The Shocking Proof

I did the math starting with a 20 year old person smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. I assumed they smoked for their entire career – so to Age 60.

I increased the price of cigarettes by 2%/year (average inflation rate) and the number of cigarettes smoked by 1%/year. This would mean that they were smoking a pack and a half a day when they retired at 60 (that is probably too conservative as anyone that has smoked for 40 years is very likely a 2-3 pack a day smoker but we will give them the benefit of the doubt).

When I first ran these numbers, cigarettes were $13/pack; I’ve recalculated at today’s price of $20. I’ve stayed with the same rate of return of 8% which is very doable if the money is invested in good quality stocks.

Are you ready for it?

$2,772,449.00

Are you shocked? Did you guess anywhere close to this number? It almost seems unbelievable but it’s very easy to confirm. Just google “Investment and Regular Deposit Calculators”. The one I used is ATB Wealth’s which we’ve attached. There is no option for Daily deposits in so I used a monthly amount of $600 ($20/day x 30 days). One other thing to note is the cash flow shows the YEARLY amount ($600/mth x 12 months). But this most notable thing here is the chart and legend. The actual amount invested is $542,889. It’s the growth of $2,229,560 that is the big surprise!

So now we’ve concluded that you should save large amounts of money so you can be very rich WHEN YOU RETIRE, right? Because being a VERY RICH retiree with mounds of money to spend is by far THE most important thing in life, right? Or is it? Let’s see what Logan has to say about that in next week’s post. Stay tuned!!

Investment and Regular Deposit Calculators: https://calculators.atb.com/atb/jsp/InvRegDeposit/InvRegDeposit_run.jsp

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Coming Next: For the Rookie Investors

How do you invest in your future, while doing what you love now?

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