Why Waiting for the Right Time to Invest Is Costing You Wealth

You keep telling yourself you’ll start investing when you earn more money, when life becomes easier, or when the “right time” finally arrives—but what if waiting is the reason you’re falling behind? 

In this episode of The Money Blueprint Podcast, Isaac Nkusi explains why many people delay investing despite wanting financial freedom, and how the search for perfect conditions prevents long-term wealth building. The truth is that successful investors don’t wait for the perfect moment—they build the discipline, habits, and financial systems that allow them to start. 

If you’ve been saying “one day” to investing, saving, or improving your finances, this episode will help you overcome financial procrastination, take action, and start making your money work toward your future.

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

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If you’re ready to go beyond just listening and actually change your financial situation, Isaac has opened a private email list for you. You can share where you are financially and receive practical, personalized advice from him directly. Take the first step here: https://linktr.ee/themoneyblueprintpodcast

Produced by LF Media

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Can I ask you an uncomfortable question? A question that you can carry with you for the rest of the day. When exactly is the air quote right time you're waiting for? After your next promotion? After the children finish their grade or high school? After you've bought that house? After you've paid off the car that you currently own? After your business improves, or after life becomes less expensive. Listen, I've been teaching personal finance for close to 15 years now. I've spoken to thousands of professionals, from doctors to engineers, teachers, finance professionals, entrepreneurs, development workers, bankers, and the lot. And over the years, I've noticed something. Very few people ever say, I'm choosing not to invest. Instead, what they say is, I'm just waiting for the right time. But here's a problem with that statement. The right time has a habit of never arriving. Because life is incredibly creative at inventing new reasons for us to wait. A few years ago, I met a gentleman who had just turned 35, 45, I believe. He had a solid career in human resources. He was very respected in his position and among his peers. And he had an excellent salary, especially relative to peers and others in the East African region. He wasn't irresponsible with money, far from it. He paid his bills on time. He had a great relationship with his bank. He supported a lot of his family members, extended family members, and he avoided unnecessary borrowing. But every time we discussed investing, he had a reason to postpone it. Five years earlier, he'd been saving for a wedding. Then he was putting some money away for a home. Then, of course, school fees became a priority. And of course, as you can imagine, his aging parents needed his support. Of course, inflation is increasing, the household expenses are rising, and work becomes uncertain ever since, as you can imagine, ever since this post-COVID world we live in. Work isn't guaranteed. And every reason sounded very reasonable until one day he looked back and realized that 15 years had disappeared, had evaporated in front of his eyes. Nothing dramatic had happened. No financial catastrophe had met him or his family, thank goodness. Just 15 years of waiting for the circumstances to become ideal. Now, here's what I want you to notice. The problem wasn't that life kept changing. Life always changes. The problem was that investing was always treated as something that he would begin when life becomes easier. But investing isn't something you do after life becomes expensive. It's what helps you survive when life becomes expensive. That realization changes absolutely everything. Because the people who build wealth aren't the people who eventually find the perfect timing. The people who build wealth, generally speaking, even financial stability before we get into wealth, those people are the people who decide that uncertainty is no longer an excuse to remain on the sidelines. So why do we keep waiting? And why does waiting feel so reasonable? Even when it's quietly costing us years. Look, waiting feels responsible. And it even sounds wise. I'll start when I have more money. I'll start after this busy, chaotic season. I'll start once the economy improves. Those sentences sound measured and logical, but underneath them, there's often something deeper. Fear. The fear of making mistakes. The fear of losing money. So instead of saying I'm afraid, we tell ourselves, I'm waiting. Waiting sounds smarter, but emotionally, it's often the same thing. Hi, if this is your first time listening in, my name is Isaac Nghusi. I'm a finance literacy consultant here in Ronda, focused on financial decision-making architecture. For the last decade plus, I've helped professionals, organizations, and business owners manage financial stress. And one thing has become clear over the years. Your personal finance struggles don't come from how much you earn if you make a livable wage. Your financial struggles are born from your spending culture. What purposeful instructions you give your money monthly 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. Here's