The Cost of Delayed Investment

Updated on 16 Oct, 2023

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People tend to delay their investment each day to the following day with a mindset that it hardly makes any difference if the investment is delayed by 24 hours. But delayed investment could turn out to expensive. Find out how.

Indicative returns of 10-12% annually

Investment horizon of 5+ Years

No lock-in

Long term goals such as retirement or building your wealth

Parag Parikh Flexi Cap fund (G)

HDFC Large and Mid Cap Fund (G)

ICICI Prudential Value Discovery Fund (G)

ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund (G)

Consider a situation where money lying in savings bank account could fetch 10% excess returns over 4% that a person might be earning currently. But what if you realize a couple of years down the line, that you don’t have enough funds to meet your goals (say buying a car/house, wedding, vacation) because you did not give enough time for your investments to grow!

So the answer here is pretty simple – “Start early, gain more”.

Sant Kabir said: काल करे सो आज कर, आज करै सो अब |

Not following the rule of the time can impact financial health of an individual. Let’s see how –

Example: Raj is 25 years old and he has decided to plan for his retirement at the age of 60 years. He has 35 years of time and he plans to invest monthly Rs 1000 in mutual funds. Assume return on investment is 10% (10% return is conservative and is taken based on average return, an equity-linked fund, generated over past 2 decades). Raj has three options to start with his investment as illustrated in the table below:

	Scenario 1	Scenario 2	Scenario 3
Time	Start now	Start after 5 years	Start after 10 years
Term	35 years	30 years	25 years
Monthly investment amount	1000	1000	1000
Amount on maturity	38,28,277	22,79,325	13,37,890
Cost of delay when compared to immediate start	–	15,48,952	24,90,387

The cost of delayed investment increases with increase in delay as seen from the illustration above. All these scenarios show that if Raj had started early, he would not have to earn eye-popping rates to accumulate handsome wealth. All that is needed is time. If investments are started early they have a longer time to grow.

Starting early is also related to compounding effect. Compounding occurs when the initial investment (called principle) is invested back to earn a further return. For example: In the previous example assume Raj invested Rs 25000 in an instrument that yields 10% returns. Thus, return generated for the first year is Rs 2500. Raj decided to re-invest it with an initial amount. Thus, he invested Rs 27500 next year (Rs 25000+Rs 2500). In year 2, the returns generated increased to Rs 2750. This is the power of reinvesting or compounding whereby as time passes the initial investment along with returns of every year compounds itself to generate higher returns. It pays to start early!

Now, assume Raj decided to increase his monthly investment in all the three scenarios with an aim to ensure that his total investment remains same across all the three cases.

	Scenario 1	Scenario 2	Scenario 3
Time	Start now	Start after 5 years	Start after 10 years
Term	35 years	30 years	25 years
Monthly investment amount	2000	2333.334	2800
Total investment amount	840000	840000	840000
Amount on maturity	76,56,553	53,18,427	37,46,093

As seen above, it is very well evident that even if the total investment during the course of 35 years, 30 years and 25 years remains the same, the returns generated vary significantly with the first scenario outperforming the other two. This is because money invested at the beginning gets ample time to grow and multiply and the power of compounding which bears fruit when started early.

Points to ponder:

Start early – Starting to invest with the first salary is a very good idea irrespective of the amount invested. Small investment with ample time has the potential to translate to huge sum of money over time.
Investments are monthly bills – Like a milkman or a maid will not wait even for a day with regards to their salary, similarly, an investor should treat his/her investment as monthly bills and should invest without any delay every month. Using Systematic investment plan (SIP) makes life easier as the amount gets auto-debited from the bank account on a fixed date. Try the SIP Calculator to assess your monthly investment amount.
Have patience – Patience is a virtue is a well-known proverb. An investor should always follow this and should wait for long term to see the benefits of his early investing. One of the biggest mistakes people tend to do these days is that they withdraw their investments mid-way thinking that they have already earned decent returns. It is not a right approach as the pace of returns in initial years is slow and returns start to compound gradually over time. Thus, an investor should wait for their investment to automatically achieve its goal. Explore Goals to invest for.

There could be multiple reasons behind postponing investments such as people tend to think they do not have the magic figure to invest or they are concerned about market volatility, etc. In reality, there is no magic number to start with. Every number is a right number. Similarly, there is no good or bad timing. Now is always a good time to start investing. You only need to act.