While the average American is resolving to spend more time with family, lose weight or cut spending, experienced investors are making more complicated resolutions.

In fact, according to E*Trade Financial Company’s most recent StreetWise survey, investors are planning to boost retirement savings, adjust asset allocations, and better educate themselves about their finances and investments.

The self-identified experienced investors, who say they have moderate to professional investing experience, have taken charge of their investments and believe they understand the markets, investment products, and asset classes, are all about increasing retirement plan contributions.

In fact, 40 percent of investors say they'll increase retirement plan contributions—and the move to up contributions is the top priority for six percent more investors than it was last year. More than half of GenXers chose this as their chief goal for the coming year.

Then there’s the need to adjust asset allocations, in second place, with 35 percent saying that tackling this is their top priority. The choice is most common among senior investors, with more than half of boomers putting it at the top of their resolution list.

Millennials are more interested in educating themselves about investing than their elders, which is probably to be expected, considering how much less time they’ve had to learn about the markets.

But then, millennials are also the most likely of the three age groups to believe that they’ll be able to get by in retirement with just a 401(k)—despite the fact that 52 percent of millennials have already had to resort to withdrawing money from an IRA or (401). And 67 percent of them already regret doing so.

Still, overall, respondents are optimists about the year to come, with 66 percent of respondents expecting it to continue to rise; 42 percent expect it to rise by 5 percent.

But all that optimism aside, they do have some concerns—chief among them market volatility, although there was a slight decrease in the number of investors actively managing for that particular hazard.

Another worry is political instability—which, oddly amid all the talk of North Korea and unrest in the Middle East also actually trended down a bit from the third quarter.

But three other concerns—inflation, recession and the threat of armed conflict, war or terrorism—all saw a substantially larger uptick in investors actively seeking to ward off their potential effects on investments.

Interestingly, investors are increasingly inclined to see investing opportunities abroad than they were earlier in the year, though the U.S. continues to dominate. But 34 percent intend to increase their exposure to emerging markets in the year to come.

Instant Insights /

Here's what dominates investors&rsquo; New Year&rsquo;s resolutions

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Here's what dominates investors’ New Year’s resolutions