If you start investing young you could feasibly build up enough wealth to retire early.

That way you could live a badass life of leisure, unchained to a boss or a routine.

Retirement may seem a long way off

But if you don’t want to slog it out until you are 65, invest early to build up enough capital to escape the rat race.

Compound Gains Are Bigger The Longer You Leave It

Even a small investment will generate significant returns over a long period of time thanks to the power of compound interest. The longer you leave it, the higher the rate of return will be.

You don’t really see significant investment gains over 5, 10 or even 20 years on a conservative investment of 5-8%. But once you hit 40 and 50 years even small amounts of initial money will be growing rapidly.

If you start funneling money out of your everyday spending in your 20s and start investing it, it will pay off much more in the long run than if you wait until you are in your 40s. By then you lose valuable decades.

Make Mistakes Early

Other than the extra gains that time buys you, the other key feature of investing young is that you will make mistakes young.

Every investor will make mistakes at some point, and you are more likely to make mistakes when you lack experience. This is just the nature of investing, you won’t make perfect picks with perfect timing every time.

Accept that you will make mistakes but make them early, learn from them and move on before most people have even started making theirs.

Intergenerational Wealth

The real wealth to be made is wealth that is spread over generations. This way the power of compound capital growth has much more time to act.

The difficulty here is that one generation can generate significant investment returns but the next generation might squander it. However families where responsible financial stewardship is passed down are the wealthiest families in the world today.

Maybe you will be lucky enough to inherit some money. If not you should be investing early to make the most of your money during your lifetime, and hopefully being able to leave a sizable portion for your children.

Invest In Your Own Business

Since it takes such a long time to generate significant investment returns when making low risk investments, you have to take a long term view. But what about short term cash if you want to escape the rat race and live a life of leisure?

The best thing you can do is invest in your own business on the side. You can do this even while you are employed, and build it up until such a point where you can quite your day job and focus on your business full time. An online business is the best way to do this.

That way you gain control over your life and your financial destiny and any extra money you are earning can be invested for the long term.

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