7 Tricks For Baby Boomers To Enjoy Retirement Savings

Find Room in Your Budget to Save More

You can’t put more into retirement savings if you don’t control spending. “Finding space in your budget is key,” Sicchitano said.

According to a recent GOBankingRates survey, 55 percent of Americans spend most of their money on guilty pleasures, such as fast food, alcohol, tobacco and gambling. Your discretionary spending is the area over which you have most control, Sicchitano said. When you reduce your spending on guilty pleasures, you can boost your health and accumulate more money to stash in retirement savings.

You also should tackle debt before retirement. “Debt is an expensive real problem you have on a monthly basis,” said Terry Dunne, managing director of automatic rollovers at Millennium Trust, a financial services company based in Oak Brook, Ill. By eliminating debt quickly, you free up more room in your budget to save for retirement. Plus, you’ll need less money in retirement to cover those monthly debt payments.

If you need more motivation, think about how much your money would grow if you put it into retirement savings instead of spending it. Sicchitano said he created a spreadsheet for a client to show him that the $1,000 he wanted to spend on a new TV would grow to $3,500 by the time he retired if he invested it. “All of the sudden, that TV doesn’t look so good anymore,” Sicchitano said.