My dear child:
The messages I get ask one question more than any other: "Is it too late for me?" The youngest to ask was twenty-six.
So let’s check the numbers.
Warren Buffett bought his first stock at eleven (surely he was not too late). He was a millionaire by his early thirties. Yet in the year he turned sixty he was worth about three billion dollars, and by his ninetieth it was more than eighty. Over ninety-five percent of one of the great fortunes of our time arrived after an age when most people are planning their great gig in the sky.
This isn’t some act of genius, it’s just basic math. A boring index fund, left alone, has doubled about every decade for the past hundred years. And each doubling adds more than all the doublings before it put together. The early years pay pennies. The last years pay the fortune.
Buffett called his life a snowball. What mattered, he said, was wet snow and a long hill. Every man ever known worries about the size of his snowball (among other things). But none of them protect the length of their hill. They shorten it themselves: starting late, cashing out early, deciding at fifty that the game is over when the best of the hill is yet to come.
The doublings that matter most are the ones still ahead of you, and they don't give a damn what age you start at. But you’ll be sure to lose them if you decide they don't count.
So you can spend this decade mourning the years you lost, or you can get your money on the hill and let it roll. You can't do both, and the hill doesn't wait.
If Warren Buffett at sixty, with three billion in hand, hadn't reached the steep part of his hill, surely you haven't either.
One thing I'd tell my younger self: The years I nearly walked away from paid for everything.
From the bookshelf: "The Snowball" by Alice Schroeder. Buffett's whole life on paper. Notice how far into the book the money shows up.
A tool on my bench: A long hill is easier to stay on when you can see the whole of it. PocketSmith lays every account on one page, with the years ahead sketched in if nothing changes. (An affiliate link. The letter earns a small commission if you subscribe.)
Yours sincerely,
