NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - My husband and I want to begin saving for retirement, but we have no idea how to start since our employers don't offer any retirement accounts. Can you point us in the right direction?

-- Jenniene McIntyre, Oceanport, NJ

You and your husband may not have retirement savings plans available at work, but you do have two important things going for you: you know that you need to save and you want to get started.

Now the trick is to apply that knowledge and determination into an actual retirement kitty. Fortunately, there's no shortage of things for you to do.

The first step is to see which non-employer-based tax-advantaged retirement savings plan you may qualify for. Since you're not covered by a retirement plan at work, then you're no doubt eligible to invest in either a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA.

With the traditional IRA, you get an immediate tax deduction for your contribution and you then pay taxes on your contribution plus earnings when you withdraw your money, preferably after age 59 1/2 to avoid a 105 penalty.

You invest after-tax dollars in a Roth IRA, so you get no deduction, although if you play your cards right all your Roth IRA withdrawals can be tax-free. (For more on the pros and cons of a traditional vs. Roth IRA, click here).

Whichever you choose, you can invest up to $3,000 this year, although the maximum rises to $4,000 in 2005 through 2007 and to $5,000 in 2008, after which it's adjusted in $500 increments for inflation.

People 50 and older can make additional "catch up" contributions of up to $500 this year and next and $1,000 a year starting in 2006. By the way, these maximums are for all your IRA contributions in a given year. In other words, you can't put $3,000 into a traditional IRA and stick another $3,000 in a Roth for the same tax year. You can, however, split the max (or less) between a traditional IRA and Roth.

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If you and your hubby have self-employment income -- earnings from a business you run or perhaps outside consulting or contracting work you do -- then you may also be able to take advantage of tax-advantaged retirement savings plans for small business owners and the self-employed.

Here, I'm talking about plans such as a SEP IRA and a Keogh, which allow you to contribute up to 20 percent of self-employment income after expenses to a maximum of $40,000. Again, though, you must have actual self-employment income to contribute. For more on these plans, click here.

Don't assume, though, that the only way to save for retirement is through government-sponsored programs like 401(k)s, IRAs, SEP IRAs, Keoghs and the like. After you've maxed out on such plans, there are still ways to build retirement nest egg, and to do it in ways that's tax smart-think of it as building your own tax-advantaged savings plan.

One tax-smart way of investing for retirement is to put some money into tax-managed funds. These are funds that use a variety of strategies -- selling shares with the highest tax basis, taking losses on some positions to offset gains in others, etc. -- to reduce their taxable distributions.

So instead of much of your return coming in the form of dividends and short-term capital gains that are taxed at higher ordinary income tax when you receive them, these funds deliver their returns through a growing share price.

That has two advantages: first, you don't pay tax until you actually sell shares, which means your investment's value can compound without the drag of taxes until you sell; and, second, as long as you hold the shares longer than a year, you are taxed at long-term capital gains rates, which max out at 15 percent now vs. 35 percent for ordinary income.

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Most large fund families, including Fidelity and Vanguard, have tax-managed funds. You can also find such funds by going to Morningstar.com and inserting the words "tax managed" into the Quotes/Reports box that appears on each page of the site. (You'll first get a screen saying "Security Not Found." Just re-insert "tax managed," select "Name contains" and then click Go.)

While not tax-managed per se, broad-based index funds, such as those that track the Standards & Poor's 500 index and the Wilshire 500 index, as well as many ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, are "tax-efficient" in that they generate few taxable gains, which makes them good tax-advantaged vehicles for long-term retirement investing as well.

Don't forget too that as a result of the 2003 tax law, qualifying dividends are now taxed at the same rate as long-term capital gains, or a max of 15 percent. So there too is an opportunity to reap a return that, while taxed, is at least taxed at a favorable rate.

I don't want to give the impression that saving and investing for retirement consists of nothing but finding the most tax-wise ways of investing.

In fact, as I stress in my new book, "We're Not In Kansas Anymore: Strategies for Retiring Rich in a Totally Changed World," even more important than investing is that you map out a plan showing how much you must actually save to achieve the retirement lifestyle you'd like.

Once you've got that overall plan, you can then focus on an overall investing strategy that makes the best use of all the investment alternatives available to you.

I've done my part and pointed you in the right direction. Now it's up to you.

Walter Updegrave is a senior editor at MONEY Magazine and is the author of "We're Not in Kansas Anymore: Strategies for Retiring Rich in a Totally Changed World." He also answers viewers' questions on CNNfn's Money & Markets at 4:40 PM on Mondays.