Comments on: Start Investing Today: An Amazing Comparison of 25 vs 35 Year Old Starters

By: Monevator

Monevator — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:37:06 +0000

Cool graphics. I had a similar “Eureka!” moment – after reading a Motley Fool book if I remember correctly.

I’d already started saving in my early 20s, and starting investing around 30. Fortunately that was after the dotcom crash, but then of course we saw another crash soon afterwards.

I’ve kept ploughing money in throughout, and I expect it all to compound nicely over time – war and eco-disaster notwithstanding!

By: smart money

smart money — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:42:27 +0000

Hi Darwin,
Yes it does help! Sorry, I’m blind as a bat sometimes! Usually when I’ve seen diagrams with skipped/hidden cells there’s usually a gap or some dots to denote time passing. Your dad gave you great advice. The power of compounding returns is really amazing. If you started saving $5000 pa from 25, there aren’t that many reasons to stop saving that $5000 from 25 -60 …especially once the habit of saving has been ingrained

By: smart money

smart money — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:41:41 +0000

Hi Darwin,
Yes it does help! Sorry, I’m a blind as a bat! Usually when I’ve seen diagrams with skipped/hidden cells there’s usually a gap or some dots to denote time passing. Your dad gave you great advice. The power of compounding returns is really amazing. If you started saving $5000 pa from 25, there aren’t that many reasons to stop saving that $5000 from 25 -60 …especially once the habit of saving has been ingrained

By: Darwin

Darwin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:46:23 +0000

Thanks for your comment.
Out of lack of technical sophistication, laziness or whatever I should call myself, I couldn’t fit the entire spreadsheet into one screenshot. So, what I did was – I cut out years 51-58 and had that little admin note to demonstrate (note how the $ values jump up as well); the cells were hidden. In the source spreadsheet, it’s a continuous calculation, but I omitted those years so you could see the final output at age 60. The reason left column has this probably is because the 25 yo investor has 10 extra years (cells) to fit into the picture.

Hope that helps!

By: smart money

smart money — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:09:27 +0000

Hi Darwin,
Love your site, lots of interesting articles and posts. Just a note on this post however… your calculations for the 25 yo starter investment period is incorrect for the last two cell values of your spreadsheet screenshot… assuming that we continue your calculation at 8% flat interest compounded annually, the ‘Final Retirement Value’ should be $332,578.32 which unfortnately means that you’ll need to continue with your $5000 annual contribution for a few more year (even if you started at 25yo) to exceed the value of the 35yo starter.

By: Money Hacks Carnival #64 at My Life ROI | Money Hackers Network

Money Hacks Carnival #64 at My Life ROI | Money Hackers Network — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:29:35 +0000

[...] Start Investing Today: An Amazing Comparison of 25 vs 35 Year Old Starters posted at Darwin’s Finance [...]

By: Carnival of Personal Finance 204 | Paying For Retirement

Carnival of Personal Finance 204 | Paying For Retirement — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:58:30 +0000

[...] Finance shows off my favorite graphs on saving money early. It doesn’t get any easier than [...]