I'm not worried about outliving my MONEY.

Westerville, Ohio, retiree Gary Link. 65, worked his way up the ladder at the White Castle restaurant chain in Columbus, A bond ladder now ensures that his retirement benefits will last a lifetime.

I'm the American Dream. I worked for White Castle for 37 years, starting in 1962 when I was 21. It's a privately owned corporation headquartered in Columbus with nearly 400 stores selling its famous hamburgers. You know how some people have a bowl of candy on their desk? When I was working. I'd grab a burger right off the grill. I still eat 'em.

I started out as a janitor, cleaning and emptying the trash. I worked as a carhop, then behind the counter frying hamburgers and fries, then I became a shift manager. I progressed through all the steps until I became the regional vice-president, in charge of 36 stores in Columbus and Cleveland. I had 640 people on my payroll in all departments.

White Castle recognized hard work and rewarded people, promoting from within. It's a great company, and it was a great job. I stopped working in 1999 after I suffered a stroke. I would have liked to have made it to 40 years. But I stayed on disability insurance until I reached retirement age last year.

The company had two retirement plans--a trust fund [profit-sharing] and a pension plan--both totally paid for by the company. When I retired I'd accumulated $500,000 in my trust fund and $600,000 in my pension plan. I had more than $1 million, but I did not consider myself a savvy investor. I wanted to make sure the money lasted as long as I needed. And I wanted to build a home, for me, my brother and my folks. I never married (came close once) and my folks are in their nineties now.

I became acquainted with a financial planner I met through my church--Bob Schumann, part of the Cambridge Advisors network. He is helpful, knowledgeable and trustworthy. The first thing he did was put my trust-fund money in a retirement account invested in a 15-year bond ladder of zero-coupon Treasury bonds. You buy them at a discount and get your principal and interest when they mature. I've got nearly $700,000 in the ladder now. I've got bonds maturing every year until I'm eighty-something, and I get $72,000 a year, I don't have to worry about stock fluctuations or changes in interest rates.

I can also be more aggressive with my stocks because I've got 15 years of income locked in. Last year I took my pension in a lump sum. We rolled it over and put about $500,000 in mutual funds run by Dimensional Fund Advisors, a low-cost mutual fund company with ties to some pretty smart people at the University of Chicago. The money's divided between large-company. small-company and international stocks.

We'll keep the bond ladder going--sometimes I roll over money that I don't need for living expenses, or we'll take it from stocks, or from social security or rental income. Besides the 5,000-square-foot house I built in Westerville, I own a small apartment building in Columbus and two condos in Florida--one we stay at in winter and the other we rent.

I'm not a micromanager. I wasn't that way when I worked. If I find good people, I let them do what they do and I leave them alone. I meet with my planner quarterly and do tax planning at the end of the year. The main thing is that I'm not worried about outliving my money. I'm stress-free as far as that's concerned.

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As told to Anne Kates Smith; PHOTOGRAPH BY Anna Knott