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10 Painless Ways to Boost Retirement Savings
 Good intentions are always important, but action is what makes them truly meaningful. Most people intend to save for retirement, but they sometimes fall short on the follow-through. According to the 2005 Retirement Confidence Survey, more than half of workers say they are behind schedule when it comes to planning and saving for retirement.*
When asked why they were failing to meet their own retirement savings schedules, most (51%) said the culprit was high expenses. Specifically, the respondents cited everyday, child-rearing and medical expenses as playing a major role in keeping them behind schedule. Other things they blamed include career choice and job loss or frequent job changes.
If you want to bring your good retirement planning intentions to fruition despite the hurdles you face, you might need to get creative in looking for ways to boost your savings. Here are 10 ideas to get you started. Try some of these for a few months – plus some of your own invention – to see how much more you could afford to contribute to an individual retirement account (IRA).
Think "Wacky"
- Return DVDs or videos on time and pay the late fee to yourself.
- Did you just pay off a loan or credit card? Continue making the payments, but send them to yourself.
- If you own a washer and dryer, put the quarters you would have spent at the Laundromat in a jar for yourself.
- When you tip the wait staff at a restaurant, "tip" yourself the same amount.
- Have your kids play video games at home and set aside the amount you might have spent at the arcade.
- Buy gently used clothing, sports gear, CDs or musical instruments and keep the price difference between that and "new."
- Cancel premium cable channels and watch the cash pile up instead.
- Call yourself richer when you tell the phone company to drop all the "extras."
- "Buy" (and pack up) lunch from your kitchen at home as if it was a deli. Instead of forking over dough to a cashier, keep it for yourself.
- As your kids outgrow the need for a baby-sitter, pay the sitter's wages to yourself when you go out.
Crazy Like a Fox
You may think that the amounts you can save with these tips are piddling, especially compared to the cost of retirement. You'd be right; but don't discount the power of compounding. It can make trifles grow to sizable sums over time. An extra $100 per month earning a 7% annual rate of return in a tax-deferred traditional IRA over 25 years amounts to an extra $81,490 at retirement.** And only $30,000 of that is your contributions; the rest is earnings. So think small to realize big dreams, and see an investment professional at Chaco CU to open or contribute to an IRA.
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