Investing is also a type of skill, you have to gain sufficient knowledge and experience before you start seeing results. Just like any other type of skills such as playing basketball, singing, or even dancing, it takes time to learn and you don’t get good at it overnight. This is why I feel that it is important to start investing when you are young as this is the time where you are more willing to take risks and even if you fail at investing, you are still young and you can start things all over again.
Why should you not invest when you are older?
By the time where you feel that you have not enough money for retirement, it is probably too late to learn how to invest. Yes, you can invest but the risks that you are going to take are probably not going to be high and that means that your returns will be lower as well. When you are older, you would not want to put your retirement funds at risk because, by the time, you probably are already sick of working life.
Why start investing early?
I am sure that is common sense that the more experienced you are at doing certain things, the better results you will achieve in doing that. This means that investing early gives you the advantage to have more time to learn how to invest.
Think of it as growing a plant. You will need time to learn how to place the soil correctly in the container before you start planting your seeds. Afterward, you will learn how to water properly such that your plants won’t die. As you get better at doing all these, you will surely see better results in your plantation.
In this context, think of starting early as gaining an advantage in learning how to invest. The younger you are, the more likely that you will be able to take risks as all investments carries a certain level of risk. Think of the seeds as your investments, if you get better at “watering” which is your investing strategy, you will be able to see better results and have a beautiful plant by the time you retire.
Securing Your Retirement
I have seen many examples of adults ended up having to work even when they are in their 70s or even 80s. During my experience working as a banquet server, I have talked to a lot of adults and most of them are always talking about how they do not have enough money for retirement, some of them are barely able to support their living expenses through the part-time job!
Investing would require you to plan out your money and this is a good habit as you are learning how to be more disciplined in your spendings. By allocating money for investment, you are teaching yourself to be more mature in your spendings. This will allow you will be wiser with your spendings since you are limited after setting your investment amount aside.
By doing this every month, as time goes you already accumulated a huge amount of money in investments. Not to mention that your investments would be compounded over time, this means that your money will grow according to the amount of time you invest. This can add up to a lot of money!
In the end, you have your own decisions to make. My take is that investing should be started young so that you would be able to cultivate good spending habits and grow your money. Not all people are willing to take risks and you may see your friends spending their money on branded goods or cars. What do you think?
