When you’re 40 and plan to retire in 10 years, do you think it’s too late to stash away some good amount for your planned retirement a decade down the road? It seems like the answer is quite obvious.

Oh, you think it’s too late? Think again.

Fortunately, there are two simple steps you can do to save enough money to beef up your retirement fund. If retirement is right around the corner for you, you might want to speed up your savings and plan on sticking to your day job for as long as you can.

Walter Updegrave, a senior editor of Money Magazine, lends his brilliant advice to people who are nearing retirement but haven’t saved enough to fund their foreseen lifestyle as they step into the whole new world of retirement. In his recent article, he shows how saving, taking on a regular day job and tapping into home equity can help fund your retirement.

We would like to add into the equation the good old financial strategy called investing concurrent to or as an alternative to saving, and do away with tapping into home equity, assuming that not everyone owns a house. Let’s take a look at how saving and / or investing and sticking to your day job can help give a boost to your retirement fund.

First, save and / or invest as much as you can.

Remember the different types of investment vehicles that we talked about in the last posts? We dealt with mutual funds, stocks, bonds, IRAs, variable life insurance policies, etc. Take advantage of them! In fact, if you’ve got some idle money stashed away in some savings account, use some of it to feed your retirement account.

Now that the financial sector is showing signs of recovery, and every-now-and-then Wall Street takes on a bullish outlook amid the rising investor confidence, there’s no better opportunity to start putting your money into accounts that yield greater returns.

Based on the premise that you intend to work 10 more years, if you can manage to save at least $250 a month and put that amount into a mutual fund account that yields, albeit not a guarantee depending on how the market generously provides a lucrative return, 40% annually, you could save $42,000 in 10 years! Not a paltry sum to add to your social security benefits upon retirement. That is, again, depending on how the financial markets perform in the next 10 years.

If you could manage to add even more to your monthly savings and investments, say jack it up from $250 to $300 or even $500 a month, imagine how much you could be putting away for retirement.

Second, work longer and smarter while you still can.

Working longer, according to Walter Updegrave, allows you to save up some more. And as you work longer, say five more years after one’s supposed retirement date, the shorter the period of time the amount of money you saved up for retirement will have to support you.

Even better, if you’ve got home equity, you can tap into it to further beef up your retirement fund.

Finally, creating a solid plan to help you tap into your retirement fund sensibly when retirement has finally come is crucial. You don’t want to take an unplanned vacation that would land you into financial trouble during your retirement, and you don’t want to do anything that will upset your financial stability at this time either.