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There's a belief I come across almost every week, and it does more quiet damage than nearly any other. It goes like this: you need money to make money. Investing, the thinking runs, is something you graduate to once you're already comfortable — a club with a velvet rope, and you're not quite on the list yet.

I understand completely why it feels true. But it stops people before they ever begin — and that, not the stock market, is the real cost. So I'd like to gently turn the idea the right way round.

The truth is the other way about: you don't begin because you're rich — you begin in order to become comfortable. And the single thing that separates those two states isn't a salary, or a windfall, or some clever decision. It's simply time.

You don't need to be rich to begin. You begin in order to become comfortable.

Two savers, one identical habit.

Here's an example I use with clients all the time, because it makes the point far better than any amount of theory. Picture two people. They save the exact same amount — €200 a month — with the exact same effort and the exact same discipline. The only difference between them is ten years.

Same effort. Same monthly amount. A €100,000 gap — purely from ten extra years.

Look at that gap for a moment. It isn't explained by income, or intelligence, or luck. Both people did precisely the same thing. The only ingredient the first person had more of was time in the market — and time is the one ingredient that compound growth genuinely feeds on.

To put it another way: for the later starter to catch the early starter up by age 55, they wouldn't need to find an extra €50 or €100 a month. They'd need to find roughly an extra €500 a month.

That is the real price of the ten years spent waiting.

But €200 a month isn't really the point

I'm always a little wary of that example, because the figure itself can quietly become a new barrier.

Someone reads '€200 a month', thinks well, I can't manage that, so I'll start when I can — and the whole cycle of waiting begins all over again.

So let me be very clear. The number is not the point. Starting is the point. In Ireland, a PRSA — a Personal Retirement Savings Account — has no minimum at all. You can begin with €50 a month.

You can begin with less.

And here's the reframe I'd most like you to carry away with you. That first €50 isn't money leaving your account. It isn't a bill. It's the first thing you have ever deliberately bought for your sixty-year-old self — a small, kind purchase, made on their behalf, by the only person in the world who can make it.

That first €50 a month isn't a bill. It's the first thing you've ever bought for your 60-year-old self.

Starting small beats starting perfectly.

There is no perfect moment. There's no salary milestone, no tidy point where life finally feels settled enough to begin. People wait for that moment for years — and the waiting itself turns out to be the most expensive thing they ever do, because it quietly spends the one resource they can never buy back.

Starting small, and a little imperfectly, beats waiting for perfect every single time. So if you take nothing else from this, perhaps take these three small, free steps:

Decide that the amount doesn't matter. Whether it's €50 or €200, it's the decision to begin that compounds. Let yourself off the hook of finding the 'right' number.

If you're not in a pension, start one. There's no minimum and no perfect time — there is only starting and not starting.

Talk to a qualified financial planner, ideally a CFP professional. Not to be sold anything — simply to have someone show you that second number, and help you point it at your own future.

None of this is a 'should'. It isn't another obligation to feel faintly guilty about. It's genuinely an act of investing in yourself — in your future freedom, your peace of mind, and all the choices you'll get to make later because of the small one you make now.

You can't go back and hand yourself those ten years. But you can start forward today — and that, honestly, is something to feel good about.