You may need to invest more than the numbers in this example, or may not end up with quite as much at retirement, but you will still be better off if you do not put off your investments any further. Of course the problem is that now is not when we want to start saving. Oh, sure now is the best time to save, but now is also the time when we have a million things we would rather do with the money rather than saving it. Or we may be short on funds, or just do not want to put up with the hassle sometimes required to invest. My advice is to save a little bit on a regular basis.
Many mutual funds have automatic investment programs.
These investment programs regularly, and automatically, take small amounts of money from your bank account to invest. The advantage of these programs is that once they are set up you do not need to think about it. The investment becomes automatic which takes you out of the picture, and thus you do not have the opportunity to give in to the temptation of putting off savings. Now before you invest immediately, there are a few more things you should know, but let's make the goal of starting this week. Once you get your investment plan underway, you can largely put in on auto-pilot.