Boosting Your Savings

It may seem challenging to find money to save for the future when you’re just getting started in your career or when something like the COVID-19 pandemic comes along and affects your finances. Be encouraged and remember that early in your career is when your savings are the most powerful. Because money you set aside now has decades of growth potential, the power of money making money, also known as compounding, means you'll have to set aside much less to reach your goals than if you waited.

Increasing your savings, even by a little bit, can make a big difference over the long run. If you get a raise or tax refund, or if you find ways to cut back on your expenses and squeeze some extra money from your paychecks, consider adding at least part of it to your retirement savings.

For example, if starting at age 25 you contribute about $100 from each bi-weekly paycheck to your retirement savings, you could have more than $166,000 in your account by age 65, even if you never increase your contributions. But if each year in the future you increase your bi-weekly contributions by $30, you could have more than $680,000 by the time you retire (assuming a hypothetical and steady 5% return per year on your investments). You can run the numbers for your situation at www.icmarc.org/savingsboost.