Cost of Delay Calculator
Calculate the real cost of delaying your investments. See how much wealth you lose by waiting just one year, five years, or a decade to start investing.
Wealth Comparison: Start Now vs Delay
Impact of Different Delay Periods
See how each year of delay costs you
Year-by-Year Comparison
| Age | Start Now | Start After Delay | Difference |
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Key Features
How to Use This Calculator
Understanding Cost of Delay
The Cost of Delay Calculator shows the powerful impact of time on investment returns. Every year you delay starting to invest represents permanently lost wealth that can never be recovered.
Consider two investors, both aiming to invest ₹10,000 monthly at 12% returns until age 60. One starts at 25 and accumulates ₹3.24 crores. The other starts at 30 (just 5 years later) and accumulates only ₹1.76 crores - ₹1.48 crores less.
To match the early starter, the delayed investor would need to invest significantly more each month. The catch-up amount is often surprisingly high, sometimes 50-100% more than the original plan.
This happens because compound interest is exponential, not linear. Money invested early has more time to compound, and those early contributions grow to become the largest portion of your final corpus.
The best time to start investing was yesterday. The second best time is today. This calculator quantifies why waiting is so costly and why even small amounts invested early beat large amounts invested late.