Can you spare $5 a day? If so, you could become a millionaire — one day.
“If you start in your 20s with a couple of reasonable investments, you can’t avoid becoming a millionaire,” said Michael Taylor, author of “The Financial Rules for New College Graduates.”
However, many young people are delaying or refusing to invest.
The average millennial doesn’t expect to start saving for retirement until their late 30s, while half the generation isn’t invested in the stock market at all, according to a study by TD Ameritrade.
That’s a problem.
Taylor provided some math to explain why. If you save $5 a day in an account with a 10% annual return, you’ll have around $30,000 in 10 years, $330,000 in 30 years and $2.3 million in 50 years. (The S&P 500′s annual rate of return over the last 90 or so years has been around 10%. After adjusting for inflation, however, it’s closer to 8%.)
Assuming a more modest 6.5% annual return, you’d have around $26,000 in 10 years, $168,000 in 30 years and $667,000 in 50 years.
“If you start late, you will never catch up to the person who started early with the same amount,” Taylor said.