By Scott Burns

Q. I'm a 62-year-old copywriter. I lost my job in January. There are so few jobs around that I think I just may be retired, though I'm still looking for a job. I have no pension. But I have about $370,000 in savings, most of it invested in CDs. What is the best way to grow this money so it lasts? My house has a small $50,000 mortgage.

Should I get back into the market? Is it worth it to pay to manage my portfolio since I lack the expertise to manage it? ---L.K., by email

A. One question you need to ask yourself is whether you can live on the income you could get from your savings and Social Security. At 62 you are eligible for early retirement benefits. You can find out what these would be online by using the online calculator or by visiting a local Social Security office. If the combination of these benefits and about $15,000 a year from your savings will be enough to pay your living expenses, you'll be OK.

If your current expenses are a lot higher than your retirement income, you'll need to do a "reset." You’ll need to figure out how you can cut your expenses.

Many people respond to this as a burden. In fact, your spending is one of the few things you can control. The return on your investments is not. So spending is a very good lever. Use it and you will reduce the feeling of helplessness that many people feel.

The best position for most people is to be getting enough income from their investments that they seldom, if ever, need to sell a security to pay their bills. A mutual fund like Vanguard Wellesley Income Admiral shares (ticker: VWIAX) has about 40 percent of its portfolio in equities and 60 percent in fixed-income. Recently, shares of this fund, which requires a minimum investment of $100,000, were yielding about 4.8 percent.

While this is a managed fund, the expense ratio of the Admiral shares is only 0.23 percent. That's in the range of most index funds. It’s also a small fraction of the 1.34 percent average net expense ratio of conservative allocation funds as a group. And if you check the cost of similar funds in the Fat Fund Report on my website, you’ll find that 90 percent of all Conservative Allocation funds cost 0.79 percent or more. So this fund comes at extraordinarily low cost.

In spite of (or because of) all the money being spent managing similar funds, this fund has provided a higher return than 94 percent of its competition over the last 5 years.

Q. My wife and I are in our early 70s and retired. We have a good retirement income, which provides us a comfortable lifestyle. Everything we have is paid for.

We have a little over $60,000 in recently matured CDs and would like advice on investing this amount. If we lost all of the $60,000, it would certainly hurt, but would not result in our financial ruin. In the past we have lost thousands in stocks and now only want to invest "safely."

At present we have the funds in a savings account drawing 1.60 percent interest. We are interested in CDs because we understand them and know they are a safe investment.

We have seen advertisements in the newspaper offering greater than 4 percent on 6-month and 12-month CDs. They state these CDs are through FDIC-insured banks and we will be dealing directly with the banks. Are these safe investments? ---E.D., by email from Austin, TX

A. Don’t believe everything you read in advertisements. Readers have written to tell me that when they answer ads like this, they are told that particular CD is no longer available, but another product with an even higher yield is. The rates being quoted are far above anything you can find online. The rates are vastly higher than the average for CDs of similar maturity.

If it seems too good to be true, it is.