Ndubuisi Egwim shows how UK doctors lose £36,000 over a career by delaying investment decisions. Postponing a £460 annual investment costs real money through inflation and missed compound growth at 8% returns over 25 years. Starting now, even with small monthly amounts, avoids this hidden penalty.
If that does not hit home, here's another way to look at it. That is roughly 1 year of overpriced coffee. Not this one, I mean the oat milk flat whites, the iced lattes with an extra shot, the frappuccino, the pumpkin spice latte, or maybe a matcha— yeah, yeah, matcha persillade. Now that is all gone every single year without even the satisfaction of you drinking the coffee. You lose that money basically due to inflation and taxes. But here's where it gets interesting, because £460 is not just £460. £460. If instead of losing that £460 to delay every year, you had invested it at 8% per year over 25 years and it's compounding, that could amount to up to £36,000. Now that's a real cost of hesitation, not in year 1, across several years, a career of annual hesitation. I call it the delay tax. It's not a real tax, of course. HMRC has nothing to do with this one, but it is a very real cost. And unlike most bills that arrive in your life, This one is one that you can actually avoid. You can avoid the delay tax. Of course, if you haven't got lump sum to invest, this doesn't matter. If you haven't— if you get like a thousand or whatever, if you invest monthly based on your salary, that's fine. I'm referring to someone who's making a decision. They've got a lump sum and they're trying to decide.
