Compound growth rewards time far more than it rewards the amount you start with. Money invested earns returns, and then those returns earn returns — so the earliest dollars do the heaviest lifting. Waiting a few years to start doesn't cost you a few years of growth; it quietly removes the most powerful, longest-compounding years from the front of the timeline.
Because growth compounds. A dollar invested at 25 has decades to double, double again, and again. The same dollar invested at 35 skips one of those doublings entirely — and the doubling you skip is the biggest one, near the end. That's why someone who invests modestly but early often ends up ahead of someone who invests far more, later.
Partly, but you're fighting the math. To match an early starter you usually have to contribute dramatically more, because you no longer have the years that did the work for free. Time is the one input you can't buy back later.
Start now with whatever you can, even if it's small. Consistency and time beat timing and size. The best day to start was years ago; the second best is today — and that's not a motivational poster, it's just how compounding arithmetic works.