A treacherous trio of threats may thwart your "golden years" of retirement, but a savvy investor can avoid all the pain, suffering and lost with a little common sense and a lot of preparation.

Excessive spending, too little stock exposure, and lack of diversification are three of the biggest risks that investors might face in retirement, Seeking Alpha has found.

"Most of the risks can be appropriately mitigated with a few tweaks leading up to, and early in, the golden years," wrote Seeking Alpha’s Mark Morelli, who offered some tips.

• Spending too much: Seeking Alpha said the most dangerous threat is excessive spending, especially in the early portion of retirement. “The primary mitigation is living below your means by developing and adhering to a reasonable budget that factors in the ravages of inflation over time,” Morelli wrote. “Practicing retirement during the last few years of your working career is a great way to fine-tune the budget.”
• Having too little stock exposure: One of the best ways to ensure income keeps up is to hold a basket of stocks that have boosted dividend payments annually for decades upon decades such as Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), every year since 1963, and AT&T (NYSE:T), each year since 1985,” he explained.
• Not enough diversification: "To prevent any problems in this area the prudent retiree should not hold all their eggs in one basket and have more than one basket,” he wrote. “One technique I like to use is to ensure that two to three years worth of expenses are in cash and another few years are in bonds to ride out any storm in the equity markets.”

Meanwhile, a recent new survey of retirement confidence confirms that many workers lack realistic plans for making ends meet in retirement. It also suggests there is a disconnect between Americans' confidence about retirement and their actual preparations to ensure a comfortable one.

The Retirement Confidence Survey published by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) is the longest-running annual survey of retirement confidence among both workers and today’s retirees - this is the 26th annual edition. It provides a long view of how we are doing as a country in preparing for retirement, and this year’s survey does contain some encouraging news.

EBRI found that the percentage of workers who are confident about having enough money for a comfortable retirement has continued to recover from the record lows following the Great Recession, Reuters reported. Twenty-one percent are very confident this year, compared with 13 percent in 2013. Those who are somewhat confident rose to 42 percent, up from 38 percent in 2013.

So that means 63 percent of those surveyed have some degree of confidence. But here is the problem - many people are just guessing. Only 48 percent of workers say that they or their spouse have ever tried to calculate how much they will to have save to live comfortably in retirement.  
 
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).

Related Stories:

• USA Today: Consider Rebalancing Your 401(k) So Stock Holdings Aren't Too High
• Financial Adviser Nelson: Return Sequence May Not Curb Your Spending Ability