Why Waiting to Invest Could Be Your Most Expensive Financial Decision

You don't need more time—you need to make your first move. In this episode of The Money Blueprint Podcast, Isaac Nkusi explains why delaying your investment decisions could be one of the biggest obstacles to building long-term wealth. Many people believe they'll start investing when they earn more money, feel more confident, or find the perfect opportunity. 

But waiting often comes at a hidden cost as inflation reduces purchasing power and missed opportunities prevent your money from growing. If you've been putting off investing, delaying important financial decisions, or waiting for the "right time," this episode will help you understand why action matters more than perfection and how starting today can create greater financial freedom tomorrow. 

Learn practical strategies for investing, building wealth, and making your money work harder for you instead of sitting still.

🎧 The Money Blueprint Podcast is about turning financial knowledge into execution — helping you build wealth with clarity, discipline, and structure.

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Produced by LF Media

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

If you're over the age of 30 and you've been telling yourself you'll start investing soon, I want you to really hear me on what I'm about to say. You may not have an investing problem. You may have a starting problem. Because most people already know investing is important. They know that it's critical to fight inflation, to fight against the potential of losing an income. They know that retirement is coming. They know that their salaries alone rarely create financial freedom. And yet, millions of people spend years standing on the edge of the swimming pool talking about swimming, reading about swimming, watching videos and sharing videos about swimming without ever actually getting into the pool and figuring out for themselves exactly how to move their bodies through the water. And eventually something strange happens. The longer you delay, the more emotionally difficult starting becomes. Because now you're no longer comparing yourself to where you are today. You're comparing yourself to where you could have been if you started five years ago, or 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. I remember speaking with a gentleman in his early 50s, a few years ago, a successful professional in the development workspace, very well respected, great job, excellent income, and a mature family, wonderful family. But one day he said something that will stay with me always, an example I will always use. He said, Isaac, every time someone talks to me about investing, I become uncomfortable. Not because he disagreed with investing, not because he didn't believe in investing, but because he knew he should have started decades ago. He understood the real effect of inflation, what your money could do 10 years ago, can't do today. He understood the need to have income-earning assets that supplement his income or will replace his income, especially when considering retirement. And in fact, he probably understood these concepts better than many young investors who have already interacted with already investing and participating in the investment market today. But year after year, life kept moving for him. His children needed school fees at upgraded schools. Work demanded his attention and his energies. His family responsibilities expanded with every promotion, and unexpected expenses arrived every time his hands got in touch with some money. And eventually, investing became something he would do later. Always later. Hi, if this is your first time listening in, my name is Isaac Mhousie, a finance literacy consultant focused on financial decision-making architecture. Over the last decade, I've helped professionals, organizations, and business owners manage financial stress. And one thing has become clear over the years: your financial struggles don't come from how much you earn if you earn a livable wage. Your financial struggle is birthed from your spending culture. What purposeful instructions you give your money each month as soon as it hits your account? So, if your money is instructionless and you want to give it order, you're in the right place. You're listening to the Money Blueprint podcast. Now, listen carefully. This is where most people misunderstand investing. They think investing is primarily a knowledge issue, an issue of understanding and intellect. It usually isn't. While intellect and understanding is critical, that's not where the main issues lie. Most people don't fail to invest because they lack information, understanding, intelligence. They fail to invest because they never created a bridge between intention and action. That's the real issue. Because the human brain is remarkably good at creating reasons to delay. You tell yourself, I'll start when I earn more. Then you earn more. And you don't start still. Then you tell yourself, I'll start when things settle down, when the madness reduces. But life never truly settles down. There's always something happening, always something demanding your resources and your energies. And before you realize it, the years have quietly disappeared, passed you by. There's a statement that I like to use frequently in my workshops. Just because I'm a doctor, a medical doctor, doesn't necessarily mean that I'm healthy. Just because you know something doesn't mean that you live it. So why do people keep delaying investing? And what are they really waiting