Think you’ve got plenty of time to save for retirement, boost your bank balance or achieve the level of wealth you’ve always aspired to? Think again.

While it might be said that life begins at 40, this is far from the case on the financial front: wage growth stalls 30 years before the average retirement age, according to personal finance website Fool.co.uk.

A poll of 3,321 of its panel members found that average earnings accelerate in the 20s and 30s. A typical 16- to 20-year-old sees their wages increase from 15,000 pounds to 17,500 pounds by the time they reach their mid-20s, then to 25,000 pounds between the ages of 26 and 30. The rate of increase accelerates through the early 30s — to 35,000 pounds between the ages of 31 to 35.

But, average earnings then flatted out — and remain at 35,000 pounds until aged 55. If that doesn’t make painful enough reading, it gets worse: income typically falls to 25,000 pounds from the ages of 56 to 70, then drops to 20,000 for those aged 71-plus.

Women’s earnings reach their potential earlier, but with a whimper rather than a bang. Earnings plateau in the mid-30s, compared to the mid-40s for men, and never reach the peak of 45,000 pounds hit by their male counterparts.

This withering in wages coincides with a stage in life that is typically more dynamic — making income stagnation a double blow. It is around this stage that eight out of 10 people own their own homes, of which a third are family dwellings. Six out of 10 support dependents — including both parents and children.

What makes the findings even more worrying is that people in their 20s and 30s have racked up a sixth of Britain’s total consumer debt in recent times, according to Bank of England figures. It is this uncontrollable spending — and “can’t save, won’t save” mentality — and could spell serious trouble.

Just think – at 40, contributions of more than 2,000 pounds per year are necessary to support an average lifestyle at retirement. Wait until the big 5-0 and that figure soars to almost 6,300 pounds.

But just look at what happens the earlier you start: those who start a pension at aged 30 need only stash away 738 pounds per year to achieve a 200,000 pound pension pot (based on a 10 percent investment return). Nine years earlier — when 21 — that figure falls to 306 pounds. Start pension saving at sweet 16, and annual contributions of 189 pounds could spell a 200,000 pound retirement pot; at aged 13 the figure stands at 141 pounds; and at birth just 30 pounds per year would need to be saved.

That’s a cautionary tale, if ever there was one, for today’s 20- and 30-somethings.

These days, “keeping up appearances” has less to do with the pompous Hyacinth Bucket (or should that be “Bouquet”?) of the British sitcom of the same name, more to do with “bling” and extravagant spending by the younger generation.

A survey of 1,619 consumers, commissioned by mobile banking service Monilink, found that 71 percent of 16 to 34-year-olds admitted secretly competing with their friends in the purchase of “luxury” products — cosmetics, gadgets, clothes and the like. Image concerns are the key driver of this “bling-itis”. Over half (56 percent) of those questioned say they believe people are judged on appearances and possessions in modern British society, rather than personality.

That has fuelled a level of spending that is problematic at best, severely damaging at worst. More than 60 percent are still paying off credit card debts from “bling-itis”-driven luxury purchases from 2006 and 2007; over a fifth say they have so much debt from non-essential spending that repayments are a “significant” strain; and around the same proportion admit they find it hard to keep track of spending and make ends meet.

Perhaps even more worryingly, young Britons associate spending with personal happiness, and value short-term luxury over longer-term financial security. Some 55 percent of 16 to 34-year-olds purchase goods simply to make themselves happy and “feel down” if they don’t get the opportunity to buy goods regularly. Meanwhile, 72 percent state that a good lifestyle in the short-term is “considerably” more important than making savings in case of an emergency (27 percent). Top areas of spending to achieve this “good lifestyle” are holidays (27 percent), drinking and going out (21 percent), clothes (19 percent), gadgets (12 percent), home improvement (10 percent), cars (8 percent) and jewellery (3 percent).

If only they’d listen to the Janet Jackson and Luther Vandross hit of 1992: the best things in life are free.

Here is a round-up of Tuesday’s headlines:

DAILY MAIL: Father of Four Taken to Court and Fined…Because he Overfilled his Wheelie-Bin by Just Four Inches

Bus driver Gareth Corkhill collected a conviction and a 210 pound fine after he declined to pay a council on-the-spot fine for leaving the lid of his wheelie bin ajar four inches. Story here.

THE TIMES: Judges Set to Deliver Fresh Blow on Terror

Gordon Brown was facing a new battle over key anti-terrorism laws this week with the High Court set to rule against powers to freeze suspects’ bank accounts, the paper said. Story here.

