George Bernard Shaw had it right when he said "
Youth was wasted on the young".
When you are in your 20s, your typical worries include graduating from college, getting job and chatting on web. thinking about how you are going to support your family how you retire doesn't usually top your list of concern.
Thanks to the magic of compounding, money saved early on has more time to grow.
Let's try and understand with example of two friends Ram and Shayam. Both start working at same time at the age of 23.
Ram start saving when he turn 25 and he invests Rs 50,000 every year. Assuming that he earns a return of 10% every years, at the end of ten years, Ram has been accumulate Rs 8.77 lacs.
After that, due to some person finiancial problems Ram is not able to invest Rs 50,000 every year but at the same time he does not touch the money that he has already accumulated, hoping to live on it when he retires.
He lets the Rs 8.77 lacs grow and assuming that it continues to earn a return of 10% every year, he would have been able to accumulate around Rs 95 lacs by the time he turn 60.
So the Rs 5 lacs ( Rs 50,000 x 10 years ) he had invested in the first 10 years has grown to 95 lakhs. even though Ram has stopped investing Rs 50,000 every year after first 10 years.
Now let's take the case of Shayam.During the first few years of his life Shayam enjoyed life spending money on all kind of things rather that invest regularly. At the age of 35 reality suddenly drawn on him and he start investing regularly Rs 50,000 every year. He invests this amount every year till he turn 60 that means for complete 25 years. Assumong he also earns a return of 10% per year on his investments.
At the end Shayam managed to accumulate Rs 54.1 lacs.
Even after investing Rs 50,000 regularly for 25 years Shayam has managed to accumulate Rs 54.1 lacs which is around Rs 41 lacs less in comparision to Ram.
The way compounding works is that your money compound slowly at first but it picks up speed the longer it's invested. So strongest advice is to begin investing early and set up a regular plan to invest a set amount per month.
You can start investing as low as Rs 100 to Rs 500.Later we discuss on such type of investments.