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"If you're behind saving or want to retire at an earlier age, you may find when you crunch the numbers that to reach your goal you should be saving 15 or even 20 percent," Tyson says. "If you're at a point in your earnings career where your earnings are relatively high but you don't think it's going to last, you don't want to keep working as hard, you may want to save 20 percent to 25 percent of your income during a certain period." Fortunately, there are a bevy of online calculators that can help craft an estimate for how much you'll need to put away for retirement. Look for these on the websites for large 401(k) plan managers such as Vanguard, Fidelity or T. Rowe Price. A couple of alternatives: The AARP's calculator and Bankrate.com's. 4. REBALANCE YOUR ASSET MIX Experts recommend taking a look at your asset mix -- how much you have invested in certain funds of varying risk, or say, the proportion of your 401(k) invested in stocks versus bonds or other investments
-- and tweak them occasionally. "Whether the market is up or the market is down, it's always a good time," says Philip Rousseaux, president of Everest Wealth Management Inc. "It's kind of an automatic way of always selling high and buying low." Simply put, if you're heavily invested in a segment of stocks that have gone up sharply, you bring down your position on that a bit and shift the funds over to a segment that's undervalued. Rousseaux recommends rebalancing at least on a quarterly basis. Tyson, on the other hand, says every three to five years is just fine, unless the market has undergone a significant downturn. As a general rule, stocks are going to be more volatile and risky in the short term, but reduced over the long-term. With bonds, it's reversed. They're less volatile in the near term, but there's a chance that they're not going to give enough of a return in the long term, sapping your funds for retirement. 5. RESIST TIMING THE MARKET Making major changes to your 401(k) to profit off a market trend can be risky, and experts suggest avoiding it altogether. "Market timing changes people make are often made on emotional reactions to events," Tyson notes. "It's better to have an overall allocation, and stick to that." And if you do take a shot and miss, don't wait on the sidelines for a time to jump back into the market. "You don't want to compound that mistake by continuing to engage in more market-timing," Tyson adds. 6. PLAY CATCH-UP A law passed in 2006 allows workers over 50 to beef up how much they contribute to their 401(k) plans and other individual retirement accounts. It's aimed at helping those workers closer to retirement age put more tax-deferred money aside while they're still working. This can be especially helpful if you've incurred a big loss over the years during a market slump.
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