The Sun: Harry Meets His Hero

Prince Harry, who served in Afghanistan, is pictured smiling and relaxing with wounded soldiers recovering in the Forces rehab centre in Surrey. Story here.

The Independent: Can the Bank’s 50bn Pounds Save the Economy?

The newspaper’s Hamish McRae explains in a typical Independent comment-style front page that the Treasury and Bank of England’s line of credit may not be enough to keep the supply of mortgages flowing. Story here.

Daily Express: Miracle Surgery Lets the Blind See

The paper looks at how British doctors carried out pioneering surgery to restore the eyesight of two blind patients. Story here.

The Guardian: You’re Dragging Us to the Edge, Labour Rebels Warned

Gordon Brown moved to stop a potentially damaging backbench budget rebellion with a contrite address to Labour MPs and a promise to hold a review before the autumn on the impact of the abolition of the 10p tax rate. Story here.

The Financial Times: King Rules Out Return to Risky Mortgages

The paper quoted Bank of England governor Mervyn King insisting that the housing market will not see a return to the profligate mortgage lending practices of the past few years while he announced a massive operation to support liquidity in British banks. Story here.

Daily Mirror: Show Some Heart

Chancellor Alistair Darling was going to tell bank chiefs to go easy on families who fall behind with their mortgages, the paper said. Story here.

A little white lie never hurt anyone, right? Wrong: it could have serious financial implications for your future. A growing number of people are getting into financial difficulty at a younger age and are then telling lies on applications forms to obtain credit, insurance and other products, according to CIFAS, the UK’s fraud prevention service.

The number of application fraud cases filed on the CIFAS database increased from 62,000 in 2004 to 77,000 in 2007, an increase of more than 24 percent. In each of these cases, people told “material falsehoods” on application forms or supplied false or altered documents to support them. The lies most frequently told included trying to conceal a poor credit history or exaggerating the length of time resident at a particular address in the belief that stability increases creditworthiness.

Verification checks often unearth such “little white lies”. But there are also more serious ramifications. At the very least, having your application refused could, in itself, work against your credit score. “Lenders look at the number of searches conducted by consumers as part of the credit assessment process and a number of searches in a short space of time would impact on a consumer’s score,” says Neil Munroe, external affairs director at credit reference agency Equifax. “But more significantly, if a lender felt the information provided could be deemed as fraud and decided to prosecute, this would show on an individual’s credit file and could seriously affect their ability to get credit in the future.”

People who have missed payments on previous credit agreements are advised to explain these to any new potential lender. A “notice of correction” service run by credit reference agencies give the facility to provide an explanation of circumstances that might adversely affect your ability to obtain credit on your credit file. There are other ways, too, to try and improve your rating:

* Make sure you are registered on the Electoral Roll — this is an essential way for lenders to verify an applicant’s identity and prevent ID fraud;

* Be aware of searches on your credit file when shopping around and how it can affect your credit rating;

* Close old credit card accounts — even if they show a zero balance lenders will look at the potential credit available when assessing applications;

* Aim to pay off more than the minimum each month otherwise it could take years to pay off debts and you will incur huge amounts of interest;

* Set up Direct Debit payments for loan repayments to avoid costly late payment charges.

And above all exercise honesty. In this case, it really is the best policy.

The Friday night take-away, Saturday shopping spree and summer get-away are in line for the chop, as consumers become increasingly nervous over looming recession. Almost nine out of 10 Britons say they will cut spending on non-essential items to cushion themselves against impending economic downturn, according to a poll of 1,000 people for Web site Fool.co.uk.

A British institution — the good old take-away — is set to receive the biggest blow, with over two-thirds of the nation planning to cut back on curries, fish suppers and late-night kebabs, the survey says. Other planned cutbacks include retail therapy (67 percent) and fewer holidays (49 percent), while 12 percent plan to stop smoking, 4 percent to put pension contributions on hold and 3 percent say they will even cut their kids’ pocket-money.

This is just the latest in a string of evidence pointing to dwindling consumer confidence and increased uneasiness over the state of the global economy. It is, of course, important not to talk ourselves into recession: unnecessary doom and gloom will only serve to exacerbate the situation, something that those with a vested interest in the property market remaining buoyant have long maintained.

But Britons are surely feeling the pinch. The latest figures from Philip Hammond, shadow Treasury chief secretary, reveal that the disposable income of the average working family has dropped to 25,900 pounds today from 26,200 pounds in 2006, and personal debt in the UK is growing at an unprecedented rate — one million pounds every five minutes.

