The Story of Jack & Jill: Why You Should Invest Young

Building off of yesterday’s post “Why You Should Invest & the Power of Compound Interest” we have another great article about how time plays a key component into compound interest and generating great wealth through investing. We have broken it down into simple terms for everyone to understand in our Jack and Jill story below, enjoy!

The Story of Jack and Jill

Delaying making investments in order to launch your career can cost you dearly later on. Smaller investments made between the ages of 18-25 will yield much greater returns than larger investments made later on over a longer period from ages 26-65. Consider the classic parable taught in many basic economic courses:

Jack decided not to go to college. He got a job at 18 and invested $4,000 each year into an IRA. He stopped after eight years after investing a total of $32,000. His sister, Jill, went to medical school, started her medical practice at age 26, at which point she began contributing $4,000 to her IRA. Jill did this for 40 years from 26 to 65. She invested a total of $160,000 and put her money into the same investment as her brother. Jill started investing the same year Jack stopped, and she saved for 40 years compared to just eight years for her brother.

By age 65, whose IRA account do you thing was worth more money?

Assuming both Jack and Jill earned a 10% annual return, Jill accumulated $1,327,778. But Jack had $1,552,739 – $224,961 more than his sister!

Jack’s account grows to a higher value because he started sooner!

+$224,961

Jack stopped investing at age 26 having invested only $32,000 to Jill’s $160,000. But Jack’s money earned interest for eight years longer than his sister. It wasn’t the money that made him successful – it was the time value of money. Jack didn’t put off investing when he first launched his career. By investing sooner than Jill, his account grew larger.

The moral of this story is not to forego a college education and its promise of higher earning potential. No doubt, Jill earned more disposable income during her career. But Jack’s investment head start was far superior, resulting in substantially greater savings.

Without question, procrastination is the most common cause of financial failure.

If you haven’t started investing yet don’t panic or worry. It’s never too late and always better to start at some point than to never start.  Over the course of the next few days we will be highlighting more reasons on“Why You Should Invest in the Stock Market“ so tune into Stocks on Wall Street to follow along. If you are interested in getting started investing and would like some help and assistance in getting setup and finding a brokerage account that fits your needs, etc then feel free to Contact Us. Also checkout both the links below for more assistance:

How to Choose a Brokerage Account

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