How to increase your chances of fully funding your retirement [Video]

Figuring out how much money you’ll need in retirement can be tricky. After all, while some factors are in your control — such as what sort of lifestyle you plan to lead in retirement — others, like your life expectancy, are nigh impossible to predict.

Researchers at Morningstar are trying to narrow down how things will play out for most Americans. The investing research firm recently released an updated model of U.S. retirement outcomes based on spending, investing and life expectancy data, among a litany of other factors.

Morningstar’s model — which assumes a hardly guaranteed status quo for Social Security benefits in the future — predicts that 45% of U.S. households will run short of money in retirement. For a large chunk of Americans, that could mean returning to work, going into debt or drastically reducing costs to make ends meet.

But if it’s still relatively early in your retirement savings journey, there are two major levers you can pull that drastically increase the chances you’ll have …