The other day I was at Home Depot. The gentleman who checked out my purchases (I almost said checked me out), was in his late sixties at least. He might have been seventy or older. He asked if I needed help getting my potting soil into my car, and I declined. He said, “Are you sure? I couldn’t do it.”

This guy, who couldn’t lift a bag of potting soil, was on his feet all day on concrete. It seems a grueling way to spend your day. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 25 percent of men over the age of 64 are working, and about half of them are in physically demanding jobs. Now, I’m assuming he wasn’t doing it for fun, though it’s possible I’m wrong on that front.

Does your future hold a Home Depot job? For too many, the answer may be yes. The median net worth (half are below, and half are above) of those aged 65 to 74 is just $224,000, and that includes the equity in their homes. Net worth is the value of all your assets, including your home and retirement accounts, minus the value of all your debt, including your mortgage. That is not nearly enough to live on, especially if you are living in part of it.

And it isn’t just those with low incomes. I’ve recently spoken to a few couples in their mid-fifties with high paying professional careers, but a negative net worth, meaning they owe more than they own.

But you can do something about it. The younger you are, the less you will need to change, but you can find a solution. A friend of ours, Gene, made a course correction at the age of 61. He really wanted to retire. He was tired of his commute and the office politics. But he had little saved.

He took a good hard look at his expenses to understand what kind of income he and his wife, Roberta, needed to live comfortably. Then he found out what he could expect from Social Security at the various filing ages. With this information, he was able to make some decisions.

First, he needed to get rid of his mortgage payment. That wasn’t going to happen soon enough if he stayed in his San Francisco Bay Area home. Gene and Roberta agreed they would retire to a lower cost area. They would sell their current home and with the equity be able to buy another home for cash. They expected they would even be able to bank some of the profits from the sale, given California real estate prices.

He knew he had little choice but to wait until he was 70, when his Social Security benefit was at it’s highest to retire. In the mean time, he saved as much of his income as he could, about 40 percent. His budget was the minimum he and Roberta could get by on.

The investment and housing markets were kind to Gene and Roberta. It turns out they will be able to retire to another state at 67 instead of 70. Gene righted his ship just in time. Had his income been lower, he might not have been able to save so much, and his future would have been far less comfortable.

The key to Gene’s success was he faced his problem head on and looked for alternatives that he and Roberta could live with. Wherever you are today, I urge you to do the same. The sooner you do, the more options you will have. You don’t want working at Home Depot into your seventies to be the only one you have left.

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Save Yourself; Your Guide to Saving for Retirement and Building Financial Security, is available on Amazon.