Hey, it's Ben here. The following is a blog post called How Much is $20 a Month

worth that I originally posted on my blog a wealth of common sense. Enjoy.

The hardest part about building wealth for the majority of the population has nothing to do with picking stocks,

or asset allocation, or active versus passive, or the macro economy, or any of the other stuff, professional investors spend their time debating.

The hardest part about building wealth for most regular people is the process of saving their money on a consistent basis

But it doesn't take that much to make a big difference over time if you're able to stick with a regular savings plan

Even $20 a month could have any enormous impact if you give yourself a long enough runway.

The maximum contribution for an IRA in 2020 and 2021 is $6,000 a year.

That means maxing out your IRA would require you to save $500 a month.

If you were to diligently save that $500 every month for 30 years, assuming a 7% return on your investments,

you would end up with more than $600,000 after 30 years of saving. Now this is easier said than done

for a variety of reasons but that's not a bad haul. But what if instead of saving

that same amount every month for three decades you instead increased your savings by

just $20 a month each year.

So in year one you'd say $500 a month.

In year two you'd say $520 a month.

In year three you'd say $540 a month and so on. 20 bucks a month can't be worth that much right?

Actually in this scenario assuming a 7% annual return your ending balance after 30

years would jump from a little more than 600600,000 to more than $850,000.

That $20 a month increase would be worth more than $260,000 in total.

Not bad.

Now, maybe you think 7% is too high for risk assets right now.

...