Young people, listen up. A couple of retirement surveys released in the last month provide information that you can capitalize on if you act quickly.

An important point of both surveys: You may not have complete control of your work destiny when you get older, so plan accordingly. For instance, a global retirement survey by AXA Equitable reveals that one-quarter of middle-income folks were forced to retire early. Another retirement study commissioned by Nationwide Financial indicates that 30 percent of workers retire earlier than expected "because they have to, due to illness, disability, layoffs or some other reason beyond their control."

So how can you capitalize on this rather negative news? You can take preventive measures by investing in a retirement plan now, even though retirement may seem like a goal that's light years away. The reason: You have time on your side, and time is your best ally when it comes to getting rich.

So at age 25, after graduating from college and landing a job, she opened a Roth IRA and began contributing $4,000 a year to it. She chose a moderately aggressive balanced fund within her IRA that invested mostly in stocks, with limited exposure to bonds. It produced annual returns of 9 percent on average.

Shirley did this even though she owed money on college loans. She continued to invest until she turned 35, at which time the account was valued at $60,772. Then she stopped and invested nothing more, but continued to earn 9 percent annually in the account. At age 35, her life intersected with Nate's.

Nate was quite ambitious and owned all the latest technological gadgets. But he had put off investing because, well, he was about driving cool cars and impressing women and he just didn't want to think about retirement. Retirement was for old people. He finally started investing $4,000 annually at age 35 because Shirley put him up to it. In fact, that marked their first fight, among many.

Nate invested this amount for 20 straight years in a mix of funds that also returned 9 percent annually on average. When he turned 55, his account was worth $204,640 -- less than Shirley's account value, which by then had grown to $340,591. Nate's total outlay of $80,000 was twice that of Shirley's. And oh, by the way, the two had split up eons ago, after only investing six months in the relationship.

Nevertheless, Nate continued to invest $4,000 a year for another 10 years until he turned 65, when his account value reached $545,230. But guess what? Shirley's account at age 65 was worth more than $806,303.

You can see for yourself how starting early puts oomph behind your retirement fund using Bankrate's compound interest calculator.

Workplace options

This tale serves to show how time can work to the advantage of young investors. But it's not a guide to follow precisely. In the first place, Shirley wouldn't stop investing at age 35. She's too smart for that.

A better strategy would be to invest a percentage of your income regularly in a tax-advantaged retirement account, if one is offered at your workplace, particularly if your employer offers a matching contribution. For example, if your employer offers a 50 percent match of up to 5 percent of your salary, you'd be passing up an instant 50 percent return if you didn't contribute at least 5 percent of your money to the plan.

At a minimum, take full advantage of the company match. But if you can manage it, contribute 10 percent or more of your income.

If your employer offers an automatic enrollment plan and you don't opt out, the plan will determine how much to take out of your paycheck and which investment to put it in. Of course, your employer will have to let you know all those details in advance. Take a look at them. If it's not enough, opt to have a higher percentage deducted from your paycheck. Whatever you do, don't opt out.

If your employer doesn't offer a plan at all, an IRA serves as a decent backup plan. Keep in mind, too, that your money isn't necessarily tied up for decades. You can withdraw up to $10,000 to use for a home purchase from a Roth IRA in certain cases without paying a penalty.

Advice to heed and ignore

A lot of folks, both young and old, are not sure how to juggle their finances. It's not hard to understand why. They're often hit with conflicting advice even from financial experts.

For instance, The Wall Street Journal published a story recently on the subject of financial priorities in which a vice president of financial planning at The Schwab Center for Investment Research said, "Don't even bother saving for retirement or saving for college if you haven't paid credit card debt." In the same article, a financial adviser for T. Rowe Price advises paying off debt while saving for retirement and an emergency fund.

I agree with the guy from Price. While it's true that paying off high-interest credit card debt is always a good idea, it's just not good advice to hold off on investing here in America, where the average household carries a $5,100 credit card balance, according to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances. If they wait until they've paid off their credit cards, the majority of Americans would forgo investing altogether because they'd be focused on this one area of their finances rather than on the bigger picture. Unless they can eradicate debt very quickly, they'd miss out on the magic of compound earnings.

The same goes for student loan debt which, by the way, is tax-deductible. If you happen to be stuck with a private student loan with a high interest rate, by all means, go on an accelerated payment plan and get that off your back. But try to allot something -- even a small amount of your pay -- to a retirement plan.

Focus on the present

We should apply our multitasking skills in our personal finances. So a good strategy would be to pay off debt from the past and invest for the future at the same time. Of course, you can't have everything and you'll likely have to give up something. How about rethinking some of the urgent needs that you have in the present?

For instance, rather than be swayed by the whims of fashion, why not go for a basic look that will endure? How many pairs of shoes do you need? And who says you have to pay $40 or $50 for a haircut? You can find a good hairdresser and get the job done for half the price. And why spend a lot of money making a landlord rich so you can have a spacious apartment? And what is the most important function of your car -- to convey status or convey you from one place to another?

You get the idea. Rethink your priorities, because chances are you can easily let go of some of these "necessities" and build yourself a fortune instead.

Longtime financial journalist Barbara Mlotek Whelehan earned a certificate of specialization in financial planning. If you have a comment or suggestion about this column, write to Boomer Bucks.

