by GopherFawkes
The money you make earlier in life is more available than the money you will make later in life thanks to compounding interest.
Here is a fun made up example of what I mean.
You and I are 25. We decide we want to retire at 65. I contribute $500/month from age 25 thru age 35, but you want to wait so you dont. So I invest monthly for 10 years, with 7% return being assumed after inflation (dividends always reinvested, of course).
I stop putting in at 35 and I have $86k and let it accrue 7%/year.
You decide to stop waiting and contribute the same $500/month starting at 35. BUT you contribute all the way until 65. We will assume 7% growth as well to be fair.
Edit* Holyshit folks, don’t worry about the 500 number or age of 25, you are trying too hard, this is just an example, obvouisly everyone has different situations, the point of this post is to tell you to stop putting off retirement simply because it’s so far away and you can deal with it later You never catch me, even though you invested for 3x as long, because you started late. You finish with $588k, I finish with $655k, or 11.4% more than you.
Best time to invest is today!
Edit* Holyshit folks, don’t worry about the 500 number or age of 25, you are trying too hard, this is just an example, obviously everyone has different situations that will factor into how much they can invest, the point of this post is to tell people to stop putting off retirement simply because it’s so far away and you can deal with it later. Invest what you can and as soon as you can so you are not playing catch up later in life
Change the $500 to whatever figure you would like, the point still applies