You have probably thought about that your retirement account may not have that value it had before the recent Wall Street crisis caused record drops and gains.

To create income when your job income stops is the main purpose of a retirement account. Some financial experts state 60%; some 80% and others say 120%. How much you want to replace determines the size it needs to be.

Try to think about your retirement account as a big bathtub, then monthly contributions are like a faucet that is filling it up, the interest that you earn is another faucet and when you retire, the contribution faucet turns off and the large drain starts to open. Such benefits as Social Security will certainly add a faucet but the drain is still much larger and this means that sooner or later, the tub will empty.

So, what should you do, what can add such a faucet?

Most people who work are familiar with linear income it means that you get paid one unit of pay for one unit of work. Residual income is money that keeps coming in after the work has been done once. For example the author who wrote a book over 30 years ago and still receives royalties on it. The other example is producing a movie, and you’ll receive royalties on it. There could be named two key ingredients. The first one is that the money keeps coming in. The second is that you do little to no work to keep it coming in.

These concepts of leverage and residual income are often combined by home-based business. You probably know the situation when often you are introduced to the business through another person and then become part of their team. Whole building your business, you introduce it to other people who become part of your team and you can leverage the efforts of others to continue to receive income.

If this income covers your living expenses, then you could be called financially free and it means that you can 'retire' at any age. In addition there are many tax advantages that are available to small business owners.

It understood that you can do nothing to control the situation at Wall Street (though surely you can get junk silver coins to invest the money into real value of silver, or you can compare online trading and choose the most adequate one to make money), but you can control your own actions and a home-based business can be a perfect answer for you if you want to take control of your retirement, to protect it and to make it calm and comfortable.

Read the article about 401 k retirement plan to learn more tips about the issue.