Four retirement savings resolutions

Lose weight. Volunteer more. Quit smoking. Get a better job. Drink less. Save more. Sound familiar? These are but a few of the most popular New Year's resolutions. And you know what's funny about them? They're almost always never carried out.

Why? Because they are couched in terms of lifestyle change. That's a tall order for most people. How easy is it for you to give up doing something you've done all your life? Every year millions and millions of Americans look at the advent of a new year as the opportunity to fundamentally change their lives. But before the first robin of spring, those New Year's resolutions have evaporated like the winter snow into forgotten memories.

Would you be interested if I told you there are several suggestions you could make to your clients that represent an easy way to actually complete the promise of their resolution? Folks can do them quickly. And they can do them immediately. These resolutions don't require a lifestyle change. They are “one-and-done” types of projects, meaning most people can complete them while they're still amped up from the whole New Year's resolution thing.

1. Don't save a cent

Make a resolution to sit down and figure out what you need to retire in comfort. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans have never come up with a retirement savings plan, even the ones who are already saving for retirement. All you need to do is, sometime in 2015, find out what your retirement goal is.

2. Forget stock market

Your goal here is to just “let it ride.” Don't worry yourself about those ups and downs you might see in the market. If the market goes up incredibly high, do nothing. If the market crashes all of the sudden, do nothing. Remember when the market tanked in 2009? By virtue or accident, the people who froze and didn't do anything are well ahead of where they were pre-recession. Those people who panicked and sold might never catch up.

3. Go on autopilot

Many companies' retirement plans have one or two “auto” features—“auto-enrollment” and “auto-escalation.” They kickstart your retirement savings program as soon as you're eligible to join the plan and keep pumping it up over the course of your career. You don't have to do anything. The company does it all for you. The plan even invests for you. It's as easy as pie.

4. Find the fees that matter

There's the mistaken belief that paying “higher” fees is worse than paying “lower” fees. To understand why this idea is dumb is to understand why we have the famous adage that says “You get what you pay for.” Find the bad fees. Over the course of a retirement saver's lifetime, they can equate to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost savings.