A new study has crunched the numbers to find a way to help would-be retirees to turn their retirement savings into retirement income.

The study “How to ‘Pensionize’ Any IRA or 401(k) Plan,” a collaborative effort between Steve Vernon, consulting research scholar at the Stanford Center on Longevity, and the Society of Actuaries, sought to find a way that middle-income workers could beef up the effects of their retirement savings on their own and even use the information to decide whether they were financially prepared to retire or whether they should work longer, or even part time.

That middle-income group seldom consults a financial advisor, the study points out, and are ill equipped to make the sort of decisions either an advisor or an actuary would make to turn their defined contribution retirement savings into income that will support them similar to the way a defined benefit pension would.