You’ve seen this picture dozens of times. The frantic crewpushes the ship to its structural limits to prevent a killerasteroid from destroying a planet that’s home to billions oflives.

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The tension builds as the captain must decide whether to use allavailable power to push the asteroid away from the planet’s path –and risk sending a limp ship into gravitational spiral plummetingto the surface of the planet it wishes to save – or keep enoughpower in reserve to possibly save the ship and risk failing tobudge the asteroid enough to alter its trajectory.

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I’ve got news for you folks. This is all Hollywood malarkey.

You don’t have to be a trained astrophysicist to know thesituation would never need to happen. Computers can plot the pathsof asteroids years in advance.

Why is this important? Because the farther away the asteroid isfrom the threatened planet, the less “push” it needs to change itscourse.

It’s only when you wait until the final minutes – when theasteroid is barreling towards the planet’s outer atmosphere – thatyou need inordinate amounts of energy to divert its track.

Preparing for a comfortable retirement is likesaving a helpless planet from a killer asteroid.

The sooner you start addressing the problem, the easier it is toaddress. There would be no “retirement crisis” if we started savingfor retirement as children. (see “Guidelines for Minor Children: How to Avoid aPersonal Retirement Crisis,” FiduciaryNews.com,September 26, 2017). A quick look at the numbers bear this out.

The book From Cradle to Retirement speaks ofestablishing an IRA from the moment a baby is born until that babyreaches 19. By saving only $1,000 a year in a Child IRA throughoutthat time period, that baby will have $2.25 million dollars in thatIRA at the retirement age of 70.

If we tried to duplicate this same result (i.e., $2.25 milliondollars at age 70) and saved the maximum allowable amount each year(currently $5,500), the total savings requirement increasesexponentially the longer we wait to start.

For example, if we started a Child IRA at age 16, the totalsavings requirement to reach $2.25 million at age 70 would be$46,592.

If we waited until 18, it would be $58,434 and if we waiteduntil age 22 it would be $122,679.

If we waited until age 30, we’d have to contribute a total of$239,000 through age 70, and we still wouldn’t get to $2.25 millionuntil age 72.

As a practical matter, if you’re reading this and you’re under18, you need to do two things and do them quickly.

The first is to get a job that pays you money. The younger youare, the more help you’ll need from your parents on this. But if welearned anything from the White House lawn mower boy, even aten-year-old can be an entrepreneur. It doesn’t matter what age. Itdoesn’t matter how you do it (cutting grass, shoveling snow,babysitting, etc…) earning income has to be the priority. Withoutearned income, you can’t start a Child IRA.

Once you have that earned income, you drag your parent orguardian down to the nearest financial services office (e.g., abank, a broker, a mutual fund) and get them to set up a “Custodial”or “Minor Child” or “Guardian” IRA (the names may vary depending onwhich firm you use).

Be careful, though. While most big-name companies offer them,not all financial services firms offer these types of IRAs.

If you happen upon one that doesn’t, don’t give up, just move onto the next firm. Once that IRA is opened, just keep working andsaving. If you’re lucky enough, you’ll earn enough money to savethe maximum allowable amount. If you smart enough, you’ll actuallysave the maximum allowable amount.

Compounding is a truly amazing phenomenon. It makes up for lackof “power” (money, in this case) as long as we have time on ourside. In other words, if we get to the killer asteroid earlyenough, we don’t need to save that much money to retire in comforton the planet we just saved.