Employees have always been able to take all or part of their 401(k) retirement account balances and buy a commercial annuity to guarantee lifetime payments.

FORBES: How To Make Your 401(k) Last Forever: The Pension Rollover

If some day you do reach the happy position of achieving your retirement savings objectives, you can reduce stress even further by putting some of that money into a low-cost annuity that will guarantee you a certain level of income for the rest of your life (options that cover a surviving spouse, or are indexed for inflation, are available but reduce annual income).

FORBES: Retirement

The entire selling point of the annuity is a lower return in exchange for a guarantee.

FORBES: The False Promises of Annuities and Annuity Calculators

First, neither of these options guarantee income distributions the way most insurance-backed annuity products do.

FORBES: Nest Egg Tapping