1. Put your savings on autopilot
If you're saving in a workplace plan, your contributions will likely be deducted from your paychecks.
You can automate your other retirement savings too. For example, set up automatic bank transfers to an IRA on a monthly or weekly basis. This has the added benefit of taking the money from your account before you have the chance to spend it!
Automatic transfers also ensure that you don't accidentally throw your savings plan off track. Forgetting a few contributions a year can have a huge impact on your retirement balance, because those contributions will miss out on compounding.
For example, if you planned to save $100 a month and missed two contributions every year until retirement, you could wipe almost $33,000 off your final account balance—way more than the $8,000 in missed contributions.