You already pay your bills on time. So why not add one more really important obligation to your monthly budget. If you begin treating your retirement needs as a future liability that you must fund now, you’ll likely put away more money than if you pretend retirement saving is optional.

It’s easy to fund your retirement account last. You know you should save, but there are competing priorities. The kids want to go to college, and you would like a new boat. And often, retirement saving loses out. But if you treat your retirement saving as another bill you have to pay, it will stay at the front of your mind. You won’t miss payments, because—just as when you’re paying the mortgage or the electric bill—getting behind has consequences.

While this solution to retirement planning sounds pretty simple, it comes from the sophisticated world of institutional investing. Pension fund managers, for example, have to treat future obligations—payments to pensioners—as liabilities, and that forces them to deal now with something that may be years or decades off. Using actuarial tables, they calculate the cost of future obligations to determine what return they require on their investments and whether the pension fund is adequate.

While you may not use actuarial tables, you can manage your retirement account like a pension fund. The first step is to determine the savings you need to support the lifestyle you want during retirement, keeping in mind that you probably want to fund retirement through age 90 or 95. Next, determine how many years you have to reach your savings goal. If you are 45 and plan to retire at 62, for example, you have 17 years to fund your retirement account. Finally, determine how much you must save each year and make projections about returns on your investments.

If you’re already funding your retirement goal by contributing to a 401(k) or other plan at work, treating that money along with all of your other retirement savings as a liability, may provide you with a more realistic picture about how much you need to put away and the retirement you should expect. It may make you save more.

A simple way to establish a monthly liability for your retirement obligation is to divide your goal into equal installments. So if you have 17 years to save $500,000, you can divide that obligation into 204 monthly payments of just over $2,450 apiece. Given the expected growth of your investments, you’re likely to “over-fund” your retirement obligation.

If you would like us to calculate your payments more precisely, we will estimate the impact of inflation, investment returns, and taxes. That may give you a realistic number for your monthly liability. By thinking of your retirement account as a liability, you’re paying yourself along with your other debts. It’s a great way of funding retirement. Of course, making calculations about how much you need to save today to fund a debt in the future, while also making judgments about inflation and taxes and selecting the right investments, requires the help of a professional. We’re here to assist you with any aspect of this and help you create a disciplined system for planning your retirement.