NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - I'm 47 years old and have not yet started saving for retirement. What should I do? Or is it too late to start?

-- Faye, Northport, Alabama

It is never, repeat, never too late to start saving for retirement. Yes, we'd all be a lot better off if we began saving for retirement early in our careers. The simple mathematics of compounding makes that startlingly clear.

For example, if you began to invest, say, $100 a month at age 30 in a mutual fund portfolio that earned 8 percent per year, you would have just under $216,000 by age 65. Procrastinate to age 40 to start that regimen, and your nest egg would total less than $92,000. Getting an early start clearly pays.

The reality, however, is that many of us don't get an early start -- or even if we do, we don't save nearly enough.

Related articles and links • The dream of retirement • Socking it away made simple • More on retirement

According to the 2004 Retirement Confidence Survey, 43 percent of workers overall have not saved at all for retirement, while 35 percent of 45- to 54-year-olds have failed to put away a cent for their golden years.

And many of those who have saved haven't managed to accumulate staggering sums. More than half of all workers overall and 39 percent of 45- to 54-year-olds report having less than $50,000 in total savings and investments, excluding the value of their homes. (For more details on who's saving and how much they've accumulated, check out the 2004 RCS survey results at the Employee Benefit Research Institute Web site or the American Savings Education Council Web site.

But the mere fact that you haven't saved to this point -- or haven't accumulated very much -- is no reason not to get started now. Quite the opposite.

If you want to have a comfortable retirement, you'd better begin making up for lost time. Even if you're starting from scratch in your 40s -- for that matter even later -- it's still possible to accumulate a sizeable nest egg.

Indeed, in my new book, "We're Not In Kansas Anymore: Strategies For Retiring Rich In a Totally Changed World", I devote an entire chapter to strategies that can help people make up for a late start and increase the size of their nest egg quickly or, failing that, find other means and resources to increase their retirement income.

Those strategies range from revving up your savings to taking full advantage of every possible tax-advantaged savings to innovative ways of tapping the equity in one's home to more radical solutions such as stretching one's retirement income by relocating to a less expensive region of the country.

That's not to say that everyone who got a late start or for whatever reason failed to build an adequate nest egg can put themselves in the same position as if they'd begun saving and investing earlier in their career. But you can always improve your situation.

Even if you manage to accumulate only a few thousand dollars prior to retiring, you're better off than you would be heading into retirement without that small cushion. And even after you're retired there are things you can do to make your retirement more financially comfortable.

The key is making a commitment to do so, and then being willing to follow through with some creative thinking and innovative strategies.

YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS Retirement Investing Ask the Expert Mutual Funds or Create your own Manage alerts | What is this?

My recommendation: start by creating a retirement plan that shows you how to get from where you are now to where you need to be by the time you call it a career. I describe in detail how to do that in my book, but you can also start by going to our Retirement Planner.

After that, it mostly comes down to saving as much as possible. Sock away all you can in tax-advantaged plans like 401(k)s and IRAs and then invest whatever else you can in regular investment accounts. Believe me, making a concerted effort now can make a huge difference in your retirement lifestyle.

So stop procrastinating, and start saving and investing.

Walter Updegrave is a senior editor at MONEY Magazine and is the author of "We're Not in Kansas Anymore: Strategies for Retiring Rich in a Totally Changed World." He also answers viewers' questions on CNNfn's Money & Markets at 4:40 PM on Mondays.