Waiting Just 10 Years to Invest Costs You $1.1 Million
Key takeaways
- Starting retirement contributions at age 25 instead of 35 can turn a $225,000 lifetime contribution into $2M+ versus $931K by age 65, with the $1.1M gap driven entirely by compound growth over an extra decade.
- If you re focused on picking the right stocks and ETFs you may be missing the bigger picture: retirement income.
- They even have the same period that they were on the planet.
Waiting Just 10 Years to Invest Costs You $1.1 Million Gaudi Lab / Shutterstock.com Joel South Tue, May 26, 2026 at 6:02 PM GMT+7 5 min read SPY Quick Read SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) has returned roughly 259% over the past ten years, or low-teens annualized returns, supporting an 8% long-run assumption for retirement savings projections. Starting retirement contributions at age 25 instead of 35 can turn a $225,000 lifetime contribution into $2M+ versus $931K by age 65, with the $1.1M gap driven entirely by compound growth over an extra decade.
The cost of delaying retirement savings compounds dramatically: a 20-year-old needs just $95 monthly to retire a millionaire, while a 40-year-old needs $1,052 monthly for the same goal, as lost compounding years must be replaced with raw cash contributions.
If you re focused on picking the right stocks and ETFs you may be missing the bigger picture: retirement income. That is exactly what The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income was created to solve, and it s free today. Read more here