Retirement planning has some pretty straight forward aspects and some difficult to predict aspects. If you don’t save substantial amounts of money over a long period of time there is little hope for a good retirement nest egg (outside of things like winning the lottery or living off an inheritance). So consistent savings over a long period is normally a requirement. You can get decent estimates like saving 8% of your income from age 30 to age 65 (in a 401k, Roth IRA…) but how you investments perform during that period will have a large impact on your success (as will how much risk you want in retirement, the state of health care at that time, inflation, tax rates, your health insurance…).
This is a good article discussing some options as you close in on retirement and the financial picture become clearer: Two More Years for a Better Retirement. From Fidelity: Survey: One-Third of Americans Delaying Retirement.
One alternative to delaying retirement is to start saving more earlier but the overall data shows few are taking that option.
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Retirement age has barely budged at life expectancy has increased by 20 years. I have long felt the best practice for the economy is to provide part time work to transition into retirement…
[...] First, I had been somewhat optimistic in my guesses about investment returns. The current decline means that investments in the S&P 500 have returned about 0% over the last 10 years. That is a horrible performance and it will take many years to even bring that up to a bad performance. So if you reduce your long term investment performance expectations you need to add more while you are working (or reduce your retirement expectations – or work longer). [...]
[...] Working Longer and Delaying Retirement – Many Retirees Face Prospect of Outliving Savings – Pushing your financial problems [...]