Invest Now, Don’t Wait Until Tomorrow
What’s the difference if I invest now or if I wait a year? The difference can be quite substantial. If you still have a long time until you retire, or if you are retiring in the near future, investing now will benefit more than if you waited 1, 2, 3, or more years to start.
Time is money; it’s the simple truth. We spend our time working and are paid for it. It takes time for a writer to write a book that they eventually collect royalties on. A teenager spends a few hours of her time watching kids and is paid for it. You have to give up some time to make money.
Investments are the same way. You can’t buy a stock and expect it to go up 50% in the next 10 minutes. It takes time for the return to accumulate. While you don’t have to directly work hours and be paid, you do have to put some thought into investments and wait.
If you start investing when you are young, like in your 20s, you will have the biggest advantage. You’ll have more money for retirement if you invest, and you’ll have even more if you invest it early.
Let’s say you are 25 years old. You plan on retiring at the age of 65 in 40 years. You decide to invest $500 every year for those 40 years and expect an average return of 9%. Over the 40 years, you will have invested a total of $20,000. In 40 years, you will have approximately $182,000.
If you started investing later in life, you would have quite a bit less, even if you invested more. Let’s say you invested $2,000 a year from 45 to 65, for a total of 20 years. You would have invested a total of $40,000. You would have about $110,000. That is much less. Would you rather retire comfortably or rush through your last working years trying to save enough?
Take these scenarios you’ve read and use them to help you decide when you should start investing. Hopefully you’ve realized there is no better time than the present. When you put together time and compounding, you can earn a lot of dough. Compounding is basically exponential growth with your money. The money you earned last year will continue to earn money this year and so on and so forth.
Invest whatever amount you think will work with your budget. There is no rule as to how much you should invest except that it should be as much as you can. What you put away towards retirement should be top priority in your financial budget. Start investing a certain amount now and add to it every year. Soon you may even realize that you might be able to retire early!
Tags: investing, Business, personal investing, investing young