Ways to keep more of your nest egg.

• Position: Retirement

As the year winds down, many people will start thinking about their tax bill, and so will Uncle Sam--specifically, about your retirement fund. However, certified financial planner and retirement counselor Rick Rodgers contends that, with some simple adjustments, consumers will be able to pay less in taxes and keep more for their golden years.

"The IRS sees a huge amount of collective dollars--17 trillion dollars, to be exact--stashed away in IRAs and retirement savings," states Rodgers, author of The New Three-Legged Stool: A Tax Efficient Approach to Retirement Planning. "This has caused the IRS to become very aggressive in taxing those assets. While you might not think the IRS is after your money, they actually have a big red bull's-eye painted on your retirement plan.

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"As of the last quarter of 2010, our country's national debt totaled more than 13.5 trillion dollars--and the number continues to rise by $2,000,-000 every minute. That amounts to $121,600 of debt for each taxpayer in the U.S. Yet, this is a mere drop in the proverbial bucket compared to what the government will owe in benefits to Social Security and Medicare recipients far into the future, as well as in pensions to military and civilian government workers"

Rodgers suggests a few ways to help bolster your retirement savings:

* The smartest move a younger person can make is to invest in a Roth IRA. An...