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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Invest Now, Don't Wait Until Tomorrow

By Samantha Asher

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.

The longer the wait, the less money you have. Time is money and if you waste it, it's like you're wasting money. Just as you get paid for your time and efforts at work, with investing, you'll get paid a lot more with more time. The sooner you start, the more you'll make.

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 are young, such as in your 20s, you have a huge advantage. If you start investing, even putting the same amount aside overall, now and your friends start investing in their 40s, you'll have a lot more money.

Let's say you're 23 years old and just started a good job. You want to retire at age 65 which is in 42 years/ If you invest $500 every year for 42 years with an average return of 9%, you'll have invested about $26,000. Guess how much this $26,000 will be worth? You'll have about $218,000.

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.

This doesn't mean you have to invest this specific a year. You could invest more or less. The point is, you need to make plans and goals NOW. Don't wait until it's too late. You don't have to be cheap and live like a mortar in order to invest enough, just budget your money and start investing now. By the time you retire or need to buy a house, you will be so happy you did.

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