Invest Rs 10,000 a month at 25, and it could become crores by 65: CA explains the power of starting early

Your 20s may not be the decade when you earn the most, but they could be the most valuable years for building wealth. Starting early gives your investments more time to grow and compound. CA Nitin Kaushik recently highlighted this through a simple example on X. He explained how investing Rs 10,000 a month at age 25 could potentially grow into a sizeable corpus by 65, while also giving young investors something money can eventually buy: greater freedom.

Your biggest advantage in your 20s is time

CA Nitin Kaushik took to X and shared a financial lesson about why young investors should not underestimate the value of starting early. “Your 20s aren’t the time when you have the most money,” Kaushik wrote. “They’re the time when you have the most time.” For someone in their 20s, the amount available to invest every month may be relatively modest. But Kaushik’s point is that time can make a significant difference because investments have longer to compound.

What Rs 10,000 a month could become

Kaushik illustrated the potential impact with a hypothetical example. He said a 25-year-old investing Rs 10,000 every month for 10 years, assuming a 12% CAGR, could build roughly Rs 23 lakh by the age of 35. The interesting part comes next. If that Rs 23 lakh corpus were then left untouched, Kaushik said it could potentially grow to around Rs 7 crore by age 65 without any additional contributions.


That example highlights why starting early can matter so much. The investor does not necessarily need to keep increasing the investment for decades. The existing corpus gets more time to potentially grow through compounding.

Why young investors often overlook this

Kaushik believes this is something many young investors miss. The focus in your 20s is often on getting a better salary, paying bills and enjoying the present. Retirement can feel too far away to worry about. But early investing is not necessarily just about building a retirement fund. “Early investing isn’t only about retirement,” Kaushik wrote. The money accumulated over time can potentially create more choices later in life.

Investing can buy career freedom

Kaushik argued that financial wealth can eventually give people the ability to make career decisions without being driven entirely by salary. A sizeable financial cushion could make it easier to take a pay cut for a role that offers better opportunities, start a business or walk away from a toxic workplace. It could also mean being less dependent on chasing the highest possible salary throughout one’s career.

For Kaushik, this is one of the biggest benefits of investing early. The objective is not simply to have more money at a particular age, but to have more options.

‘Money buys things. Time buys options’

Kaushik ended his post with a simple distinction between money and time. “Money buys things. Time buys options.” His example of Rs 10,000 a month is therefore less about the exact amount and more about the advantage of giving investments time to compound. For someone starting at 25, even a relatively modest monthly investment can have decades to potentially grow. Waiting until later may mean having to invest significantly more to reach the same financial target.

The core message from Kaushik is straightforward: your 20s may not give you the biggest paycheques, but they give you something that cannot be recovered later, time.