The way to do this? Kautt believes his three-fund portfolio, which allocates 50% to Pimco's Low Duration Bond Fund and splits the remaining 50% evenly between DFA 5-Year Government Bond Fund and DFA Global Fixed Income Fund, will give Joe Sr. a 9% average annual return while negating a large portion of his investment risk and trying to offset a 2% inflation rate.

Last year, this actual portfolio returned 9.3%, says Kautt, who maintains that a number of clients have similar portfolios, though they usually contain more funds.

Kautt's other big push: Getting Joe to reduce his annual income needs by 10%. "When we reduce his income by 10%, his probability of success to age 90 (measured by Joe's still having money left) goes up to 79%," Kautt says. "No other combination will result in a higher probability of success," says Kautt of his bond fund portfolio and Joe's trimmed income.

Kautt, however, like the other planners, does believe Joe Sr. could truly benefit from continuing to work in some capacity. "Many of our clients have part-time jobs for two reasons: It supplements their income, but it also stimulates them mentally, which puts their minds on productive things rather than worry and stress."

Christopher J. Cordaro, RegentAtlantic

Cordaro's portfolio for Joe Sr., with its 80% equity, 20% bond allocation and 2% inflation rate, relies on the firm's in-house investment expertise to create a stock and bond portfolio Cordaro believes will go the distance for our millionaire. At the same time, Cordaro is innately more conservative than the other two planners, believing Joe will earn just a 6.7% average annual return over the next 30 years, even with an eye trained sharply on costs.

"We're always trying to get the lowest-cost funds, but of course we want to make sure we're capturing the asset class that we're investing in, so we can add value above the index," Cordaro says.

The firm is pretty innovative in its approach to adding value and managing costs. When principals became disenchanted with the diversification available in large-cap stock funds, they created their own portfolio (the RegentAtlantic Disciplined Equity Portfolio), which uses a quantitative approach to rank and select 50 stocks from the universe of the largest 1,000 U.S. stocks. The approach has beaten the S&P 500 over time, in addition to eliminating the management fee clients would pay in mutual funds.

With similar sentiment, RegentAtlantic decided to begin investing in Undiscovered Managers Multi Strategy Hedge Fund late last year. In search of high spreads on the fixed-income side of Joe Sr.'s portfolio, Cordaro selected the Vanguard High-Yield Corporate Fund, a portfolio recommendation he has in common with Longo. On the small-cap side, Cordaro's belief that there is a strong value premium is reflected in his 8% allocation in Royce Micro-Cap. "This is an aggressive portfolio, and we'd really underscore that with the client," he says.

So how will Joe Sr. fare with Cordaro's portfolio? "He's got about a 60% chance of having money left at age 90. In my experience, that's not a lot of comfort. If he would cut his income just 5%, the comfort level would go up to 81% at age 90," says Cordaro, who adds that he would strongly counsel Joe Sr. that small changes like part-time work would have big consequences in terms of his success.

Note to Fox: Find Joe Sr. a part-time job, will you?