a sentence I'd like you to remember. Your future does not know your intentions, it only experiences your actions. Your retirement doesn't benefit because you meant to invest in your youth. Your children won't inherit assets because you planned to buy them. Financial freedom doesn't reward good intentions, it rewards consistent execution. And here's something fascinating. The cost of waiting is almost invisible as you experience it. You don't wake up one morning and suddenly feel poorer because you delayed investing for the last 12 months. You don't feel poorer in the moment. The cost accumulates quietly, like rust, like termites that eat your wooden foundations or wooden floors, like water that slowly leaks from the tank into your foundation. By the time you notice it, years of compounding have already been lost to your structure. So, what's the solution? When is the right time to start investing? Let's start by asking what can I begin with today? Maybe it's a modest monthly contribution. Maybe it's opening an investment account. Maybe it's automating a transfer that happens every payday. But notice something none of those actions require perfect timing. They require a decision followed by an action. Because wealth and financial stability are rarely built through dramatic financial moments. It's built through ordinary decisions repeated for extraordinary lengths of time. So, how do you stop waiting? How do you finally become the kind of person who begins before life feels ready? Financially secure people don't necessarily have fewer problems or more money than everybody else. They simply refuse to let those problems and that lack of resources postpone their preparation for their future. This is the identity shift I submit to you. Stop becoming someone who is always preparing to build wealth at some point in the future and become someone who builds wealth while life is still imperfect. Because life will always be imperfect. There is no perfection in this life. Children will still need school fees despite the imperfect reality you live in. Unexpected repairs to your car and your home will happen randomly. Work will still be stressful. Inflation will still exist and expand. If you wait for life to become calm, to become stable, to become ideal, then you may wait your entire life. So here's what I'd encourage you to do this week. First, identify the sentence you've been telling yourself. I'll start after dot dot dot. What's that sentence? Finish it honestly with yourself. Then ask yourself another question. Has that condition ever actually arrived before? That that what if when? That when that you're hoping for, that you're waiting for, did it has it ever happened before? If it did, did I start? If it did happen in the past, did you start? Then make investing automatic. Remove the monthly debate. Remove the emotional negotiation. We've talked several times before on this podcast about the difficulty, the hurdle that exists when we make financial decisions independently every single month, free from a structure and a budget and order for the way we use our money. When we set a structure for our spending and just implement it every month, the decision-making process becomes so much easier, which now allows you to execute consistently. So when you remove that monthly debate again, you remove the emotional negotiation with whether you should do this or do that. Is the right action or not? Which direction should I take? You've made the decision already, and now it's time only to act. Because every recurring decision creates another form, another opportunity to delay. Finally, start small enough that you cannot convince yourself to postpone it. Because consistency beats intensity every time. Look, if today's conversation has challenged you, that's good. Because sometimes the biggest obstacles to financial freedom, financial stability, is not a lack of income. It's believing that tomorrow will somehow be easier today. And when has that ever happened? When has that ever been true that tomorrow will be easier than today? Your future isn't built on the day you finally feel ready. Your future is built on the day you decide that readiness is no longer a requirement to take the first step. Remember this. The right time isn't discovered, it's created. And every day you wait, your future quietly keeps waiting to. So if something in today's episode resonated with you, if you're tired of watching another year go by without building the financial future you've imagined for yourself, I'd like to invite you to take a different approach. Our investment club wasn't created for financial experts. It was created for ordinary professionals who are ready to stop waiting and start acting with structure. You'll find practical guidance, accountability, and a community of people making the same commitment to stop postponing tomorrow's security. If that sounds like the next step that you need, the details are in the description. Take a look and join if you feel you are ready to take that next step. This is the Money Blueprint Podcast, where waiting gives way to action and where the future is built on structured decision making, one decision at a time. As usual, we have questions coming in from our listeners, and uh my producer is going to read them out, and I'll take a few moments to answer them before we're done.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

