So, why think about investing?  The bottom line is that investing can generally produce returns that exceed what you would receive if you kept your money in your checking account all your life.  Essentially, you can grow your money tree quicker.  That doesn’t mean that keeping your money in a checking account is a bad thing, but just know there are products and strategies out there that can potentially give you a better or worse returns.

More importantly, you are young.  This gives you a huge advantage in the investment game because you have more time to go through the ups and downs of investing and grow that money tree you have so diligently planted.  By planning ahead and figuring out the investment game now, you may be able to have more money down the road for big purchases and your retirement.  Don’t believe me about the long-term aspects of investing?  Check out this graph below.

We can’t stress how important saving for retirement is and saving early! Let’s look at a basic example of two investors who both make $45,000 a year and contribute 6% of their salary and continue to do this till they are 65 with the same salary.  Investor #1 starts saving at age 22 while Investor #2 starts saving 10 years later at age 32.

That 10-year jump start on Investor #2 saved Investor #1 $272,657 (keeping in mind Investor#1 only contributed an additional $27,000) more for his/her retirement!

Generally speaking, the earlier you start investing the more opportunities you have to grow your money.  As we know investing has its ups and downs for everyone (sometimes you make money and sometimes you lose money), but history has shown that over time your investments generally grow in the positive direction.  That’s why the longer you have to invest the more likely you will end up on the plus side of things.  But it’s not simply just about investing over a long period of time (aka “ok lets buy this stock and I’ll see you in 2050”).  There are other factors to consider, and that’s what we hope to explain in this section.