I read a lot of articles about retirement that make me cringe. Most of them are about people who are not on track for a financially secure retirement. But this week I read an article that really got my blood boiling. Oddly enough, it was about a group of people who have more than enough for retirement.

A recent study by the Center for Effective government and the Institute for Policy Studies found that the retirement accounts for Fortune 500 company CEOs had a combined worth of $4.9 billion — equal to the retirement account savings of 41% of all American households with the least retirement wealth.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m jealous. I’m disappointed that many of these CEOs have retirement plan options that they don’t offer their own employees. But even that’s not what upset me most.

My problem is that these kinds of articles can discourage the “rest of us” from taking steps to secure our own retirement security.

People read these articles and conclude the retirement game is rigged. It’s for CEOs and celebrities. For regular folks, a secure retirement seems like a lottery — where they aren’t allowed to buy a ticket.

But it’s not just articles like this about the “elite” that discourage people from taking the first step to improve their financial security.

In a recent issue of my premium newsletter, The Daily Paycheck, I linked to a study demonstrating that people were less likely to enroll in an employee retirement plan once they learned that their co-workers had been enrolled for years already. In a nutshell, people felt that they had already missed the boat — that it was too late.

Well, I’m here to tell you something: It’s never too late.

There’s an ancient Chinese proverb that says: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Anne Scheiber didn’t start investing until after she retired. She had an annual pension of $3,100. She had also squirreled away roughly $5,000 in savings. When she died, Anne’s investment portfolio was worth $22 million and was generating roughly $750,000 a year in dividends and interest alone.

Granted, Anne lived to a ripe old age of 101. But it really doesn’t take long to build an income portfolio — especially if you have a few years to reinvest your dividends as Anne did.

It’s stories like this that inspired me to launch my premium newsletter, The Daily Paycheck. In my newsletter, my subscribers and I own a basket of some of the best dividend payers on earth. We then take the income we earn from these securities and reinvest it right back into the portfolio.

Thanks to the magic of compounding (not to mention that many of my picks are some of the fastest dividend growers you’ll find on the market), it’s led to impressive results.

For instance, 2010 was The Daily Paycheck’s first full year in operation. That year, my portfolio generated $9,714.11 in dividends. By reinvesting those dividends to buy more shares, I was able to generate even more income. By 2014, my portfolio generated $18,251.21.

It’s proof-positive that just a few years can make a big difference.

Here’s my advice. When it comes to retirement planning, don’t worry about what celebrities, CEOs, your co-workers or friends have. This is all about you, and taking the first few steps to improve your financial security. Don’t worry about whether you should have started 10 or 20 years ago. Go ahead and plant your tree today.

In the past year, I’ve averaged $1,558 dollars a month in dividend income. That means I’m already collecting more monthly income than the average government retirement check.

And I’m not the only one. The thousands of folks I’ve shared my strategy with are enjoying similar results.

These people aren’t members of the richest 1%. They’re regular folks. And I’m willing to bet many of them probably got a bit of a late start on building their retirement nest egg. But that’s OK. They’ve figured out that anyone can use The Daily Paycheck strategy to earn a growing income stream to help pay their monthly bills, fund retirement, or simply increase their wealth.

Again, that’s why I created my newsletter. I wanted to show individual investors that it’s possible to create an income-generating portfolio that can sustain you during retirement no matter what stage of your life you’re in or how much you’re starting with. If you’re interested in learning more about my strategy and how you can get started on building an income stream that can pay you thousands of dollars a month, I invite you to follow this link.