Waiting five years to start a SIP costs roughly half your final corpus. At 12% a year, ₹15,000 a month for twenty years reaches ₹1.50 Cr; the same ₹15,000 started five years later and run for fifteen reaches ₹75.69 L. The delay costs ₹74.19 L, which is 49% of the outcome.
Why the loss is always 49%
Because the instalment cancels out. A SIP’s future value is directly proportional to the amount invested, so the ratio between a twenty-year run and a fifteen-year one is fixed by the time and the rate alone. Change the amount and both sides move together.
Same proportion every time. Run your own numbers in the SIP calculator.
What a late start has to pay to catch up
Almost exactly double the instalment. ₹5,000 a month for twenty years reaches ₹49.96 L. To arrive at the same figure starting five years later, you would need ₹9,901 a month for fifteen years.
- 1
Twice the instalment. The late starter commits ₹9,901 a month against ₹5,000, every month, for fifteen years.
- 2
Half again as much money in total. They put in ₹17.82 L of their own against ₹12.00 L, to finish in the same place.
- 3
And they had to be able to afford it. Doubling an instalment is a decision about income, not intent. The early start asked for neither.
The comparison people actually make, and why it misleads
It is tempting to say a small SIP now beats a large one later. It usually does not. ₹15,000 a month for fifteen years reaches ₹75.69 L and beats ₹5,000 for twenty by ₹25.73 L, because it is two and a quarter times the money. Time is powerful; it is not free money.
The honest claim is narrower and more useful. Compare like with like, the same instalment you can genuinely afford, and the five years you spend deciding cost about half the result.
“Waiting for a raise to start investing is the most expensive way to fund a raise.”
What we see in practice
The reasons for waiting sound prudent at the time: until the bonus arrives, until the market corrects, until the home loan is smaller. Each is a decision to pay roughly double later for the same outcome, and none of them is ever framed that way.
A smaller amount, started now and stepped up as income rises, beats a perfect amount that starts eventually. That is the whole argument, and the arithmetic above is all of the evidence for it.