"Retire to what? I'm a golfer and a fisherman. There's nothing to retire to." -Julius Boros

Last night I was going through my mail and I received a nice little post card from a credit card company suggesting I take my economic stimulus check and give it to them to pay down a credit card so they could issue me a better credit card. No thanks. I turn 40 this year and I have my own little wake up call going on. It is called retirement.

Online retirement calculators are great tools to look at your finances and give you an idea of where you stand. I have assembled a list of online calculators here that do not require a sign up or start with annoying commercials (Bloomberg).

• The Motley Fool - The best of the group. It has calculators for many financial topics.
• CNNMoney.com - is relatively straightforward.
• MSN Money at MSN.com
• USA Today - A great set of financial calculators.
• Yahoo Finance - One of my favorite financial sites, the calculators work well. I have encountered some serious lag as ads were loaded.
• About.com has a retirement planning site with articles and calculators.

No matter your age, it is important to have a real sense of what you would need to start doing right now to have a decent, supporting income when you want to retire. I guarantee if you do that before the economic stimulus check arrives, you will think twice before purchasing the HDTV and seriously consider starting a low cost Roth IRA.