Your finance: Nonfinancial assets matter

I have a resourceful friend who lives a good life, despite never having quite enough money. She is hardworking and popular, and she networks, barters and works for what she really wants.

She finessed enough grant money to pay for a two-week trip to cooking school in Italy. She knows where all the good used furniture stores are, has bartered home cleaning for a two-week stay in a vacation home in Vermont, and is working on an arrangement now that will get her free housing in France for several weeks this summer. Tres bien!

I'm pretty sure my friend will do really well in retirement, though I strongly suspect she has nowhere near the $1-million plus that you would think her lifestyle would require. She has a different kind of capital: skills, smarts and a great social network.

Experts are increasingly focusing on the nonfinancial assets workers can bring into retirement to help them manage on fewer dollars than might be optimal. Here are a few of the best nonfinancial forms of capital that pre-retirees can invest in to ensure a good retirement.

Investing knowledge. Nothing good can come of being uninformed about investing. The more you know, the more you can grow small contributions into a retirement kitty you can live off. Break it into small bits and learn a little every month. Learning about mutual funds, stocks, taxes, portfolio management and the like will help you, at the very least, choose the right adviser.

A money-earning skill. Baby boomers may well have psychological problems adjusting to the “withdrawal” era of their lives. It could be harder than you think to pull money out of a treasured 401(k) plan to go see a movie or make a car payment. So develop something now that can earn money in the future. Some popular money-earning side business include eBay sales, handyman work, cooking and baby-sitting.

Practical money-saving skills. Gardening, appliance repair, lawn mowing, scratch cooking, vacuuming . . . got it? For every $100 a month you want to pull out of your tax-deferred retirement account, you need to have roughly $37,500 in assets in that account. So, save $200 a month in do-it-yourself activities and that's $75,000 you won't need to have saved.

Good friends and neighbors. Can you drive each other to the airport? Check in on each other when you haven't surfaced for a while? Does someone in the crowd fix cars or own a beach house or a garden tiller? There's no end to the savings that a supportive collective like that can generate. And, of course, you'll enjoy life more.

The best body possible. Health care costs for retirees will top $350,000 for their lifetimes, the Insured Retirement Institute, an industry group, has reported. The better shape you are in going into retirement, the less you'll spend on pain pills, back braces and more. You can't control everything that befalls you, but having strong bones and muscles, a good sense of balance and cardiovascular fitness will improve your retirement fun and cut your retirement expenses.