Financial Blog

Read more: 4 Signs That You’re Saving Money Wrong (And How You Can Fix It)

You have a lot of free time in your 20s. With all that time and energy on your hands, it’s actually easier to plan for retirement. Here’s how.

Start with a goal. You will need a figure to work with. It doesn’t have to be exact; you can start with the usual stuff like health coverage and travel expense.

Then, you can move on to yearly, monthly and even a weekly estimate of your expenses. Sum it up and you’ll have your basic retirement fund goal.

Regardless of how big your salary is, you’ll need to make sure that some of it goes to your retirement fund.

The best way to do this is to automate your savings.

The logic is simple: automating your savings means that your default action is to save. It makes spending a more deliberate–and hopefully harder–thing to do.

Start with 10% of your income. Increase it as you get closer to retirement.

Investing is one of the best ways to grow your retirement fund. Since you’re essentially putting away money, you might as well try to grow it.

But investing alone is not enough. You need to invest early. There’s plenty of good reasons to invest early. One, you’ll have more time to get better returns. Two, you’re spreading out the risk through a longer period of time.

For more tips on investing, check out our Investing 101 Series here.

Retirement plans are another way for you to grow your savings. There are even plans that you can tie with your life insurance.

Take the time to check for retirement plans based on your objectives and means. Ask your employer if you have benefits for employee retirement.

As with all savings goals, there are a lot of methods to achieve your goal. While the steps we proposed are and straightforward, some people prefer a more meticulous approach. We suggest reading Grit.ph’s Retirement Fund Guide to learn more.