for? People think they're waiting for money. Most of the time, they're actually waiting for certainty. Certainty that they won't make mistakes, certainty that the markets won't drop as soon as they invest, certainty that they'll choose the right investment, the next unicorn, certainty that they will have enough knowledge to mitigate the chance for failure. But here's the problem with that thinking. Certainty is not the price of entry, action is. And many people don't realize that investing is a skill learned through participation, not observation. You don't learn confidence first, then invest. You invest first and your confidence develops as you go. Let me give you a difficult truth. The biggest cost of delaying investing is not financial, it's psychological. Because every year you delay, you quietly reinforce an identity in yourself. The identity that you are someone who plans to invest. Not someone who actively invests, but someone who has a plan to invest. That becomes your identity. And identities become habits. Habits turn into years, years become decades, and before you know it, many people become experts in preparation, highly skilled in preparation, but beginners in execution. That is very, very dangerous because wealth doesn't reward preparation, it rewards participation. Now, here's what changed everything for the client I mentioned earlier. He stopped asking after our interactions on how he can change, have a mind shift, a mindset shift, mentality shift when it comes to investing. He stopped asking what is the perfect investment and started asking what's the smallest action I can take this month to get on the road, to get moving. That shift, it sounds so simple, but it is extremely powerful, especially when momentum is allowed to build. Because investing stopped being this giant, intimidating mountain of a task and becomes a repeatable monthly or daily behavior that you engage, hopefully automatically, a process, a habit, a rhythm. And once investing becomes part of his life instead of a future goal, momentum, like I mentioned, finally starts to appear. So how do you finally stop waiting? And how do you become someone who actually invests? Listen, investing is not really about money. At least not at first. At first, investing is about who you are. What is your identity? What is your money culture? Because the moment you begin investing consistently, something changes in you psychologically. You stop seeing yourself as someone who's trying to get around to doing it. You start seeing yourself as someone building a future, actively constructing their financial future. That shift is invaluable. Because identity drives your behavior. You behave the way you behave in life because of who you believe you are. You're a Rundan, you're an East African, you're a Kenyan, you're an African, you're a European, you're an Asian. You behave according to who you believe you are. Identity is critical when it comes to behavior. It is foundational. And behavior repeated long enough creates either wealth, financial success, stability, or desperation. So if you're listening today and you've never started investing, start here. First, stop trying, aiming for perfection. Perfection is the enemy of participation. Second, focus on consistency before amount. How much you invest is not nearly as important as how regularly you invest. The habit matters more than the number, especially at the beginning, because habits grow and evolve. Then, third, create a recurring investment schedule, monthly, quarterly, whatever works for you. But make the decision once, as I've mentioned before about decision-making architecture. Make your decision once and then automate it, repeat it. Because investing is not an event, it is a rhythm, it is a structure, it is a consistency. Rhythms create results. Now, if you take one thing from this episode of the Money Blueprint Podcast, take this. The biggest reason you haven't started investing is probably not a lack of money. All of us lack money at different levels. And it's probably not a lack of knowledge because knowledge is available to you at the touch of a button. The biggest threat, what's been holding you back, the biggest reason you haven't started is delay. Delay disguised as preparation, delay disguised as caution, delay disguised as waiting for the perfect time, because the perfect time never arrives for anything. We make time. The people who build wealth eventually realize something very important. Action creates clarity, not the other way around. So, if this episode resonated with you and you're realizing you've spent more time thinking about investing than actually doing it, then the investment club was built specifically for people like you. Not experts, not gurus, just ordinary professionals who understand that their future deserves more than just good intentions. Good vibes is not enough. It's a place to learn, a place to act, and a place to build consistency alongside others who are also starting or growing their investment journey. So, because we do this, because investing becomes much easier when you're not trying to do it alone. If you'd like to learn more, the details are in the description. Review them and join when you feel ready. This has been the Money Blueprint Podcast. And as usual, we are the place where financial intentions become financial actions and where someday finally becomes today. As usual, we have a few questions from our listenership that my producer is going to read out, and I'll take a few moments to respond to.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

