There a million articles about why you should plan for retirement early, and they all have one problem: they assume everyone has the luxury of doing that. We tend to ignore the fact that some people start out the hard way, and are on a shoestring budget till they’re 40. Well here’s some help for them:

1. Conduct a realistic assessment of retirement goals

The emphasis on realistic. We hate to say this, but if you are starting your retirement fund at 40 or 50, you will have to give up on some things.

In particular, be realistic about provisions for people other than yourself. You may not be able to provide as much for your children, and providing for your grandchildren’s needs is probably out of the question. As an example, you may want to scale back on insurance that provides a high death benefit, because you’ll need that ...