Retire right: in a surprising new survey, 6,700 retired readers share their dos and don'ts.(SPECIAL FINANCE SECTION)

What's the secret to a successful retirement? Our retired readers turned out to be a good group to ask. In a recent survey, a stunning 93 percent of them told us they were satisfied overall with their retirement, with 32 percent saying they were completely satisfied. Forty-one percent said retirement had actually been better than they expected. Only 5 percent said it had been worse.

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If there was one widely shared regret, it was that they didn't have even more money to enjoy themselves. About 35 percent told us that, looking back, they wished they'd started saving earlier, and 30 percent said they would have put away more each year. Eight percent said they should have retired earlier, but the same percentage wished they had done it later. More than a third, when asked about their regrets and given a list to choose from, checked the box for "None of the above."

The Consumer Reports National Research Center surveyed 17,877 subscribers to ConsumerReports.org, ages 55 to 75. Some told us they were fully retired, some semi-retired, and others still working full-time in their main career.

Most of the retirees could probably have stayed in the workforce longer and piled up more savings had they chosen to do so.A third retired …