Compound Interest is the 8th Wonder of the World.
This. I read that when you're in your 20's, every dollar invested is worth $88 when you retire.
I have a friend who lost their job & had to cash out his 401k to support his family when he was in his 30's. He's 70 now and still working. I'm 62 and doing ok financially but plan to work probably another 5-8 years.
I asked a wealthy woman, whose path through life had tracked closely with my own, without me becoming wealthy, what was the secret of her wealth. Her two word answer was "compound interest".
That woman has a sister who is also well-to-do, but who, at age 65, is still on the corporate treadmill. My friend, on the other hand, spends only two hours working every week, and those two hours are spent managing her investments.
These days she lives off dividend income. She has told me that she loves stocks that pay a 9% dividend, and looks only for very conservative investments (e.g. garbage disposal companies and companies in other basic industries).
If I had to do it all over again, I would have bought more tracts of raw land. Land appreciates at about the same rate as the market and you have a physical asset. Taxes are low on timber land. And you can stand on it and say in your best Obamao accent, “I don’t own this.”