When it comes to New Year's resolutions, here's one to consider: building an adequate retirement fund.

With each passing year, the burden of retirement falls increasingly on workers. Employers are backing away from providing pensions, lifetime health insurance and other benefits that have been valuable safety nets to employees long after they quit working.

Companies are putting the onus on workers by adopting 401(k) plans and other plans that are funded by employees' salaries, rather than company largesse. For example, the number of employers offering old-style pension plans dropped by a third, from 91 percent to 61 percent, between 1985 and 2005, according to Hewitt Associates.

The bottom line: Be sure retirement figures into your resolutions for 2008. There's always ways to improve, whether you need help getting started or just fine-tuning a pretty good plan you put in place years ago.

Start saving
Sure, it's obvious. Nevertheless, too few workers are setting aside money for their golden years. In fact, the most recent retirement poll by Employee Benefits Research Institute, or EBRI, finds that 40 percent of respondents aren't currently saving for retirement, while 34 percent have never saved anything for retirement.

Whether you're among the group of nonsavers, or those who are doing just a bit, make this the year you boost savings. Perhaps you set aside all or part of your raise for retirement, or maybe you find the extra cash by making other choices, such as reducing the times you order take-out dinners each week. Even small changes reap big rewards.

"It's never too late to start retirement savings, and never too late to beef it up," says Dee Lee, a Certified Financial Planner and author of "Women & Money."

Make Last-Minute IRA Contributions
Even after the confetti's been swept up from New Year's Eve parties, you have until April 15, 2008, to make 2007 contributions to your IRA or Roth IRA. Be sure you don't squander opportunities to save as much as possible, and take advantage of extra time to make your 2007 IRA contributions, which are capped at $4,000 per person, or $5,000 for individuals who turned age 50 by the end of 2007.

In 2008, the limits climb to $5,000 per person, or $6,000 for those over 50.

When you fund an IRA, you aren't just putting money aside, you're capitalizing on a chance to let your assets grow without being eroded by taxes. That's because with a traditional IRA, earnings grow tax-deferred, meaning you pay the folks at the IRS only when they're taken out, usually at retirement. Plus, depending on your income, you may also qualify to claim tax deductions for any contributions you made to the plan.

With a Roth, you never pay taxes on earnings. Because there's no required date to start taking withdrawals, or so-called "minimum required distributions," you can fund a Roth for as long as you like. That allows the Roth to grow forever. It can even be passed along to your heirs, untouched. That's not true with a traditional IRA or 401(k). But you have to qualify. To open a Roth in 2008, a married couple filing a joint return can't have income that exceeds $169,000. For a single person, the limits max out at $116,000.

Next: "Get stay-at-home spouse on board" >

Bankrate.com is the Web's leading aggregator of information on financial products including mortgages, credit cards, new and used automobile loans, money market accounts, certificates of deposit, checking and ATM fees, home equity loans and online banking fees. Visit Bankrate.com to get the tools and information that can help you make the best financial decisions.

Don't miss our guide to retirement planning.

Haven't started saving yet? We've got a late-starter's guide.

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