If you delay till setting aside funds for one's leisure years is more convenient, as I did, it takes much more money and/or a higher return to accomplish the same level of financial independence. In fact, that way it is difficult to catch up with what can be accomplished by the young person who has had a steady, consistent approach to investing.

Currently employees can set aside $3000 a year in tax-deferred IRAs ($3500 if the job-holder is already approaching retirment). The age most U.S. workers may now retire with full Social Security benefits is 67.

The annualized S&P 500 Index total return over the last 30 or more years has been about 10%.

By contrast, our Early Sprinter, who sets aside $3000 a year through a tax-deferred account for just 10 years, starting at age 18, and gets just a 10% average compound annual return on his $30,000 total investments, will wind up at age 67 with $2,163,946.

Thus, a married couple, each partner of whom begin such an early investment plan, can wind up with a household retirement nest egg of over $4,000,000. If they have also gotten retirement annuities or pensions through their work and Social Security benefits, they might enjoy their leisure years with the equivalent of over $5,000,000, through relatively little special effort.

Yet if the reader, like me and so many of us, has not had the good fortune or forethought to get started with an investment approach rather promptly, soon after leaving home, there is reason not to be disheartened. While we are quite young, it is usually all we can manage just to go to school or pay monthly bills while living in some fairly modest accommodation, perhaps shared with one or more roommates. Later, there are frequently student loans to be paid off. Early jobs seldom compensate us so well that there are thousands of dollars a year left for investing.

Thus, if another Late Starter (II) begins investing $9000 a year at age 42 and is careful with his or her stock or mutual fund selections, continuing the same rate of regular investments and getting a compound average return of 15%, he or she could have a million dollars by age 62 and wind up with $2.2 million at age 67, despite having to play catch-up to the relatively easy results for our Early Sprinter.

So, it often is not too late for the older individual to begin a powerful investment plan. And please note: if a 15% annual return sounds like setting your Olympic bar a bit too high, there is still hope. You may, instead, invest such that the combination of your actual return plus new investments is equal each year to the increase that would have resulted from a $9000 annual contribution at 15%, and then will achieve essentially the same result. (This approach, though, often is not practical much above $500,000, as the annual increases to meet a 15% growth rate can quickly get beyond the average earner's capacity to add in new funds, especially in a bear market.)

But you need not follow our national trends. Whether out of patriotism or concern for your own personal goals, why not start investing as early as possible and so best reap the magical rewards of compound total returns? With an early enough start, you may then essentially coast your way to financial independence.

A young person interested in beginning his or her own investment plan might consider using a mutual fund.

Here are several no-load equity mutual funds generally rated by CBS MarketWatch to be low risk and which also have long-term compound returns of 13% or better.

Of course, past returns are no guarantee of future performance, either for the market as a whole or these funds specifically. But it is clear that starting early puts one ahead in this venture. Size (of one's initial investment) definitely matters, but (relative) youth (when you begin an investment plan) matters even more.

(Disclosure statement: Larry and Val have holdings in some of the suggested assets but do not "make a market" in any of them and do not derive any direct benefit from recommending them, except perhaps for a bit of smug self-satisfaction.)