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.

When it comes to investing, the sooner you start, the more money you’ll have. If you had $10,000 to invest over a period of 10 years, if you could, you should invest it all in the first year. You would have to most money after 10 years than if you spread it out. It’s just simple rules of compounding.

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?

That is the power of time plus compounding. Compounding means you continue to earn money on the money you already earned on top of the principle. The more time you have, the more time your money has to earn. Now, if you had to choose between a retirement investment account or a Starbucks coffee everyday, which would you choose?

There is no set amount of money that you must start investing now. You could start out very small and then as you begin to earn more, start contributing more. Start by taking 2% of your income and investing it for retirement, then add a percentage point more each year to your contribution. When you hit 20%, you might find you are in a good place to retire early.