A few days ago, I sat at an outdoor café on Las Olas Street in beautiful Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and had a dismally tasteless lunch. Next to me was my lovely wife of many decades and a friend from the movie business who now lives in Florida. The friend is in trouble.

He had gone through a magnificent career in Hollywood as a high official at a very big studio, the head of two major production companies, and a reputation as big as a Cadillac. Then, very relentlessly, his career unraveled or imploded or maybe just plain went away.

Partly, the problem was that he was tired of Hollywood. But partly it was also that in Hollywood, age is everything, and by his mid-fifties, he was considered too old to be totally hip to what the young moviegoer wants to see.

A Basic Idea Too Commonly Ignored

So far, it's a typical picture of life in Hollywood. It happens to everyone. The difference with my friend -- and with many friends I have in Hollywood -- is that this man, whom I will call Kevin, has made a foolish mistake. In fact, he has made a few foolish mistakes, and these cost him dearly.

His first mistake had to do with probably as basic an idea in consumer finance as there is -- and likely the most frequently ignored and misunderstood. It was explained to me in stark, stunningly brilliant terms by my friend and colleague, Ray Lucia, a nationally operating Certified Financial Planner, host of a huge national radio talk show about money, frequent guest on Fox News, rock singer, and generally supersmart guy.

The key in financial life, Ray told me when we first met years ago, is to "match your liabilities with assets."

That is, for every liability that's going to come down the pike, Ray explained, you must have a matching asset to meet it. My pal Kevin, like about 40 million other Baby Boomers racing towards retirement, had not taken the time and trouble to plan for the largest possible liability -- retirement. He mostly just never thought about it.

But when he did think about it, he engaged in what psychiatrists call "magical thinking". He thought he would somehow one day just strike it so rich that money would fall from the sky. Thus, he didn't save, didn't make a retirement plan, and just hoped for the best.

Life Happens

Alas, money didn't fall from the sky. Instead, he left the Hollywood labor force about 10 years earlier than he'd thought he would. He had some modest savings and a small inheritance, so he didn't starve. And he has a house he will soon sell. But he didn't make provision even remotely adequate for maintaining his pre-retirement lifestyle. Now he's tortured by anxiety, had to drastically shrink his lifestyle, and is just plain sad.

The second giant mistake he made, embedded in the first, was in failing to foresee that in life, the bad scenario can and does often happen. It's not called "life" for nothing. Kevin should have realized that he would probably be the victim of age-ism, like so many of us. He planned for the most optimistic outcome, but that scenario rarely happens.

It's not good to be a pessimist. It drains hope and joy from life. But it's sensible to plan for the worst and make provision for it.

Too Important to DIY

The third mistake Kevin made -- and this is a huge one -- was to fail to educate himself or hire a finance specialist to take care of him. Men and women, but especially men, hate to ask for directions. This is a cliché about driving, and I don't know if it's true or not, but it most assuredly is in personal finance.

Personal finance and making a retirement plan is serious business. You can't just read "The Wall Street Journal" for a few months and expect to get it. You need to get the fundamentals down pat, spend a lifetime updating yourself on the subject, and learn the ins and outs of calculations for retirement in particular.

For example, hardly any pre-retiree takes the trouble to figure out that he or she will almost certainly need to plan to live a good 20 years after retirement. In that time, the price level will almost certainly rise dramatically, even at present low levels of inflation. How do you deal with that when most of us can barely afford to have enough to retire on for the first few years after the gold watch?

Or, to summarize this: We wouldn't think of trying to figure it out for ourselves if we had a sudden pain in our forearm or in our gut and if it lasted a week. These days, we would rarely try to fix our cars' fuel injection by ourselves. But we think we can make our own plans for retirement and make them work. This is about as smart as thinking we can face a Major League fastballer with our Little League swing.

But how many of us shop around for a certified financial planner (CFP) or other financial professional at a brokerage or a bank or anywhere? How many of us take the time to e-mail my pal and colleague Ray Lucia, or my other pal and colleague, the brilliant Phil DeMuth of Conservative Asset Management, or any of the other great financial planners to get something going?

Start Somewhere, Start Today

My point is a little more complex than it seems: Ray has a phenomenally clever strategy called "Buckets of Money". It basically calls for allocating your funds so you have time for your common stocks and real estate to grow while you live off cash equivalents and income. This way, you'll have plenty of dough when you get late in retirement.

It's not nuclear physics -- and I want to say again, Ray is a colleague, and we often appear together on the same stage with the same sponsor -- but his strategy takes advantage of long-term growth in stocks and real estate to make sure you're set not just in your sixties but in later life as well.

Phil has a new strategy involving deep-value indexing and a much more aggressive investment mixture than the 60-40 (60 percent stocks, 40 percent bonds) portfolio that's usually suggested. He now thinks that to capture enough gains for a long life, you should go 70-30 stocks-bonds and go for broad indexing worldwide for heavy emphasis on emerging market and micro-cap areas.

I emphasize there could be better ideas, and there are certainly other ideas. But start somewhere, start today, and get expert help.

In a free society, we create our own destiny, and we don't want our legacy to ourselves in our old age to be one of fear. You should never have to get up in the middle of the night in a sweat about paying your bills and feeding your family and the mortgage. But it's up to you and no one else to start, and again, the ideal time is now.