SPLAT! THAT DARN ASTEROID: LIKE, WHY INVEST TO RETIRE IN 30 YEARS IF WE’LL ALL BE DEAD?

And you were worried about a stock market crash.

If the mile-wide asteroid headed this way — give or take 600,000 miles — does indeed smack Earth 30 years from now, it obviously would snuff out the next three decades’ worth of financial planning, too.

After all, why should today’s 35-year-old suffer and save for those golden years if life as we know it ends in a kind of astronomically imposed early retirement?

“I’d divide my net worth by 30 and start blowing it,” says Ben Baldwin, a certified financial planner and president of Northbrook, Ill.-based Baldwin Financial Systems Inc. “I’d have credit card debt in 30 years from now that you wouldn’t believe. I’d prove you could take it with you.”

Thirty-one-year-old Stephen Simon, who says he has no retirement investments, just a savings account, figures people would drop their 401(k) contributions and seize the day if the asteroid known as 1997 XF11 took a wrong turn towards Earth.

“I’d invest in incredibly hedonistic and luxury industries,” says the Washington, D.C., lawyer, citing sporting goods companies and ski resorts as potential investment winners if it looked like death would indeed rain from the skies in 2028.

Of course, odds are the spaceball will speed past the planet with anywhere from 30,000 to 600,000 miles to spare, scientists calculated last week. But if things began getting too close for comfort, New York-based Ernst & Young partner and financial planner Barbara Rassch would counsel clients to save for financial independence in 2028, but at the last minute — all of 2027, for instance — party like it’s 1999.

“Take out the largest loan possible and take a trip around the world,” Ms. Rassch suggests. “You wouldn’t have to worry about paying it back.”

Such a doomsday scenario would certainly skew today’s basic social and economic assumptions. Equities with high dividend yields could finally make a comeback. And certain industries could see their stock go sky-high.

“I’d go long on binoculars,” says Steven C. Witt, partner with San Jose, Calif.-based Interactive Investments, which recently launched a high-tech mutual fund.

Mr. Witt also would be bullish on companies that make skin protectants, “outdoor Barcaloungers” and, of course, booze.

Charles Scavone, senior portfolio manager of the aptly-named AIM Constellation Fund, with $14 billion in assets, has a strategy for every possible end-of-the-world outcome.

Sunglass makers, in case “it’s a giant, glaring fireball.” Surfboard builders, who’d benefit from the likely tsunamis. Purveyors of warm clothing, in case the asteroid crash leads to nuclear winter. Defense contractors, paid by the government to blow the sucker out of the sky. Funeral homes, if it actually hits.

Don’t forget to short real estate investment trusts, Mr. Scavone adds, since their holdings might be blown to smithereens. Then again, the asteroid could present a rare opportunity — say, the entire continent of Europe — for the surviving few.

“I’m assuming it’s not going to hit Minnesota — nothing ever comes here,” says Bloomington, Minn., homemaker and potential doomsday investor Susan C. Schena. “Actually, we could use the gravel from the asteroid to fill in all the potholes.”

“In 2028 I’ll be 104,” notes Martin Whitman, manager of the New York-based Third Avenue Value Fund. “It’s called someone else’s problem.”

(Even so, Mr. Whitman can’t help thinking about his $1.9 billion fund. “With my luck, it will hit Tejon Ranch,” a giant California property in which Third Avenue holds a big stake.)

And, inevitably, life goes on.

“I sit next to (the) cash management (department), and I haven’t been hearing chuckling over there,” says Jack White & Co. spokesman Barry Boyte in San Diego, Calif. “It’s supposed to hit New York anyway, isn’t it?”

Howard Kapiloff contributed to this report