Bogleheads

Taylor Larimore · Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 3:59 pm Post subject: The cost of waiting

Mr. Mason:

Assuming your read this, you need to know the facts:

If a young investor age 25 invests $4,000/year @ 10%, at age 65 he/she will have $1,947,407.

If a gambler waits until age 35 (and losses), he/she will have $733,774--less than half.

Investing for retirement should not be a gamble.

I hope you will apologize to your readers for making a serious mistake--and write a corrective column.

Best wishes

Taylor Larimore
Miami, Florida

thehumangame · Joined: 30 Jul 2007 Posts: 17 Location: Raleigh, NC

Come on, if you're going to take higher risks then at least take risks that come with a higher risk premium. -.-

7Enigma · Joined: 01 Mar 2007 Posts: 28

The big problem I have with this article is the emphasis on the dollar amount being contributed and the work that went behind that dollar amount. When I was in my early 20's I had about $2500 to invest, chose 2 very promising stocks (1 a dollar stock and the other a ~$15 one). One did poorly and I sold and invested in the other, the other I lost everything. Now to the writer of the article it was only $2500, no biggie. I'll just make that again and try something else.

The problem was that $2500 when I was in college and working at a computer store was about 4-5 months of savings. That money, though small, was worth much more than the dollar amount. I was crushed, CRUSHED when I lost it all.

And the horror of losing that kept me out of the market until about 2004-2005 which caused me to miss the market runup. Fortunately I finally saw the light and began investing the diehard way.

So while the absolute dollar amount might be low in your 20's, the actual WORTH behind that money is often much higher.