“Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world” – Albert Einstein.
Whether Einstein actually said this or not is irrelevant because the fact of the matter is compound interest is very powerful.
If you had a choice between accepting one million dollars or one penny that doubled for 30 days what choice would you make?
I hope the penny that doubles for thirty days because then we have a sum well over 5 million dollars. But here’s the thing about compound interest and why you need to start planning and having your money work for you at a young age – in 10 days that penny grew to $5.12, in twenty days $5242.88. Our penny doesn’t even break one million dollars until day 28, only to grow to 2.6 million and then almost 5.4 million in the last two days. It is in the later years that our friendly neighbor, compound interest, really starts to flash us that warm smile.
The point I am trying to make here is if we wait one, two, or three years to get going we are effectively robbing our future selves of that freshly baked “new to the neighborhood apple pie”. And who doesn’t like apple pie…?
Some other reasons why we would want to start early is to build our metaphorical “financial house” on a strong risk management foundation. In my opinion, we must earn the right to start investing and talking about compound interest and rates of return. If we aren’t properly protected then what would our financial future and the future of our families look like if, heaven forbid, we had a premature death.
I know, I know, this can’t happen to us…right?
Wrong!
Have you ever been scrolling through Facebook, only to see a friend, a family member, or heck even that random person you met on a cruise when you were 15 years old, asking for money via a GoFundMe account? Whenever I see this, it is usually asking for donations to cover funeral expenses because that person did not plan and build his/her financial foundation.
We build this foundation with insurance.
Insurance is a fun concept where we leverage our dollars and pass the risk onto a company that has far more money than we do.
Insurance companies have very smart people called actuaries who have specialized knowledge that can precisely predict, out of a pool of one thousand people, based on certain health and lifestyle factors, how many people will die within one year.
For example a healthy female at 35 has less than a 1% chance of death within one year.
Armed with this knowledge, we would then exchange our dollars, in the form of a monthly premium, and get a multiple in what is called a death benefit because do we want our family asking strangers for money on the internet?
Nope.
Other forms of insurance would be having an emergency savings AKA rainy day fund, war chest, or prudent reserve.
Health insurance and disability insurance are key factors to constructing our financial foundation.
The health insurance because, hospital stays are very expensive.
I like to refer to disability insurance as paycheck protection. A good financial planner will recommend anywhere between 3-6 months’ worth of expenses in that war chest we just spoke about. But what happens if you have an illness that prevents you from working for longer than that 3–6-month period?
Remember our friends the actuaries? They have cousins called statisticians and they say “statistically 1 out of every 4 people will have some sort of disability that will prevent them from working for at least 1 year”.
I DO NOT like those odds.
Would you get on a plane and go to your favorite Caribbean island if there was a 1 in 4 chance you don’t land safely?
No?
Me neither. Which is why I have plenty of paycheck protection.
There are many excuses that we tell ourselves for why we can’t start planning early on.
These are some of my favorites!
“I don’t have the time”, “I don’t have the money”, or “The zombie apocalypse is coming soon, I’m planning for the bunker baby!”
LOL.
Like I said many excuses, but no good reasons.
If you would like some help developing some goals and building out a financial plan you can reach out directly either by
Phone: 732-993-5255
Email: team@parent-advisor.com
Carrier Pigeon: https://www.pigeongram.com/
Stay blessed and grateful!