With the cost of living rising while disposable income falls, consumers must feel like they are being squeezed from all sides: failure to make hay while the sun was shining could soon come back to haunt them. It is reassuring, then, that reality is finally hitting home. During a recession, cash is king. And those with the leanest budgets will be best placed to survive.

Money matters are climbing the list of the talks parents feel they must have with their children: the subjects of debt and saving for the future are now deemed to be more important than educating our offspring on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), racism or religion, research by Engage Mutual Assurance shows.

Debt is the most common financial topic of parental education (64 percent) followed by saving for the future (62 percent). That ranks them fifth and sixth in the top 10 topics for parental “chats”, ahead of racism (58 percent), illness and death (53 percent) and STDs (52 percent). The only “facts of life” considered more important than these money matters in children’s at-home education are drugs and alcohol (78 percent), personal hygiene (74 percent), talking to strangers (73 percent) and the “birds and the bees” (71 percent).

The findings, from a poll of 2,000 people, are encouraging as financial education — for adults as well as children — climbs the political agenda. But they are a worrying reflection of the current environment. Britons’ debt mountain has tripled in the past decade and families are under increasing strain to make ends meet. A string of hikes in the cost of living — petrol, heating, food and transport — has compounded the problem.

Three-quarters of the population voice worry about the impact of the credit crunch on their purse-strings, according to research from BrightHouse Stores. Almost 60 percent are reining in spending on non-essentials, 43 percent are worried they won’t be able to put anything away into savings, others are spending less money on food and socialising, and 9 percent have even cancelled a holiday.

 Against that backdrop — and as recession looms – any advice on managing money should stand the generation of future adults in good stead. Perhaps, then, they will eschew that appetite for cheap credit exhibited by their parents before them.

The dust has settled on Alistair Darling’s first Budget and consumers have been given little reason for celebration. The Chancellor, though announcing various measures designed to increase housing affordability, has done nothing to help the masses.

There were no moves to give a helping hand to hard-pressed householders, already struggling amid rocketing mortgage, food, fuel and tax costs, to ride out an impending recession. Darling did pledge to introduce a savings scheme targeted at low and moderate earners, often least able to save: the “saving gateway” will attract government matching for savings over the duration of people’s participation in the scheme. This has the potential to introduce up to eight million people into mainstream savings in the UK who otherwise might not make thrift a priority.

But the level of take-up of such a scheme, amid record personal debt levels and huge pressure on people’s purse-strings, is debatable. Other such government schemes to encourage the nation to save have hardly been a runaway success: think stakeholder pensions and child-trust funds (CTF). One fifth of parents currently let their CTF expire — the government can’t even give money away.

Individual savings accounts (ISAs), on the other hand, have flourished. They are one of the government’s true success stories. More than one in three adults hold an ISA and almost 215 billion pounds has been invested — making them far more popular than other savings initiatives.

Yet, the limits that savers can squirrel away into these tax-efficient vehicles have sorely failed to keep pace with inflation. The allowance will increase to 7,200 pounds from 7,000 pounds (3,600 pounds of which can be held in cash, up from 3,000 pounds) in the coming tax year — but that means the total threshold has risen by less than 3 percent since the accounts were introduced almost a decade ago. “Failing to increase ISA allowances further is a poke in the eye of savers who need encouragement to put away money,” says David Kuo, head of personal finance at Fool.co.uk.

Other changes to the ISA regime mean people will be able to switch cash holdings into stocks and shares — but the reverse will not be possible. And, once the switch has been made, there’s no turning back. The new rules raise the spectre of “another ghastly financial scandal”, according to Cliff Husband, research director at AWD Chase de Vere. “People could switch their ISA cash savings into investments unaware that they can’t switch back. This looks like another poorly delivered initiative from the government; it would be far fairer to all taxpayers if the switch between cash and investment within an ISA could be easily reversed.”

On pensions, too, there is little to encourage saving. While scrapping the 10 pence income tax rate and reducing the basic rate by 2 pence has done next to nothing to increase people’s take home pay, it has reduced the amount of tax relief they’ll get on their pension savings. The Chancellor has maintain higher level tax relief on gifts to charities, so why not for pensions?

“Frankly, while politicians have gold-plated final salary pensions, they can tinker with regulations which will have no real benefit for real workers,” says AWD’s marketing director Martyn Laverick. “If MPs did not have such generous pensions and they faced the same issues the majority of people in this country face about their pensions we would see more decisive action.”

So, it seems, consumers must face the headwinds and try to ride out the storm alone. From today, they should be tightening their belts.