When should you start saving and investing for retirement? Well, right now would be good.

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein

Basically, the sooner you start, the longer the money that you do invest will have to grow, and the longer the money has to grow, the more compound interest kicks in, and the more money that you will eventually have.

Look at this way... let's say that you save $1000 and put it away for retirement right away. Let's say that (to make things simple), that $1000 earns 10% every single year... here is how much you would have after a certain amount of year:

Start - $1000
Year 5 - $1464
Year 10 - $2357
Year 20 - $6115
Year 30 - $15,863
Year 40 - $41,144

So you can see the great power of compound interest. In the first 20 years of that investment, you would earn about $5000, which is nice but its not going to fund retirement. However, during the next 20 years the money gains about $35,000. This is just for a one-time $1000 investment, but hopefully you're saving more than that for retirement, which makes the growth even more pronounced.

So, what's the best time to save for retirement? Right now!

Learn more about this author, Juan Leer.
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