My mother mentioned to me last year that she hasn't planned at all for retirement. She had no idea how much she spends, how much she makes (consultant, irregular hours/pay), how much she has in retirement accounts, or how much she needed to retire. She is 61. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. We hunted down all her accounts (she has like 6 from different employers that she never rolled over throughout the years). There was $40k socked away here, another $100k socked away there. I haven't actually looked too hard at what she's been invested in; we figured out that they had been growing well for the last decade or so, that if she gets half the house's value from my dad, and if she waits to collect social security until she's 70, she'll actually be in good shape. She's pretty stressed out about the pending divorce so I'm waiting until it's done to talk to her about asset allocations and rollovers. I have her using Mint in the meantime so that we can figure out how much she's spending.