Retirement advice often starts with a percentage. "Save 10%." "Save 15%." "Increase your contribution every year." "Max out your retirement account if you can." Those numbers can be useful for someone with plenty of money left after the bills are paid. They can feel completely disconnected from reality when your income is already being consumed by rent, utilities, groceries, transportation, insurance, childcare, medical expenses, or other necessities. If you have $40 left at

There is a particular kind of panic that comes with realizing you should have started saving for retirement years ago. Maybe you are 45 and have very little saved. Maybe you are 52 and finally looking closely at your retirement accounts. Maybe you are in your late 50s and retirement suddenly feels much closer than it used to. Whatever your age, there is one thing you already know: you can't go back and make yesterday's contributions. You can, however, figure out what the year

Few retirement-planning moments are more uncomfortable than adding everything up and realizing your savings are not where you expected them to be. Maybe you checked your retirement account after years of barely looking at it. Maybe you ran a retirement estimate and discovered that your projected income falls short of what you expect to spend. Maybe you always intended to save more, but housing, children, debt, emergencies, and everyday expenses kept getting in the way. Now re

By this point, you have done some of the hardest parts of retirement planning. You have estimated what retirement may cost. You have looked at where your retirement income may come from. You have built a budget around the life you expect to live. Now you have to do something with all of that information. A retirement plan is working when the pieces can reasonably come together. Your savings, income, expenses, retirement date and other resources need to support the retirement

A retirement budget can look deceptively simple. You might take your current monthly expenses, remove the cost of commuting and work clothes, add a little money for travel, and call it a day. Real retirement planning takes a closer look. When you are working, your paycheck and your schedule tend to organize your spending for you. You have expenses tied to employment, such as transportation, lunches, professional clothing and payroll deductions. You also have a routine that ca

Retirement changes the way you think about money. While you are working, your paycheck usually arrives on a predictable schedule. You know roughly how much is coming in, when it is coming in, and what will be deducted before the money reaches your bank account. Retirement can look very different. Your income may come from several places, and those sources may begin at different times. You may have Social Security, a pension, a 401(k), an IRA, investment income, rental income,

Retirement planning gets complicated quickly when every conversation seems to come with a different number. You may hear that you need $1 million. Someone else says $2 million. Another person says you can retire comfortably with $500,000. Then there are the rules about replacing 70% or 80% of your working income, the advice to save a certain number of times your salary, and the ever-present question of how long your money will need to last. It is enough to make retirement fee