Retirement Savings: Five Tips to Catch Up

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3. Cut costs on investments, too

Just as proper diet and exercise are good for your health, reducing expenses is one obvious way to save more for retirement. People looking for bargains can find them in all sorts of places—even within their own investment portfolios.

Chip Simon, president of Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) financial planning firm Taconic Advisors, suggests investors should think of their portfolio as a business. "Keep it low-cost like any other business," Simon says. "Stay away from high-commission products and inappropriate products that don't necessarily fit into a plan for you."

Consider swapping out high-cost mutual funds for low-cost, no-load funds, such as index funds. Also watch out for commissions if you trade individual stocks. Making frequent stock trades could end up costing more than it's worth.

4. Embrace automation

Now that you've got your retirement plan back on the right track, make it last. Your employer probably already makes 401(k) deductions automatically. You can also sign up with your financial institution to have money transferred electronically each month from your checking account into an IRA or taxable account.

When savings pile up without any action from you, it's very hard to "forget" to save, financial planners say. "If it happens automatically you are more likely to keep up with the savings habit, rather than waiting to see if you have the money at the end of the month," says Lauren Gadkowski, a financial planner with Personal Financial Advisors in Covington, La.

5. Rethink your mortgage

Your house could help you save a little extra for retirement, too. If you have substantial home equity, you might want to look into refinancing your house and investing the difference in stocks and bonds, recommends Ed Fulbright, a Durham (N.C.) financial planner. Over a 15-year time frame, investors would have a good chance of boosting their investment returns, Fulbright says.

In fact, paying off your mortgage before retirement might be an outmoded ideal, as long as you get a fixed interest rate. Keeping a mortgage into retirement can help protect against inflation, says John Scherer, principal of Trinity Financial Planning in Madison, Wis. "If you're 50 years old and get locked in, and inflation goes up over time, you're paying off that mortgage with cheaper and cheaper dollars," Scherer explains.

There's no magic solution for workers who have fallen behind in their retirement savings, experts say. But the sooner you can start the "catch-up" game, the better off you'll be.

Hogan is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in New York.