If you own your HVAC business, nobody's setting up a 401(k) match for you the way an employer would for a W-2 employee. That's not a small gap. It means retirement planning has to be something you deliberately build into the business, because it isn't going to happen automatically the way it does for people working a traditional job.

A few options exist specifically designed for self-employed business owners, and which one fits depends largely on your business structure and how much you're able to contribute. A SEP-IRA is one of the simpler options to set up and allows contributions up to a meaningful percentage of your income, with relatively low administrative overhead, making it a common starting point for smaller operations. A Solo 401(k) allows for potentially higher contribution limits by letting you contribute both as the employee and as the employer, though it comes with more paperwork and is generally more attractive once profit is substantial enough to make the higher limits worth pursuing. A SIMPLE IRA can work well if you have employees you also want to offer a retirement benefit to, without taking on the full complexity of a standard company 401(k) plan.

Beyond picking the right account type, the bigger issue we see is contractors simply not contributing consistently, treating retirement savings as whatever's left over after everything else rather than a planned, recurring commitment. Profitable years come and go in this business, and it's easy to tell yourself you'll catch up on retirement contributions next year, which quietly becomes a pattern that never actually happens.

There's also a real tax benefit tied to most of these options, since contributions typically reduce your taxable income for the year, which means retirement planning and tax planning aren't really separate conversations for a business owner. They're the same conversation.

If you don't currently have a retirement account set up for yourself, or you have one but haven't contributed consistently, that's worth addressing before another profitable year passes without taking advantage of it.

Jeremy Brewer is the founder of 911 Bookkeepers LLC in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He worked in the field as an HVAC tech before building books for the trades, and he serves as a licensed paramedic in EMS. He is a Xero Certified Advisor.