Retirement: Planning

Unplanned savings is better than no savings at all. But to get the most out of your retirement savings, you should figure out where you want to be and how you're going to get there.

Decide on your strategy
If you are starting your retirement savings early, you can afford to be aggressive and put money into riskier funds. If your fund loses value, you have time to let it grow again. However, if you're getting close to retirement and suddenly your investments lose 40% of their value, it will have a huge negative impact on your financial comfort in retirement.

The extra burden on women
The income gap between men and women is slowly closing - but "slowly" is the key. Women still make less than men for the same jobs. And just as saving a little early can lead to great rewards, missing out on a little income early in the savings process can create a much larger discrepancy later.

More women than men take time to raise children. This unpaid time is also time they aren't saving for retirement. They may expect that their spouse's retirement is also theirs, but divorce is so common that these expectations are often not met.

But women can't blame retirement discrepancies solely on men earning more. Surveys have shown that women tend to invest less aggressively than men. Women tend to put their money in CDs and other lower risk, lower growth investments. Their retirement funds grow more slowly and, over the course of a whole career, the difference between high risk and low risk investments can be enormous.

Mother Nature can also share some of the blame on this one. Women, on average, live seven years longer than men. On one hand, not many women will complain they get an extra seven years to live. But that's also an extra seven years to pay for. That's seven more years of living expenses that women need in retirement savings.