It may not be Halloween quite yet, but here's another look at some of the things that might keep people up at night about retirement — particularly those planning to retire at the end of this year.

It's possible to actually do something about some of them in advance.

But most of the stats below are things beyond the power of an individual retiree to avoid—or even change.

External factors are in control—like the old Outer Limits TV show, which would address its audience thusly: “We are controlling the horizontal. We are controlling the vertical.”

While workers might be able to shift course just a bit before sailing into retirement, other dangers lie hidden beneath the waves, like the other 9/10ths of the iceberg that sank the Titanic.

Despite a couple of dissenting voices this year claiming that there's no retirement crisis, nope, not here, once you've cruised through these tidbits of information no doubt you'll agree with the majority that say the U.S. worker looking to retire is in for a rough time ahead.

Particularly since several of these statistics are even gloomier than they were when we reviewed them two years ago….

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Long-term care is expensive. (Photo: Shutterstock)

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10. $72,635

In 2016, that was what you could expect to pay per year for long-term care, according to Genworth — but bear in mind that the cost varies by thousands across the country.

And this is 2017, which means it will cost more—maybe a lot more.

Long-term care insurance can run you thousands, too, in a shrinking market filled with rising premiums and shrinking benefits.

The Post-Courier reports that the older you get, the more costly it is to buy an LTC policy—a 50-year-old can pay $7,347 a year for lifetime benefits that are protected for inflation, while the same policy will cost a 70-year-old $15,070.

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Pensions are being swept away by 401(k)s. (Photo: Shutterstock)

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9. Half as much.

That's the amount of median wealth held in defined contribution plans and IRAs compared with defined benefit plans — which means that people with DB plans at work are more likely to be financially better off in retirement than those with DC plans or IRAs.

A study from the National Institute on Retirement Security found some time ago that DC plans provided better for workers than DC plans—but of course DB plans have been going the way of the dodo.

Even long-time workers who have been covered by DB plans can find that their employers are terminating the plans and switching them over to DC plans.

A report from 401(k) Specialist points out, “By 2015, 39 percent of sponsors had frozen a DB plan, and 24 percent had stopped offering their primary DB plan to new hires. The recent uptick in freezes has been among plans that were already closed to new hires.”

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You may have Medicare but it won't pay for everything.

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8. 20% or more

That's how much more than a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries spend of their annual income on Medicare premiums plus medical care, including cost-sharing and uncovered services.

You may have Medicare, but it won't necessarily take care of you.

According to a brief from the Commonwealth Fund, the lower-income the retiree, the more likely she'll pay an even higher percentage of her annual income on health care costs.

In fact, says the report, “excluding premiums, Medicare beneficiaries spent an average of $3,024 per year on out-of-pocket costs. Of this, more than a third was spent on cost-sharing for medical and hospital care, 25 percent on prescription drugs, and 39 percent on services Medicare does not cover, including dental and long-term care.”

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Millennials aren't yet as able to save as much for retirement. (Photo: Shutterstock)

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7. $325,000

That's how much less in retirement savings that a millennial could have at retirement time if she starts her career with $30,000 in student loans, according to recent findings from the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute.

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Health care costs are on the rise. (Photo:Getty)

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6. 7.2%

That's how much health care costs are expected to rise in 2018, according to a report from Aon, which also says that employee health care costs will average $5,248 in 2018, up from $4,895 in 2017.

Prescription drug costs are on the rise, too, with a separate Aon report indicating that in the first six months of 2017, they were up 7 percent over the first six months of 2016.

HealthView Services, for its part, says the annual average rate of increase for retirees—not employees—will continue at an average annual rate of 5.47 percent “for the foreseeable future,” and notes that that is “more than double annual projected Social Security cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs—2.6 percent).” And that does not include long-term care costs.

