Dennis Dove gets a big kick out of saving money these days. But he wishes he had gotten the bug earlier.

"When you're 25, you think you're going to be that age forever," said Dove, 53. "It's like work, party and spend money."

Dove, who works as a barber at Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh, regrets he didn't start putting money into his 401(k) retirement plan at work until he was 37.

Because he has worked for the state for 25 years, he's eligible to retire today and receive a pension of about $1,500 a month. But he's neither emotionally nor financially ready to retire.

"I think I will go plumb nuts if I didn't have something to do," said the divorced father of three.

And financially, he wants to sock away more money than the $30,000-plus he has accumulated. In fact, he's hoping to increase the $300 he puts away every month -- $250 into his 401(k) plan and $50 into a separate mutual fund account.

"I'm hoping I can work until I am 65 or 67," he said.

Dove's strategy isn't unusual. Driven by worries that they will outlive their retirement savings, Americans are working longer.

One-fourth of all workers plan to retire at age 66 or later, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonprofit group focused on retirement issues.

Not so coincidentally, one-fourth of baby boomers reported being "significantly behind" in their saving, according to a survey by insurance company MetLife.

Janet Fox, president and founder of ACH Investment in Raleigh, counsels that it's never too late for boomers to start saving.

"But you may have to work longer," she said. "And for the next 10 or 15 years, you need to put away all the money you can."

Dove is willing to work hard until he hangs up his barber shears.

His job at Dix pays about $25,000 a year, but in each of the past five years he has worked enough overtime to earn more than $40,000. In addition, he puts in an average of 12 hours a week at part-time jobs at two group homes for the mentally ill, where he monitors and supervises patients. He makes $10.71 an hour at one job, $7.50 an hour at the other.

Dove's plans for retirement are modest -- living comfortably with the freedom to occasionally visit friends in Maryland and Florida and a cousin in South Korea.

Born and reared in the Eastern North Carolina town of Trenton, he intends to move back to that area after he retires.

"That's home," he said. "And, of course, the cost of living is much cheaper there."

Moving would mean selling his three-bedroom home in the Southeast Raleigh neighborhood of Worthdale. Dove bought the house for $99,000 nine years ago, and last year took out a new, 30-year mortgage to lower his monthly payments.

Between his pension and savings, Dove figures he'll be fine in retirement. "I look at it and say to myself, quite honestly, I'll have enough money to live a decent life, a comfortable life for me."

Dove is focused enough on retirement that he's an avid consumer of newspaper and TV stories about how to prepare for it financially. But he's irked that those stories typically focus on people who earn considerably more than he does.

"They just never say anything about the little man, the man at the bottom of the totem pole," he said. "Because he's going to retire, too."