We have our first question from Claudine, a pharmacist in Kigali. I've wanted to start investing for almost three years now. I've attended workshops, watched videos, and even opened an investment account, but I've still never made my first investment. Every time I'm about to start, I feel like I need to learn just a little bit more first. My question is: how do you know when you're being responsibly cautious versus simply procrastinating?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Perfection is it debilitates, that's what we're talking about this week, but also failure to launch. You know, analysis paralysis is what we talked about in one of the questions I answered uh last week or the week before. I can't remember. Thank you very much, Claudine, for the question. But you need to jump in at some point. And and especially when you're starting to feel like you're you're almost there, but you're at the at the riverbank's edge. You're at the pool's edge, and you've dipped your toe in the water, but you realize you're not actually getting in. Find something really simple, right? So don't go after the most complex, the highest rate of return, uh, the most ideal investment opportunity. Let's leave perfection alone and let's get what you can do now? Let's get to that. What can you do now? You've opened a brokerage account or you've opened an investment account somewhere. Talk to your banker, talk to your broker, and say, look, I would like to buy some bonds. That's not something that should take significant cognitive load. Your bond, that whatever bond that you're buying, you're lending money to a government or corporation that is going to pay you back plus interest. You're up, you become the bank. Go ahead and if it is a contract that you believe in, if it's the kind of bond that you can stand behind, and an amount of money that you will not perish if that if that contract doesn't work. Start. It's simple enough, it's straightforward enough. It's you have, it has, it's a contract that you believe in, it's a relationship that you believe in. Dive in. Start with that. Put your money in a in a in a fund, having other professionals who manage it for you and get some return on that, a 10%, 11%, whatever it may be. Uh, where you have professionals managing strong, reputable uh stocks uh and and bonds, and they manage it for you, and you get a you get a return at the end of a year, for example. That's something that somebody else is managing on your behalf, but you are in it. You have you have you're you've started moving, you're doing something that will propel your confidence significantly because you can truly adopt the identity of investor. You actually own bonds, you actually own funds, units in a trust. Uh so start. Start. Start with something simple, but start. Excellent question.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

We have our second question from David, who works for an international NGO in Nairobi. One thing I struggle with is the feeling that I started too late. I'm now in my mid-40s, and every time I look at investment examples, I see people who started in their 20s. Instead of motivating me, it actually makes me feel discouraged because I keep thinking about the years I've already lost. How do you move forward emotionally when you feel like you've already missed your best opportunity to build wealth?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

That's an excellent question, and I'm pretty sure that there are other listeners who are hearing in talk about how, David, you're in your 40s and you feel like the time is past. And when there are people in their 50s and 60s and 70s who might who might call you a very young man, okay. Um and go every day. There's a quote from an author that I deeply respect. Um, his name is um Jeff Olson. His name is Jeff Olson, and he writes a quote that I use regularly. In his quote, he says, when it comes to changing the trajectory of your life, the direction of your life, when it comes to starting something new, when it comes to investing in your finances, in your health, in your education, uh, in your relationships, it's never too late to start. I love this quote so much. He says, it's never too late to start. And then he continues to say, it's always too late to wait. It's never too late to start, but it is always too late to wait, meaning that you're not too old to take an advantage of an opportunity. But you are definitely, we are always too old to allow opportunities to pass us by when we're informed. Now that you know, do not wait. Don't lament what has passed. The time that has passed is gone. Be an example of what to do from where you are today moving forward. Because you can do so much alone and even more together. Be the example. And you'll be surprised how much you can achieve in the next five, 10, 15 years, David. So I would say to you, don't worry about what's past. Opportunities are coming all the time, and they could will continue to come. As long as human beings exist and we have problems, opportunities will exist. That's just how the trade of value works. Problems, solutions, people who consume them. That's it. So as long as human beings exist, and as long as problems exist, and problems will all exist as long as humans exist, then opportunity will be there. The question is, have you put yourself in the right mind frame? Have you organized a cult around your spending and investing? Have you structured your savings? Have you structured your life and your discipline in a way to take advantage of opportunities when they come? And most of us, unfortunately, at all age levels and professional levels, socioeconomic levels, education levels, so many of us, the vast majority of us, are not prepared. Excellent question. Go ahead and move with the confidence that opportunities are there. They will come. They are there right now and they will continue coming. But you put yourself in the city.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

My challenge isn't understanding the value of investing.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

I hope that has helped.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

I fully believe in it. The problem is that between work, family obligations, school fees, and helping relatives, I always feel like there's something more urgent demanding my money. So investing keeps getting postponed to next month. How do you begin investing when life genuinely feels full of competing priorities and financial responsibilities?