We have our first question from Alice, a human resources manager in Kigali. Every year I tell myself I'll start investing after I've finished paying for something important. First it was a wedding, then a home renovation. Now it's my children's school fees. There always seems to be another reason to wait. How do you know when it's genuinely the wrong time to invest and when you're simply using life as an excuse?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah, Alice, this is an excellent question. And I'm pretty sure it's a question that almost everybody who's listening in has. Um, you know, one thing that's so interesting about our um the reasons that we have to delay investing is that they're all so common. Common life events. A wedding, like you'd mentioned, uh, school fees for the kids, uh a crisis in the home. Um and look, it is true there is a wrong time to try to start investing. And that wrong time is when you're not meeting the fundamental, the basic needs, the living costs of your household. Of course, that can also be an excuse if you have living costs, bare minimum, needs, expenses uh that are inflated. So, what I mean is often when we get promotions, when we get um a raise or any kind of increase in pay, often what happens when we don't have a spending culture, we don't have a structure about the way we use our money each month. What normally happens when we get extra money is that we just spend more, right? We we we live a bigger life. We move to a more expensive neighborhood, we buy a more expensive car, we take a larger loan. Um, we just spend more money when we earn more. Instead of thinking about how we could invest more money in order for us to have more income streams. So there are wrong times to invest, but usually it's not that's not the reason. The reasons that people give is not the real reason why we should uh we should wait before investing. What I would suggest is that the real reason to not invest is that you don't earn a livable wage. Your income is not sufficient for your day-to-day expenses. And by day-to-day, I mean survival expenses, right? Food, water, shelter, um clothing, um, access to your workplace, these are the bare minimums that are required for you to function, to survive in society. But going out to eat, holidays, uh online subscriptions to like your Spotify's, I'm not putting down any online subscription, but these are not basic human needs, these are privileges, benefits, desires. And when we confuse those two things, then we're never going to be in a place to invest. The funny thing about that observation is that you know the thing that truly pulls us out of financial vulnerability is our ability to own or control assets that generate money. Own or control them. Because you see, your job isn't yours, you don't own it unless you're self-employed. Um, and so you're replaceable where you work, unless, of course, it's your company. You don't own that job. You you're employed in that job, you have a contract at that job, but that job doesn't belong to you. And it's not under your control. You're trading your time for money. And when while that is a necessary function, trading our time and skills for money, that isn't permanently yours. You're not going to, your kids are not going to inherit your job. All right. Um, if you're no longer capable of executing the value needed at your job, you're not going to continue getting paid for the work that you've done historically at that job, even if that historical work is 5, 10, 15, 20 plus years. Because the job is an exchange of time and skill for a paycheck. Now, what makes us less vulnerable, financially speaking, is when we own things that generate money or we have control over them. Because that money, now you can start using the money that these assets generate to feed your lifestyle and to protect you and your loved ones, financially speaking. So, what is a genuine excuse? A genuine excuse is that you are disordered with your finances. So you can't be consistent as an investor. That is something that's a genuine problem that you can fix. You should fix before you invest. And the other thing is that you just don't earn a livable wage. So you don't earn enough to feed yourself and those who you're responsible for, to shelter them, to clothe them, to have uh to um maintain their the bare minimum standards of life. You you're not in that position yet, which again, there's no shame, but that's a situation that you're in. We have to be pragmatic when it comes to our money. If that's the case, then you need to change your circumstances first before you start investing. We need to increase how we earn and improve how we control and contain our spending before we learn how to invest. Otherwise, investing is either impossible because you don't earn enough to invest, or it's impossible to maintain because you're disordered with your spending culture. So those are the two reasons I'd give. And both of those, at least the spending culture can be fixed inside a few hours with the right guidance. The earning enough for a livable wage is another story. That's that's a difficult circumstance. So, Alice, that's what I would say. If you could fix your spending culture, most likely you put yourself in a position to start investing. And everything else is just an excuse. Thank you for that question.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

We have our second question from Brian in telecommunications from Kampala. I've been waiting for the economy to become more stable before investing because I'm worried about putting my money into the market at the wrong time. Is it better to wait for conditions to improve, or should someone like me just begin anyway?

