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Disclaimer: This is an ongoing series of the book review of the Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. Click here for the introduction and links to the other chapter reviews.

This chapter is really about ways to make your deposits automatic, and many reasons why your retirement accounts fit the automatic theme. Without delay, here are the action steps:

• Make doubly sure that you are signed up for your 401k plan at work: This hopefully is a no-brainer for us. The benefits like deferred savings, employee match should be enough reasons to get us to join the retirement plans offered by our employer. For the few of us who are lazy to join, please do not delay since you are essentially giving money away.
• Open a IRA if you do not have a retirement plan at work: I say open a IRA even if your employer has a 401k plan. Most of us can contribute in both.
• Open a SEP IRA or a One-Person 401k/Profit Sharing Plan if you are self-employed: I never knew that for someone who qualifies for a SEP IRA, he/she can contribute 25% of their gross income of up to $42,000 a year; while the profit sharing plans allow a mix of contribution percentages of also $42,000. I am going to research on these two types of retirement plans and report back, so stay tuned.
• Decide ahead of time how much you want to contribute each month and how you want to invest your retirement contribution: Make sure you have a plan ahead of time, which is the first step to making it automatic.
• Remember to make it automatic! Either have your employer deduct it through your payroll or use the bank and brokerages automatic investment plans: Automatic, automatic, automatic. Just remember that this is the key!

Next chapter is about automatically saving for a rainy day. Stay tuned.