Over the course of retirement, HealthView says, “Total projected lifetime health care premiums (Medicare Parts B and D, supplemental insurance, and dental insurance) for a healthy 65-year-old couple retiring this year are expected to be $321,994 in today's dollars ($485,246 in future dollars). Adding deductibles, copays, hearing, vision, and dental cost sharing, that number grows to $404,253 in today's dollars ($607,662 in future dollars).”

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Health care costs can take a big chunk out of retirement money. (Photo: iStock)

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5. $275,000

That's how much a retiree couple can expect to pay in health care expenses throughout retirement, according to a MarketWatch report — and they can expect those costs to continue to rise each year — or, as the report puts it, “indefinitely.”

In case you were wondering, that $275,000 represents a 6 percent increase over last year.

Fidelity Investments crunched the numbers, and the report adds that the figure “includes monthly expenses that come with health coverage premiums, copayments and deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs.”

To top it off, the report says, “The expected cost of health care has grown 70 percent since Fidelity first started tracking health care costs in 2002.”

Fidelity adds, “And that applies only to retirees with traditional Medicare insurance coverage, and does not include costs associated with nursing home care.”

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Some women can expect to live 20 years longer than their spouse. (Photo: Shutterstock)

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4. 20 years longer.

That's how many more years some women will outlive their spouses — and they'll have to have enough money to see them through.

A Yale Insights report says that while the average female will live 2½ years longer than the average male, Social Security and LIMRA data indicate that “if a husband and wife retire at the same time (the husband at 65 and the wife 63), after the first spouse passes away, the second spouse is likely to live about eight years.”

But wait—there's more.

A surprising 15 percent of women, it adds, will outlive their spouses by 20 years and thus will have to face higher expenses for a much longer time for medical care, food, shelter and all the other costs that come with supporting oneself.

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Most employers now offer a defined contribution plan instead of a pension. (Photo: Shutterstock)

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3. 5%

That's the percentage of employers who still offer defined benefit plans to new employees.

There's been a drastic change in how employees can save for retirement, a 401(k) Specialist report says, citing a Towers Watson study that reveals the frightening plunge in DB plans—from approximately 50 percent of employers offering them to new hires in 1998 that fell by 2015 to just 5 percent.

Says the report, “[W]orkers who experience a loss of guaranteed retirement income may not exit the workforce in a timely fashion—an outcome that traditional pensions were at least partly designed to avoid. Such counter-cyclical workforce trends could necessitate increased severance pay, raise benefit costs and reduce mobility within an organization.”

And worsen the outcomes of retirement for all those people with no reliable monthly benefit to depend on, other than Social Security.

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Many Americans have little to no money set aside for retirement. (Photo: Shutterstock)

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2. About half.

That's the number of Americans who have nothing saved for retirement.

A CNBC report cites data from GoBankingRates thusly: “According to a 2016 GOBankingRates survey, 35 percent of all adults in the U.S. have only several hundred dollars in their savings accounts, 34 percent have zero savings and about half of U.S. families have no retirement account savings.”

Scared yet? Try this CNN report: “Almost one-quarter of workers said they and their spouse combined have less than $1,000 saved for retirement, according to a report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Nearly half of everyone surveyed said they had less than $25,000.”

Regardless of source, the numbers indicate that American workers aren't saving enough—by a massive margin.

And whether it's zero, several hundred dollars or $25,000, they won't get far on that kind of money.

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18 percent of Americans feel they have enough to get them through retirement. (Photo: Getty)

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1. 18%

That's the percentage of people who actually think they have enough saved for retirement.

Back in 2015, that number was higher, at 22 percent.

In a brief earlier this year from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, researchers report that just 18 percent are “very confident” that they've managed to squirrel enough away to see them through retirement.

Even the “very or somewhat confident” crew has declined from where it was in 2016, when 64 percent were putting a brave face on it; that's fallen to just 60 percent this year.

According to the brief, “Worker confidence now resembles levels measured in 2015 (when 59 percent were either very or somewhat confident).”

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Marlene Satter

Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.