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A woman who became financially independent in her 30s shares what she’d do differently if she were starting over from scratch
Though she became financially independent at 38, Maggie Tucker wishes she would have invested more instead of just saving.
By Liz Knueven
Atlanta native Maggie Tucker, who is the co-host of Friends on Fire, a podcast about financial independence and early retirement, became financially independent herself at age 38.
But looking back, there’s one thing she wishes she’d done differently on the road to financial independence, she told Insider.
Instead of just saving, she wishes she’d invested
Most of Tucker’s early journey was about saving, but she wishes she’d put money into investments, too.
“I was late to investing,” Tucker told Insider. “Though I saved a lot, I literally kept it sitting in cash for years.”
There is, of course, a big difference between investing and saving. Money that’s invested is able to grow more than money that’s simply saved. In a savings account, money can only grow at a given interest rate, an average of 0.04% in a typical savings account, while the average stock market return for the last 10 years is 9.2%.
