Why Does Starting Early Matter?
For your pension, "early" just means more years of service — a straightforward, linear effect. For your savings account, the math is far less linear, and far more dramatic.
💬 GLP Retirement MinuteSame Monthly Amount, 10 Years Apart
Both savers contribute the same $200/month until age 65, invested identically. The only difference is when they started.
Saver A
Starts at 25, contributes for 40 yearsSaver B
Starts at 35, contributes for 30 yearsSaver A contributed only $24,000 more in total than Saver B — ten extra years at $200/month. But Saver A's ending balance is $197,395 higher, nearly double. That gap isn't from contributing more. It's almost entirely from time — a decade of extra compound growth doing the work.
This example uses a hypothetical 6% average annual return for illustration only — it's not a projection, promise, or guarantee. Real investment returns vary year to year and can be negative. The point isn't the exact dollar figures; it's the shape of the effect.
More years of service directly increases your pension's replacement ratio in a straight line — see Will My Pension Replace My Paycheck? A savings account benefits from time in a completely different way: not more contributions, but more time for each dollar to keep growing.
If you're early in your career, this is genuinely good news, not a lecture: the version of "starting early" that matters most here doesn't require contributing more money — it just requires starting the clock sooner.