If you're still far from retirement, don't buy a property halfway across the country on impulse. "I frankly think it is a dumb idea," says financial planner Malcolm Makin. In five or 10 years, he points out, your life could change; so too could the area you like so much today. And in the meantime, you've tied up your money in a potentially volatile and illiquid property.

On the other hand, buying a second home within about 300 miles of where you live, one that you will actually use for vacations, could be a smart move. By the time you retire, you'll know whether you want to live in the area.

Once you're entering retirement, relocating far from home can make sense.

When you're running the numbers, keep in mind the additional cost of year-round upkeep, insurance and real estate taxes.

One final piece of advice: If you're buying in a vacation spot, shop off-season. You'll probably get a better deal.

#12. How Do I Make Sure I Won't Outlive My Money?
The first rule of making your money last is not to touch your retirement accounts until you have to - either to pay the bills or because the law requires you to do so. The reason? In a word: taxes. The longer you can continue to rack up tax-deferred returns, the better. An added bonus, especially if you're in a high tax bracket, is that sales from your taxable portfolio may count as long-term capital gains, at a 20% tax rate, while retirement plan withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income, at rates up to 39.6%.

An even bigger issue than minimizing taxes is figuring out how much money you can withdraw from your portfolio each year without running out of cash. Once you decide how much you need to cover expenses - and to what extent a pension, Social Security or part-time work can fill the gap - you need to come up with a withdrawal strategy that doesn't deplete your account too quickly.

T. Rowe Price retirement specialist Joseph Healy warns that many retirees are too optimistic when they think they can withdraw 8% or more from their portfolios each year. Part of the problem is inflation, The other, he believes, is basing plans on average returns and ignoring the sequence of annual returns. If a bear market occurs soon after you start taking withdrawals, you could run out of money much faster than you expected.

The best policy is to keep withdrawals to between 3% and 5% during the first year, and then adjust for inflation. If a withdrawal rate of 5% sounds too low - on a $500,000 portfolio, it amounts to just $1,500 a month after taxes if you're in the 28% tax bracket - consider taking a part-time job after you've retired. Or postpone retirement and keep stashing money in your retirement accounts. Even a short delay can mean a substantial increase in your retirement savings. If you're making $90,000 and contributing 10% to your 401(k), with a 5% match and a 5% return, a $500,000 portfolio would be worth $580,734 in two more years. And that means your 5% withdrawal rate would give you an extra $242 a month after taxes.

#13. How Should I Tap My Retirement Accounts?
By law, you must start drawing down your 401(k)s and IRAs the April after you turn 70-1/2. (If you have a Roth, of course, you never have to tap the account.) Remembering that odd date is the easy part. What's hard is working your way through the Internal Revenue Service rules for calculating withdrawals and figuring out which method is the best one for you. "You need to make an affirmative and irrevocable decision about how you will calculate what comes out," says Jack Brod, who heads Vanguard's personal-finance group. That decision will affect not only you but potentially your heirs as well.

In the simplest terms, your minimum distributions equal your retirement plan balance divided by your life expectancy. But it's not that easy. First, you must decide how you will calculate life expectancy. You can use your own life expectancy, a combination of yours and your spouse's or a combination of yours and a non-spouse beneficiary's. If you want o minimize your distributions, combine your life expectancy with a younger person's.

Second, you must choose one of two distribution methods: term certain, which is based on your life expectancy (or combined expectancies) as it stood when you first took withdrawals; and recalculation, which resets your life expectancy each year. With term certain, your cash will run out when you reach your life expectancy. With recalculation, your distributions will last as long as you do, but they'll be smaller than they would be with term certain.

If you're worried about outliving your money, you should generally choose recalculation. That method is also best if you want to keep the money in your account growing tax-free as long as possible. but if providing for your heirs is a primary goal, consider term certain. In that case, if you die before the end of your projected life span, your beneficiary can keep taking distributions based on your original schedule rather than at the faster pace required by recalculation.