Why invest now, and not in six months

There's a financial truth that schools never teach you. That your bank has no real interest in spelling out either. And it's the starting point for everything that follows.

A 100-euro note isn't worth the same thing from one year to the next.

Take a concrete example. In 2010, with 100 euros, you could do a week's grocery shopping for one person. Today? You barely fill half the cart. Rent, transport, subscriptions, coffee on a terrace, everything has gone up. And your bank balance hasn't moved one cent.

This phenomenon has a name: inflation. The general rise in prices, year after year. In Europe, it averages around 2% per year over 25 years, with a few much sharper episodes (we all felt 2022-2023).

Picture 10,000 euros sitting in your current account for 30 years. Here's what happens.

You haven't spent anything. You haven't made a single mistake. And you've still lost almost half your purchasing power. That's inflation doing its job, every year, in silence.

At this point you're probably thinking: "yes, but my money's on a Livret A, it earns interest."

You're right. The Livret A (the regulated French passbook savings account) is a good tool, it has to be said. Its rate moves with government decisions: 0.5% for years, then 3% in 2023. No one knows where it'll be in ten years.

What we do know is its specific role: protecting your money in the short term. It's the perfect place for your emergency fund, the 3 to 6 months of expenses you need to access fast in case of a setback. For that, it's perfect.

For everything else, the money that doesn't need to be available tomorrow, the Livret A doesn't hold up. Once you subtract inflation, your real return is often around zero, sometimes below.

A lot of people figure this out too late: your public pension will probably be much smaller than what your parents or grandparents are getting. Not catastrophism, pure demographics.

The pay-as-you-go pension system is simple: today's workers fund today's retirees. It worked great for 40 years because there were lots of contributors and few retirees. In 1960, France had 4 workers for 1 retiree.

Two direct consequences. One: future pensions will be lower in real terms. Two: the retirement age will keep being pushed back.

So if you want to keep a decent lifestyle after 65, you can't rely on the State alone. You have to build your own capital alongside. And for that, time is your strongest weapon, which is why starting early matters so much.

A lot of courses only talk about "preparing for retirement" or "building wealth". Valid goals, but when you're 22 or 28, that feels distant and abstract.

The truth is, investing can serve plenty of concrete goals at very different horizons. A few examples.

Buying a car in 3 years: you're aiming at 8,000 euros in 36 months. By saving 200 euros per month in a 3% account, you're almost there. By investing those 200 euros in a money-market ETF or short bonds, you can scrape an extra 300 to 400 euros, without major risk over that horizon. Not revolutionary, but always good to take.

Funding a trip or experience in 2 years: same logic. Over a short horizon, you don't invest in stocks, volatility is too high. But you can use capital-protected products, savings accounts or money-market ETFs to grab a few percentage points.

Building a property down payment in 5 to 10 years: the number-one goal of many people between 25 and 35. And it's where the real difference shows up. For a 30,000-euro down payment in 8 years, you invest 250 euros per month at 6%/year and you're there. Just saving, you'd have to put aside 313 euros per month for the same result. Investing = 63 euros less effort per month, every month, for 8 years.

Preparing for retirement: the longest horizon. So the most powerful one. Investing 100 euros per month from age 22 instead of 35 can mean 80,000 to 100,000 euros of difference at the finish line. The only variable that matters is when you start.

Generating supplementary income: over time, a well-built portfolio generates regular dividends or interest. Not the first goal when you're starting out, but a possible destination long term.

Or just keeping pace with inflation: the minimum goal. Even without dreams of getting rich, investing is the only way to keep your purchasing power over time.

Over the long term, stocks have historically been the highest-returning asset class accessible to retail investors. The S&P 500, the index of the 500 largest US companies, has delivered about 9.6% per year on average over 20 years, dividends reinvested. And that's despite two major crises along the way (2008, 2020).

The lines we tell ourselves to put it off: "I'm waiting until I know more", "I'm waiting until I have more money", "I'm waiting for markets to calm down".

All understandable. All very expensive, statistically.

Every month of waiting is a month of compound interest you're handing to someone else. The best time to start was yesterday. The second best is today.

This course is here to give you the right tools. Without unnecessary jargon, without complex products, and without needing an advisor to make your first moves.