Meaningful Returns

If you go to the driving range to work on your golf game, it’s probably better that you hit from grass rather than an astroturf mat. But the answer isn’t, “oh, well there’s only mats, so I’m not going to practice at all.” At least that isn’t the answer if you mean to get better at golf.

There are so many areas of personal finance where this truth applies: saving and investing sooner rather than later, paying off high-interest debt sooner rather than later, beginning the journey to figure out why money is important to you sooner rather than later, snapping out of the bad dream which is Keeping Up With the Joneses sooner rather than later. All this stuff can be difficult and messy, and it may feel like you’re hitting off astroturf mats for a while.

But the truth remains: a clumsy start beats a non-start every day of the week and twice on Sundays.