You've Been Warned: Not Investing By This Age Will Cost You

The value that investments bring to a person's financial life can't be touted enough. Setting money aside for the future is one of the most important things you can do, especially when you're still young and have an increased slice of disposable income to play around with. Investing doesn't have to be mysterious or baroque, either. Beginners can get into the marketplace — with the help of index funds, plus research guidance from high-profile traders like Warren Buffett or Cathie Wood. Indeed, plenty of resources exist and are quite easy to access, making the stock market a little less hostile. (Here are 10 tips for investing in stocks as a beginner, for example.)

That being said, anyone who takes their financial situation seriously will want to start their voyage into the stock market, or in any other investment space of their choosing, for that matter, as early as possible. Once you enter the workforce, you will have a new infusion of capital ripe for investment potential. In fact, the jump from a non-employed youth to a newly working individual is likely the most dramatic financial change you'll ever experience.

Clocking in and earning a paycheck gives you lots of disposable income, with perhaps the entire deposit representing cash that doesn't have to be used toward paying a bill or managing another set expense. At 16 or 18, investing might be the last thing you're thinking of, and fortunately you won't find yourself hurting too badly if you don't start investing right away as a teen. But there is an age that signals a distinct shift in investment potential if you have not yet begun your adventure.

Ideally, you'll start investing as soon as you gain an income. For many, this might be in their late teens. However, it's not strictly necessary (or expected of you as a teenager) to begin pouring money into a brokerage account right away. Starting in your 20s is a good rule of thumb. For plenty of American workers, this will be after leaving college with an education or moving through the early stages of a blue- or a gray-collar job's promotional pipeline. Either way, as you enter and begin to move through your 20s, you'll enjoy the best of both worlds in terms of age and earnings potential.

As noted, the younger you are, the less likely you are to have developed wide-ranging financial obligations. For instance, you probably don't have any credit cards with massive limits (creating the potential for extreme repayment obligations), and you're probably not in the market to buy a house just yet, adding the need to start saving for a down payment. However, this doesn't mean young people have it easy.

From student loans (and how aggressively you should pay them off) to balancing an adult-scale budget for the first time (perhaps involving car payments, rent in a new city, and managing a full social schedule), there's a lot on a twenty-something's plate, too. These savers generally have more disposable income available, though, and they absolutely have more time between the "now" of their life and retirement far in the future. The longer you wait, the less time you'll have on your side, however.

If you haven't invested by your 30s, you've effectively lost at least one doubling opportunity. This means that in order to hit your savings goals, you may need to either save more each month or put off retirement for an extra few years. There are plenty of good reasons to delay your retirement, but feeling an obligation to push your egress from working life down the road because you didn't plan well enough in the early phase of your career isn't one of them.

Once you reach age 30, the volume you have to contribute balloons. If you set aside $500 per month from 30 to retirement age, you will have nearly $1 million waiting for you at the other end of your professional life. However, starting at 20 will give you just under $2 million. More importantly, if the $1-million mark is your end financial goal, if you start saving at 20, you'll crack that ceiling with a monthly contribution of just $258.

The difference might not feel very dramatic in your youth, but when life's demanding financial stressors come fully into play as you get older (i.e., raising children, managing a flurry of household expenses, or paying for more medical care), those extra few hundred dollars saved every month can go a long way to covering other things that feel incredibly important as they arise. The truth is that you may have the best of intentions when it comes to saving in your 30s and your 40s, but a larger contribution may quickly fall out of the realm of possibility when every other facet of your life is stacked up on top of your retirement goals.