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5 Costs Of Financial Procrastination
As long-time procrastinators will attest, this deferral of something that needs to be done is rarely an isolated instance, and it usually occurs habitually and for trivial reasons.
Procrastination can have a number of undesirable consequences, such as missed deadlines, wasted opportunities and sub-standard work as a result of insufficient time. The costs of procrastination, while substantial, are not easy to quantify.
But what can be quantified – at least to some extent – are the costs associated with putting off decisions and actions when it comes to personal finances and investments. Beware of such financial procrastination, because the price tag of needless delay in this crucial area can be steep.
Five Costs of Financial Procrastination
Broadly speaking, we can classify the costs of financial procrastination in five main areas:
1. Delays in investing
2. Putting off routine investment decisions
3. Tardiness in organizing personal finances
4. Late filing of taxes
5. Procrastinating on major financial decisions
1. Investing Delays
Delays in putting your money to work through investments can eventually end up costing you a lot. Consider the case of two hypothetical investors, Ms. A. Lacrity and Mr. D. Lay, who begin investing $2,000 annually at ages 30 and 40 respectively in a tax-deferred account such as anindividual retirement account (IRA). Lets assume that the long-term average annual rate of return earned by both investors on their investments is 5%. By the time they turn 60, A. Lacritys IRA would have grown to about $132,878, twice the size of D. Lays IRA, as Table 1 shows.
Annual Rate of Return 5.00% 5.00%
Period (years) 30 20
Annual Investment $2,000 $2,000
Total Investment (I) $60,000 $40,000
Total Value (V) $132,878 $66,132
Growth (V – I) $72,878 $26,132
Cost Of Procrastination $26,746
Of course, the fact that A. Lacrity invested an additional $20,000 over 10 years accounts for part of the difference in the two portfolios . But a substantial part of the difference – or $26,746 – can also be attributed to the compounding effect of the $20,000 for the additional 10 years that A. Lacrity has been investing. Another way of looking at this from D. Lays viewpoint is that this $26,746 in incremental growth represents his cost of procrastination for the 10-year period (recall that he commenced investing at age 40, rather than at 30).
Two points need to be noted here:
• The higher the rate of return, the higher the cost of procrastination – According to Ibbotson Associates, the compound annualized return for the S
