller retirement corpus, which needs to last at least for the next 25-30 years. However, these testing phases are when the basic financial planning matte...