A recent study by Alexander Forbes showed that half of all pension fund members were retiring with just a quarter of their salary as their pension benefit ? mainly because they withdrew money from their pension funds before they retired, for example when they changed jobs.

Follow these four cardinal rules for retirement savings to prevent this from happening to you:

1. Start saving early

2. Save your bonus

3. Don?t cash out your savings before retirement

4. If needed, work longer

If you save 15 percent of your salary from age 25, only a third of the benefit you receive at retirement will come from your contributions. The rest will be from growth (interest).

The earlier you start saving for your retirement the better, not just because more payments can be made but also because of the power of compound interest (click here to learn more about compound interest and how it will make you rich). The sooner you start saving, the sooner you can earn interest on your savings, and then earn interest on that interest.

Another way of looking at it is how much more you will have to save to get 90 percent of your salary at retirement. Below we indicate that for every ten years that you delay savings, you need to almost double the amount you save.

Percentage of salary you need to save for 90 percent income at retirement:

• Starting at 25: 15 percent

• Starting at 35: 25 percent

• Starting at 45: 47 percent

2. Save your bonus

You can build up your retirement 'bonus' by taking advantage of the tax-free allowance and saving 15 percent of each bonus into a retirement vehicle.

Because you rely on your bonus to finance your lifestyle, you need to ensure that you include a bonus amount in the final salary you will need on retirement. In other words, increase the amount you need to live on by the bonus amount.

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