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Wow, Peter. I like the thousands of people who are listening in who have this exact same issue. Urgence versus importance. This is decision making that you're talking about. Because when it comes to decision making, we all of us need to come to a position where we prioritize one opportunity, one responsibility over another. And that can be very difficult, especially for collectivist cultures like ours in the African context, but also in other collectivist cultures around the world. Responsibilities to society, responsibilities to your village, to your family, to your clan. They can overwhelm, especially when you're trying to make plans for your financial future. In order to invest in your future, you have to make present-day sacrifices. And that can become a significant problem. What I would say is you have to, all of us, each one of us, we have to come to a place where we have allocated a specific amount of our resources to support obligations, especially to family. Because the reality of it is most, especially busy professionals, solve family obligations by just throwing money at the problems. Just saying the money, here's the money for this, here's the money for that, but then the money runs out. And when the money runs out, you run out of solutions. Often, family obligations don't end with just the capital required to solve them. Often family obligations are born in our minds, in the mindsets we hold as family members. We all have or know of family members who overrely on others. The cost of financial success, as they say, the cost of success is that you feel guilty, that you are doing better than other family members, or, and that you have family members, clan members who now rest their financial burdens on you because you're successful. You hear us people saying all the time, oh, somebody so-and-so has won money. Oh, we are rich. We have won money, we have got a new job, we have got a political office. Somebody has been working for their job for the last 15, 20 years, and they get that promotion and suddenly it's a it's a we promotion. Now, I understand it as an African myself. There is collective success, absolutely. But how far does that extend? Are you willing to spend your entire paycheck on the responsibility of supporting your family members? And even if you did spend your entire paycheck, would there be more responsibilities after your paycheck is spent? I'm sure there'd still be things that people would want you to pay for, even when you've spent 100% of your money. What would you do then? Would you take a loan against your next paycheck? And then when you spend all the money from your loan, personal loan, to support your family members, and that's done, would there still be needs that they'd like you to support and pay for? What'd you do then? So the money is never enough to take care of everybody's, the whole clan's needs on your own. Structure is what takes us out, pulls us out of our financial distress as individuals and as communities. So if you were to spend more time, more effort, more energy supporting the structures that pull family members and family obligations to reasonable levels, where we share the burden as a collective rather than you as a medical professional taking on all the burdens yourself or the majority of them. Where we're empowering people to start owning their own obligations, even if it's hard at the beginning. That is the way we lift the floor of our family and uh and community financial obligations rather than try to reach for the ceiling and reach for more money to disperse as individuals in the group. I hope that's helped. I know this is a very, very complex question. There's a lot of internal guilt, uh, internal uh indoctrination that we need to revisit, culture that needs to be rethought. Um, I know that there are a lot of personal decisions to be made here, but the question for each one of us is how are we going to address these obligations while at the same time preparing for a financial future that is uncertain if we don't take control and take responsibility for the growth of our finances and our obligations that are coming in the future where we will not be able to work as hard as we're working right now? That is an excellent question. I do realize it's a it's a complex question, difficult to come to a conclusion over, but that would be my two cents. Thank you so much for it. And alas, that's what we have time for today. Thank you so much for tuning into the Money Brewpin podcast. I've been your host, Isaac Nghusi, and I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that today's conversation has given you some of the tools that you need to create the life you want with your money. If you have any questions you'd also like answered, feel free to send them to our email, themoneyblueprintpodcast at gmail.com. You can also reach out to us on our social media platforms. Have a great week.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

This podcast is for general informational and educational purposes only, and does not provide financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Do not make decisions before consulting a qualified professional. This podcast is brought to you by LF Media, home of great African podcasts.