Maybe money can't buy love. So why not use it to pay down pre-retirement debt?

Having adequate savings is half the retirement equation. Not owing it all to creditors is the other.

By the time you're within a decade of retirement, you should have taken care of business like credit card bills and other loans, says Benjamin Tobias, a Certified Financial Planner in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

"That's the key to the whole thing: Be responsible for your own actions," he says. Other planners advocate having your home paid off before you call retirement a career. If you're worried you don't have enough put away, keep working. No, you don't have to put in eight days a week, but the less you're paying creditors and the less you're drawing down your nest egg, the more you'll have for you. "I've always run scared," says Stanley Krugman, a Miami-area dentist who, at 76, is still seeing patients.