Small business owners understand that they are the ones responsible for saving for their retirement. Unlike many employees who work for large corporations that provide retirement benefits, small business owners must provide those benefits for themselves. A primary means of doing so is to set up retirement savings plans for their businesses to cover themselves and their employees. However, many hesitate to start the process because they are intimidated by the governing rules. In those cases, starting with an IRA-based retirement plan is an easy, effective, and efficient way to start the process. These IRA-based plans – SEP IRAs and SIMPLE IRAs – are low cost maintenance, easy to communicate to employees, and flexible, providing the business owners with choice of whether to fund the plan from year to year.