A. If you know you have certain liabilities down the road, you can design your investment strategy based on liability-driven investing which basically aims to match the assets with liabilities, like you are managing your own balance sheet!
This investment strategy is different from the common "benchmark-driven strategy" that aims to maximize return. It is especially helpful for retirees to plan their retirement needs (for example, need a new car in 2 years, start world travelling in 5 years, etc.) so the money is there when the need comes.
The liability-driven strategy essentially plans the various investments in bonds to achieve optimal returns and more importantly timing of bond interest and redemption to meet future needs.
Asset Dedication offers a tool to help investors build a personalized portfolios of individual bonds, unfortunately the tool is only available to financial planners, for individual investors, given the difficulty in researching various bonds on the market, it's best to work with a pro to get the job done.