Answer: You don’t need your employer to help you save for retirement, fortunately. Since you’re over 50, you can contribute $6,000 to an IRA or Roth IRA annually. You can open an account at virtually any bank, brokerage or credit union. Look for one that doesn’t charge you account service fees and that has a broad array of low-cost investment options. Vanguard, for example, waives its service fees for IRA investors who sign up for electronic statements.

If you’re able to save more, you can do so in a regular, taxable brokerage account. You won’t get a tax break for your contributions, as you would with a traditional IRA, but you can qualify for low capital gains tax rates if you hold your investments for at least a year.

Your Social Security benefits will be based on your 35 highest-earning years. The Social Security website (http://www.ssa.gov) has a benefits calculator that enables you to see your estimated future benefit based on your work record so far, and that enables you to create different scenarios — such as a lower salary going forward, or different retirement ages — to gauge their effect on your future checks.

Answer: You need to accept your new reality, rather than papering it over with ill-advised loans or raids on your retirement accounts.

That means reducing your expenses dramatically to reflect your new, lower income. If your housing expenses eat up more than a third of your current pay, for example, you need to consider your alternatives. You have equity in your home, which should make a sale easier. If you want to hang on to the house, consider getting roommates or even renting out the house while you live elsewhere (if the rent will cover your home’s monthly expenses).

You may have loan payments or other debts taken on when you had more income that you can no longer afford. If that’s the case, discuss your situation with both a legitimate credit counselor (one affiliated with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling at http://www.nfcc.org) and a bankruptcy attorney (find referrals from the National Assn. of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys at http://www.nacba.org).

Your home equity should be reserved for emergencies, not used to finance a lifestyle you can no longer afford. And your retirement funds should be left alone for retirement.

We in the media need to make that clear. We’ve been excoriating Congressional bungling and inaction so loudly that many ordinary people are getting the impression the world is about to end.

It’s not. A default would have some seriously bad affects—including raising the interest rates on the national debt that everyone professes to care so much about. One of the basics of money management is that if you’re in debt, you want to keep your interest rates as low as possible to get out of debt faster. Doing something that makes your interest rates rise is just stupid. But right now, “stupid” is Congress’ middle name.

So what can you do with your own money to prepare in case we do default? My thoughts:

Move your cash from money markets to FDIC-insured bank accounts. The average interest rate on money market mutual funds is .25%, and they aren’t federally insured. The risk that money funds would “break the buck” and lose principle is probably minimal, but you’re not being compensated for taking any risk, so you’d be better off in an online bank account paying 1% or so.

Don’t invest in gold. Gold is a hugely speculative investment. The gold bubble has been growing for years, and the last time this happened the crash was pretty awful. In fact, the price of gold still hasn’t climbed back to its previous 1980 peak in inflation-adjusted terms. Buying gold or gold mining shares right now is gambling, not investing.

Make sure you’re diversified. Bailing out of the stock market isn’t a good choice. Congress will get its act together eventually. If it doesn’t do so before the default, it will do so quickly afterward, once the stock market plunges. Either way, if you’re out of the market you’ll miss the relief rally. In any case, trying to time the market is all but impossible. If you’re invested in a broadly-diversified mix of stock and bond mutual funds, you should be able to hang on for the bumpy ride. (One way to get quickly diversified is to put your money into a “lifestyle” or “target date” fund, that does all the diversification and rebalancing for you. Most workplace retirement plans and brokerages offer these.) But remember that money you’ll need within five years should be in a safe, easily accessible bank account, not invested in the stock market. That’s true under any market conditions, but if you’ve been taking chances you shouldn’t, now is the time to correct that.

Given that I don’t get a refund on April 15 and end up having to pony up a lot of money, is there a way for me to set aside my self-employment income into a retirement account such that I can just bypass all taxes on it, including payroll taxes? Would a traditional IRA work that way? If so, how would the IRS know that I’m putting money aside from my self-employment income and not from my regular day-job income?

Answer: To answer your last question first, the IRS doesn’t really care where the money comes from when you pay your tax bill. It mostly just cares about getting paid.

That said, you probably won’t be able to avoid self-employment taxes on your side business income, although you should be able to reduce or even eliminate owing income taxes on the money, said Eva Rosenberg, an enrolled agent who writes about taxes at TaxMama.com. (Self-employment taxes are your contributions to Social Security and Medicare.)

“The only way to reduce self-employment taxes is to reduce self-employment income,” Rosenberg said. “Putting money into retirement plans of any kind will only reduce income taxes.”

One way to reduce your self-employment income is to incorporate and then have your corporation contribute to your retirement plan directly, “thus wiping out most of your wages,” Rosenberg said. “However, the cost of incorporating and the annual filing and fees related to all that will certainly exceed your self-employment taxes on $7,000.”

What might make more sense if you want to reduce your income taxes is to contribute the maximum $5,000 to a traditional IRA, which offers a tax deduction for contributions, instead of funding a Roth, which does not. Even though you have a retirement plan at work, you can deduct your full contribution if your modified adjusted gross income is under $56,000.

Another option is a solo 401(k), which would allow you to put aside up to 100% of your compensation (although again, you would still owe self-employment taxes on that compensation).

