Whatever you’ve been told about your retirement, odds are that it’s wrong. Saving enough for your retirement, and investing the right way, are truly among the hardest of all financial problems. In many ways, it’s more difficult than running a large endowment or hedge fund — and yet we all must do it.

The challenge is to make your money last a lifetime while facing uncertainty about the future of markets, your income, your health and your longevity. Meanwhile, all the misinformation and bad advice out there makes retirement finance harder than it needs to be. In an effort to make things a little easier — and with full knowledge that one column can do only so much — here are three myths about retirement.