Although the saying goes, “Pursue your passion and the money will follow,” plenty of people know that you can love what you do and still have a lot of month left over at the end of the paycheck.

So how do you save and plan for retirement while also doing low-paying work that you love? Bankrate.com asked people who’ve been successful to share their secrets.

Psychologist Katie McCorkle says, “While my profession is not necessarily low-paying, it has been a constant balancing act to generate enough income to keep my bills paid – and still have enough time and energy to do all that’s been required to launch Balanced Heart Healing Center, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit integrative healing center I founded. It would have been so much easier if I could have trained my four cats to help generate income!”

While McCorkle plans to work through retirement — she says, “Pursuing my passion is my retirement” — she also knows she needs money in the bank. She accomplishes this by transferring a predetermined amount of retirement money to savings before doing anything else with her paycheck. “You begin to train your brain to think of your income as the amount you have left after taking out your retirement savings, and you adjust your lifestyle to that amount. Commitment and consistency is the key to making this work.”