Also, if you expect to owe more than $1,000 at tax time, you should be making quarterly estimated tax payments instead of waiting until April 15 to pay your tax bill.

I do have about $4,000 in savings right now. Do you think I should go ahead and open an IRA? If so, what should I be looking for in the bank or investment company with which I open the account?

Answer: There’s really no such thing as “too little” when it comes to retirement savings. Everything you set aside can help you on your journey to financial independence.

Furthermore, waiting until you can contribute more is a bad idea, since your expenses will probably rise over time and you’ll always find ways to spend the money if you don’t make saving a habit. Start with those $25 contributions and try to bump up the amount every few months. Once you graduate, look for a job that offers a good workplace retirement plan that will allow you to contribute 10% to 20% of your earnings — preferably with a company match.

For now, though, opening up an IRA or a Roth IRA is a great idea. You may be able to get a tax credit for your contributions if your modified adjusted gross income is below $27,750. (You can learn more about this saver’s credit by reading Publication 590, Individual Retirement Arrangements, or the instructions for Form 8880, Credit for Qualified Retirement Savings Contributions.)

Avoid banks and full-service brokerages, as their hefty fees will eat heavily into your returns. Instead, start with an account at a company that offers low fees, such as discount mutual fund company Vanguard Group or discount online brokerage ShareBuilder.

Vanguard has a $3,000 minimum investment requirement on most accounts and a $100 minimum for additional investments, so you’d need to save up in another account (such as an online savings account) and transfer the money over when you have enough. If you choose its target date retirement funds, though, the minimum is only $1,000 with a $1 minimum for future automatic investments. ShareBuilder allows you to invest without minimums. Automatic investments in certain mutual funds are free, while automatic investments in other funds and stocks cost $4 apiece.

Answer: If your advisor gets paid a commission for selling annuities, as she probably does, she’s not an objective source for you on this topic. Consider investing a few hundred dollars to consult a fee-only financial planner, who can review your financial situation and your investments and offer advice.

Variable annuities aren’t always a terrible option, but they’re a poor fit for IRAs, which already offer the tax deferral that’s a big part of an annuity’s appeal. The so-called living benefits that guarantee a certain payoff typically come at a high price, which is why you should always run these investments past an objective source before you buy.

Answer: Let’s be clear: You have no assets. Your mother does, and she may plan to give those to you, but those plans could change. She may well need her money for living expenses and long-term care, which could easily eat up that nest egg.

So you need to start saving on your own for retirement. You may think you can’t live on less than you are now, but make no mistake: You’ll be living on significantly less if you don’t save. Your Social Security benefit, if you retire at 66, will be around $1,000 a month.

If you have a workplace retirement plan such as a 401(k), start contributing to that. If you don’t, put money aside in an individual retirement account. If your adjusted gross income is under $27,750, you may qualify for a tax credit that can help you, known as the Retirement Savings Contributions Credit or Savers Credit. (You’ll use Form 8880 to figure the credit; visit http://www.irs.gov for more information.)

Answer: Let’s first get clear on some terminology. CDs and money markets are types of investments, while IRAs and Roth IRAs are types of accounts — specifically, they’re retirement accounts. Think of IRAs and Roth IRAs as buckets into which you put investments, such as CDs, money markets, stocks, bonds or mutual funds.

The next thing you need to get clear about is your plan for your savings. If the money is meant to be an emergency fund, to tide you over in case of job loss or a large expense, then you probably shouldn’t put it in a retirement account, which could have penalties or restrictions on withdrawals.

You also shouldn’t put your emergency fund into investments that could lose value in the short term, such as stocks, bonds or most mutual funds. The best place for emergency money is usually a federally insured bank account. If your bank isn’t paying much interest, you can check with others, including online banks and credit unions, to see if you can get a slightly better return.

If you don’t need the whole sum as an emergency stash, however, then you might want to think about taking more risk to get more return, and perhaps using an IRA or Roth IRA as your savings vehicle. To learn more, check out Kathy Kristof’s “Investing 101″ or Eric Tyson’s “Investing for Dummies.”

Answer: You probably would have more investing choices with an IRA, but you might also wind up paying more. A good, large-company 401(k) plan often offers access to institutional funds that charge less (sometimes much less) than what a retail investor would pay for a similar investment through an IRA. If your new employer’s plan is a good one, transferring the money there is often the simplest and most cost-effective solution. Or you may be able to leave the money where it is, if you like the plan. Only if neither option is palatable, or if you’re convinced that you can find better, lower-cost options on your own, does an IRA rollover become the clear best choice.

Answer: You two appear to be nicely on track with your finances, but if you want to retire early or otherwise boost your retirement funds you have several options.

The easiest would be to simply have your husband contribute more to his account, but you also could open a joint or individual brokerage account and invest for retirement through that. You wouldn’t get a tax break for your contributions, but your gains could qualify for favorable capital gains rates.

Another option is to start a sideline business and contribute some of your profits to a simplified employee pension, or SEP, IRA. Self-employed workers have several options for retirement savings, including solo 401(k)s and even traditional pension plans, but the SEP is an easy way to start.