The following are five tips to help women plan for a financially secure future.

When building a financially secure future, women generally have different needs than men and some unique considerations to keep in mind when saving for retirement. While it may seem daunting to balance the responsibilities of day-to-day life with planning for your future, it’s important to focus on ways to ensure that you’re meeting your long-term retirement goals. Here are five tips on how to strengthen your financial fitness and increase your retirement savings:

1. Strengthen your financial literacy

Take time to boost your financial literacy. Ensure that you have a basic understanding of the savings and investment options available to you and the considerations you need to weigh when saving for retirement, such as asset allocation and risk tolerance. With a better grasp of your investment and retirement savings options, you can make more informed decisions to help improve your financial security. Easy-to-use and reliable resources such as the glossary in Mutual of America’s Retirement Center or federalreserveeducation.org are good places to start to become more financially savvy.

2. Envision your ideal retirement

When thinking about your financial future, consider what you want your retirement to look like. Where do you want to live? How do you want to spend your time? At what age do you plan to retire? A good rule of thumb to remember is that many experts agree you’ll need approximately 80 percent of your gross annual preretirement income to maintain your standard of living during retirement.¹ Note, however, that this is just a guideline. It’s important to consider when you want to retire and how long you’ll need to make that nest egg last so you don’t outlive your retirement savings.

3. Manage your expenses

Make a budget to help you balance your daily expenses, and contribute consistently toward retirement savings. Use one of Mutual of America’s Retirement Calculators to help you break down how you divide your monthly income among your expenses.

4. Boost your retirement savings

With women on average earning less than men throughout their careers,² it’s even more critical to start saving for retirement as early as possible. To help boost your retirement savings, ensure that you are taking advantage of your employer match if offered. In addition, you may want to consider increasing your contributions annually, even if by one percent, as it can have a meaningful difference in the long term. If you’ve reached age 50, you may also want to look into how you can take advantage of catch-up contributions.

5. Look to other sources of income

Though the gender wage gap is closing,³ you may discover that there is a gap between what you’re able to contribute toward your retirement savings and what you’ll need to meet your financial goals. Remember to factor in the amount of Social Security you expect to receive—a key income source many individuals forget to include when engaging in retirement planning. While you can access part of your Social Security as early as 62, you should weigh the benefits of delaying your payments. To see your current Social Security statement and what you can expect to receive in your retirement, go to ssa.gov/onlineservices.