
As you approach retirement, you transition your stocks into bonds as well as into cash in high yield savings accounts. You do this because those investments are less risky and you need stability, not growth at that point in your life. You do this to avoid exactly the issue you bring up.








Absolutely not. The transition from stocks and into bonds and cash in high yield savings accounts is something you do slowly as you approach retirement and only completes well into retirement. The point is you don’t know what the market is going to do right around retirement, as you mention, so you need to move to more stable investments.
Money invested into things like a high yield savings accounts cannot decrease, a crash does not affect it at all. That is the entire point of transitioning to them as you approach retirement.
Employing time-tested strategies is the way to go. Accounting for potential crashes is the way to go. The problems you bring up are real, and the solutions I mention are the time-tested way to account for them.