We’ve always been told that the only certainty in our lives will be death and taxes. Fair enough. But many of us would like to see a greater degree of certainty when it comes to our retirement, specifically as it relates to retirement income.

However, although there are tools to help determine our income after our work life, it really is a “best guess” and is not guaranteed. Add to that, the amount of time one will need that income is also speculation.

But there are steps we can take to augment traditional income sources. First, let’s define those typical ways of paying for our retirement.

Many among us found ourselves playing armchair epidemiologist at the outset of the pandemic. Casual discussions about rates of community transmission and projectile statistics of a cough in indoor settings, along with a browser tab open consistently to track worldwide COVID tallies, all served as useful distractions.

While the country grappled with this black swan event, healthcare infrastructure strained to accommodate three distinct influxes of COVID-infected patients in just nine short months. As the fourth wave continues to impact parts of the country today, it’s a little premature for a full postmortem on how the healthcare sector fared as a whole, but there are reasons to be hopeful.