If you’re like a lot of people, you have probably changed jobs – or even careers – many times over the years. You probably weren’t thinking too much about retirement, even if you did participate in one or more employer-sponsored retirement plans and opened a few individual retirement accounts (IRAs). Having reached your midlife years, there’s a good chance you have a collection of plans and accounts scattered around, although off the top of your head, you may not know exactly where they all are and what each is invested in.

Now it’s time to get organized. This may seem like a daunting task. For starters, if record-keeping is not your forte, you may be unsure of where to start your search. What's more, in all likelihood, many of your friends (and perhaps you, too) seriously wonder if you will ever be able to stop working, let alone whether you will live with any degree of comfort or security afterwards.

Feeling unsure that you’ll like what you find, you may have procrastinated. That is why we created this tutorial – because we know that having some guidance can help you take the steps you need to in order to help secure your future.

The following chapters will spell out those steps in detail. They are designed to assist you in identifying the topics that pertain to you and in developing a realistic plan to get your arms around what you've already saved for retirement and start planning seriously for the future. If you're married, go through this process with your spouse and make sure that your plans are coordinated.

We suggest you start by reading through all the chapters, then decide what works best for you.