SPEAKER_01 19:53

What an excellent question, Brian. When is the right time to invest in the stock market? Because volatility makes us feel nervous. From the nature of this question, I'd suggest that it might not be a very good time for you individually to invest in the market, in the stock, in stocks. If you are considering volatility as a reason not to invest, I'd suggest that you might not be ready to invest for yourself yet. You might want to invest in your knowledge of investing. So your strategic approach to how to grow your money on the market. Uh, I'd say that would be the first place to go. Or take that money if you're willing, take that money and uh put it in the hands of a trusted regulated uh advisor and or a fund manager and have them manage it for you. Because a volatile market, an unstable market, is the reason why people make money on the market. Okay, is the reason why people who know what they're doing make money on the market. Okay, so what I'd suggest you do is that you might want to become more informed. You know, one of the reasons that we could procrastinate when it comes to investing is that I want to know absolutely everything. And I often compare investing to learning how to drive a car. Right? You don't have to, as a driver, as a licensed driver of a vehicle, you don't have to know absolutely everything about an automobile in order to drive it and to operate it safely on the public roads. What you need to know is how to use a vehicle. You need to be licensed to actually use the core functions of a vehicle as a driver. So you need to know how to steer, you need to know the rules of the road, you need to have to read road signs, you need to know how to manage speed. And use your brakes and and fuel the car and uh and make sure the oil and the air in your tires are oil in your engine system. Your your engine system is lubricated. You need to know how to maintain a vehicle and you need to know how to use it on the road. But you don't have to be a doctor, a mechanic of a car mechanic. You don't have to be able to build a car from scratch in order to use a car. And I use this analogy as well when we're talking about investing. You don't need to know absolutely everything there is to know about investing, but you need to know how to safely navigate the markets productively. No, safely is not really the right word. Productively, constructively navigate, use investments to generate income. And that is like learning how to drive. So you can either have somebody drive you, like uh a fund manager, like an advisor, um, or you can learn how to drive yourself. You can have somebody teach you how to drive so you can drive yourself. So that's what I would say. I'd say don't rush into it. Investing is risky in the sense that if you are unsophisticated, uninformed, and your drivers are your thoughts about an investment and your feelings about an investment, but not technical analysis and understanding of the markets, then I would suggest that uh it would not be a good time for you to start investing just yet. I hope that makes sense. But a very, very good question.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

We have our last question from Grace, a secondary school teacher in Nairobi. I often feel embarrassed that I'm only now thinking seriously about investing because many of my friends started years ago. Sometimes that embarrassment makes me delay even more because I feel so far behind. How do you overcome the regret of starting late and focus on making progress from where you are today?

SPEAKER_01 23:57

I think that's a beautiful question. It's a beautiful question, Grace. We all have our hangups. Um, but the way to deal with the hang-up of taking a long time to start is to start, right? Like I said, you can go and open an account, go have a conversation with uh a trusted person. You're listening to a podcast like this one, but listening alone isn't action. Listening is learning. What I'd suggest you do is start. Go to a broker, a licensed broker, and open an investment account and take five to 10% of your income after you've controlled your spending to put it into that, into that uh brokerage account, right? Put that into a fund. Um, so that you can you can actually do something. You're going to learn as you go. So you wouldn't be taking any unnecessary risk by putting a little bit of your money each month, but consistently in building a culture of sending a little bit of your money each month to um to an investment account with somebody who is licensed, somebody who is regulated, somebody who can be trusted with uh with years of reputation, reputational value. And have your money grow that way. I think that's as you begin. You are no longer held back by the fact that you haven't begun. So start there and then see where that goes. As you learn more, you do more. Do something. Start somewhere. Open a savings account, right? Put some money away as you're figuring out what you're going to do. Open a unit trust or a mutual fund account and send money there automatically every month. You're doing something. And doors will open when you've put yourself in a position to start doing something because you're going to put yourself in places where you interact more with other people who are doing something. Learn from them, interact with them, get best practices from them, read, watch, but then act. Act. It's not only about learning, it's more than anything about doing. Excellent question. Thank you so much for that and for these questions. Grace, that was a wonderful question. Get started. Do something right away. Today. Thank you all for listening to the Money Blueprint Podcast. I've been your host, Isaac Nhusi, and we will see you next week right here. 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_00 26:50

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.