Jill Perlin | Source | Vice president, Advanced Markets & Sales Training at Prudential Financial

It’s impossible to anticipate your every medical emergency that may arrive, but you can prepare your finances to potentially cover large bills — medical and otherwise. “Keep funds in the bank to cover expenses for at least three months,” Jill Perlin, vice president of advanced markets and sales training, Prudential Financial said.

The cornerstone of retirement income planning is creating predictable and sustainable streams of income to cover essential expenses in retirement. Moving into 2019, clients will need to contend with increasing medical costs, longer life expectancies, elimination of employer-provided retiree health insurance, and the uncertainty of Medicare. While broaching healthcare planning can be a delicate subject, it’s also critically important to the retirement planning process.

More than one quarter of the 800,000 federal employees who were affected by the federal government shutdown withdrew money from their retirement funds to help make it through the 35 days in which they did not see a paycheck, according to a Prudential study.