According to Charlie Munger, you need $100,000 to get your investment portfolio multiplying. Naturally, this means saving $100k, as no one is likely to gift $100k to you. So, by definition, saving the first $100k is the most difficult proposition. So, who was Charlie Munger? Charlie was none other than the business partner of Warren Buffett, the famed investor.

From there according to Charlie, compound growth makes future gains easier to achieve. At a 7% return, saving $650 a month, it takes 9.5 years to save $100k. So I jumped on a compound interest calculator to test the theory and it indeed takes just over 9 years to save almost $100k. If I switch the calculator to 10 years, it works out at $78k for regular deposits and $34.5k in interest giving a $112.5k return.

So I cleared the calculator and added $112k and entered 25 years in, at year 23, the million dollar threshold was reached, so now I need to add the initial 10 years and at 33 years the target was reached. Ok, so now I have a baseline, I cleared the Moneysmart compound interest calculator and used a $650 a month deposit and 34 year range to find one million is achieved at the 33 year mark. So to put this into perspective, that is saving $162.50 a week for the next 34 years, that is not taking inflation into account either. So yeah, Charlie was right, the first $100k is the hardest and as long as you don’t give up and keep saving, you can get there.