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Traveling is my dream. Packing is my nightmare.

The day before a visit — any trip, every trip — I inevitably have the identical mini-crisis. Standing in front of my closet, I begin to second-guess my packing list. Is it going to rain where I’m going? Higher grab my raincoat. Are jeans OK? I should probably bring a dress, too. But what about heels? A showering suit?? An additional 4 pairs of underwear???

The issue is that every of these things takes up room in my suitcase, inevitably leaving little space for the things I really want. In attempting to be super-prepared for an imagined future, I find yourself shooting my current self within the metaphorical foot.

I worry this might apply to the approach I take towards retirement savings, too. It’s been drilled into my brain how crucial it’s to avoid wasting for retirement, so I contribute to a 401(k) and a Roth IRA frequently. But I wish I knew definitively whether I’m putting an excessive amount of away for my golden years on the expense of reaching other, more imminent savings goals.

Is it possible to avoid wasting an excessive amount of for retirement?

Chris Ceder, senior retirement strategist with Goldman Sachs Asset Management, says my query, unsurprisingly, is the alternative of oldsters’ usual concern, which is that they’ve saved too little for retirement. Employees predict they’ll need a whopping $1.8 million for retirement: an enormous sum that requires a complete bunch of planning.

Unfortunately, attributable to its far-off nature, Cedar says that retirement is usually the financial obligation people punt after they’re attempting to juggle student loan payments, saving for a house, getting a automotive and so forth. Then it never gets picked back up — something like 20% of Americans over age 50 don’t have any retirement savings.

But like I’ve written before, it’s not an all-or-nothing situation.

Ideally, Ceder says I must have a budget that permits me to make progress toward several goals directly. Even when my retirement contributions are small at first, the ability of compounding means I actually shouldn’t skip them. “Those early savings are really, really vital,” he says. When interest generates interest, it allows my savings to grow substantially over time.

To that end, I would like to have an overall plan that balances my current lifestyle with my need for future financial security. To find out whether I’m overdoing my efforts to avoid wasting, Daniel Milan, founder and managing partner at Cornerstone Financial Services, suggests I crunch the numbers on my expected retirement. I should ask myself what my preferred retirement looks like and check out to compute how much that lifestyle will likely cost (while accounting for inflation).

Once I’ve pinned down my money flow needs, I can work backwards and make a year-by-year plan to succeed in that concentrate on, then evaluate how I’m doing to date.

“It gives you some quantifiable evaluation to inform you, ‘Am I saving an excessive amount of or too little?’” Milan says.

There are red flags I should be careful for here. For instance, if I’m putting away $1,000 a month for retirement in lieu of paying my rent, that’s obviously an issue. Ditto if I’m digging myself into bank card debt to cover my grocery bill. And I probably should pare down my retirement savings if I don’t have more prescient constructing blocks, like an emergency fund, in place.

Assuming those are all squared away, though, the actual risk isn’t necessarily saving an excessive amount of — it’s saving an excessive amount of in certain varieties of accounts, says Nicole Garner Scott, a financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual.

This might sound outrageous, provided that the IRS allows employees to contribute a maximum of $7,000 to an IRA and $23,000 to a 401(k) in 2024. (Employees 50 and up can squirrel away extra.)

But the difficulty here is liquidity. Because they’re designed for retirement, I’m generally not in a position to access the cash I put right into a 401(k) or traditional IRA until I’m 59 ½ without incurring an early-withdrawal penalty, plus income taxes.

Overloading these accounts could essentially lock away savings I’d need sooner.

Scott says savings needs to be in buckets, of which retirement is only one. Someone in my age bracket, she says, shouldn’t solely give attention to tax-deferred retirement accounts that lock up money for a long time.”There are other buckets they will save into that is perhaps more tax-efficient in the long run,” she says.

One treatment is a Roth IRA, which lets me withdraw my contributions, tax-free, at any time. (My earnings are subject to similarly restrictive rules as traditional IRAs.) Or I could spread my savings — and, later, my withdrawals — across a 401(k), Roth IRA and a taxable brokerage account, which can afford me a more advantageous tax rate in retirement than if I were to solely depend on a conventional 401(k).

The underside line

Saving for retirement is crucial, however it’s possible to have an excessive amount of of an excellent thing.

If I’m saving a lot for retirement that it’s negatively impacting other areas of my funds, or if it means a big portion of my money isn’t accessible for shorter-term goals, I will probably want to pump the brakes. There are methods to fulfill in the center.

More from Money:

Americans Now Think They’ll Need a Record $1.46 Million to Retire Comfortably

Dollar Scholar Asks: How Can I Compensate for Saving for Retirement?

Why Retirement Savings in Roth IRAs Are likely to Outlast Traditional 401(k)s