While there were plenty of ghosts and goblins cavorting about at the end of last month, some things are scarier. When it comes to managing money, here a few things I’ve seen this year that frightened me:

•Not saving for retirement: Less than half (46 percent) of Americans are using an Individual Retirement Account, according to mutual fund company Fidelity Investments. Only 160 of 1,000 surveyed said they are very likely to contribute to an IRA. For 401(k)s, 7 out of 10 eligible employees are using them. This means 30 percent to 54 percent of workers are not preparing for retirement and are giving up tax benefits.

•Lack of discipline: From the Fidelity survey, only about a quarter of respondents said they would make a lifestyle change now to save for later.

•Gambling on retirement: At a casino, gambling $1 at a time, your odds of winning $1,000 before losing $1,000 are 1 in 2 trillion, said Travis Jarvis, mathematics department chairman at Brigham Young University, who has researched casino odds. Meanwhile, since 1926, the average stock has had a return of more than 10 percent a year, making your odds almost guaranteed to win over time.

•Spooked by stocks: The Dow fell 416 points in one day this summer, but those who held on would have been ahead by now.

•Not doing the math: After analyzing an advertisement selling new presidential coins, I discovered the seller was making a 41-percent profit when a collector could get the same coins at a bank without the markup. Under this category, I would also add that the mortgage mess wouldn’t have hit us so hard if homebuyers did the math on future costs and risks.

•Running from 401(k)s: Congressional debate about hidden fees added a degree of fright to employees’ willingness to use the retirement savings program, distracting from the 401(k)’s tax and retirement benefits and matching employer contributions.

•Not reading the fine print: The poor, and maybe deceptive, job of a few salespeople in selling annuities to seniors puts retirees in jeopardy. Despite having penalties for canceling an annuity, often within a 10-year period, seniors in their 70s and 80s have been buying them. It was then unsettling for them to learn the bulk of their money was tied up long term. The common culprit, from seniors I’ve heard from, is discovering this was partly the buyers’ fault for not reading the fine print and partly the sellers’ fault for not explaining the risks.

Dan Serra is a business writer for The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo. and can be e-mailed at dan.serra@gazette.com.