Every Excuse Not to Invest in XEQT (And Why None of Them Hold Up)

I have a confession: I used every single excuse in this article. Every. Single. One.

“I’ll start when the market dips.” “I don’t make enough money yet.” “I need to learn more first.” “I’ll wait until I pay off my car.” “The economy looks shaky right now.”

I had a rotating menu of perfectly reasonable-sounding reasons to delay investing. And every month I waited, I lost money I’ll never get back — not because the market crashed, but because compounding doesn’t wait for you to feel ready.

If you’re currently sitting on the investing sidelines telling yourself you’ll start “soon,” this post is my intervention. I’m going to walk through every common excuse, explain why it doesn’t hold up, and show you the real cost of waiting. Because I spent years in the excuse phase, and I don’t want you to make the same mistake.

Excuse #1: “I’ll Wait for the Market to Drop”

Translation: I want to buy low, so I’ll wait for a dip before investing.

This is the most seductive excuse because it sounds smart. You’re not avoiding investing — you’re being strategic! You’ll jump in when prices are lower and get more for your money.

Here’s the problem: the market goes up far more often than it goes down. In any given year, global stock markets are positive roughly 70-75% of the time. So while you’re waiting for a 10-20% dip, the market is more likely to be 10-20% higher by the time it happens.

And when the dip finally comes? You won’t buy. I guarantee it. When the market is actually down 20%, the headlines are terrifying. Everyone is panicking. Your gut screams “stay away.” The same instinct that told you to “wait for a dip” will now tell you to “wait for it to stabilize.” And then the recovery happens, prices climb back up, and you’re right back where you started — sitting on the sidelines waiting for the next dip.

The data: A study by Charles Schwab looked at five different investing strategies over 20-year rolling periods:

1. Perfect market timing (impossibly buying at the lowest point each year)
2. Investing immediately on January 1 each year
3. Dollar-cost averaging monthly
4. Investing at the worst time each year (the absolute peak)
5. Never investing (staying in cash)

The results? Immediate investing came in second — barely behind perfect timing. Even the worst possible timing (buying at the peak every single year for 20 years) dramatically outperformed sitting in cash. Time in the market beats timing the market, every single time.

The “dip” you’re waiting for might come tomorrow, or it might come in three years. Either way, you’ll have missed months or years of compounding while you waited.

Excuse #2: “I Don’t Have Enough Money to Start”

Translation: Investing is for people with big money. I’ll start when I have a real amount to invest.

This one held me back for embarrassingly long. I thought you needed thousands of dollars to start investing. I imagined suits and Bloomberg terminals and a minimum buy-in that was well beyond my budget.

Reality: You can buy XEQT on Wealthsimple with as little as $1. One dollar. The price of half a Tim Hortons coffee. There is no minimum investment, no account minimum, and no commissions.

But here’s the deeper point: the amount you start with matters far less than the habit of starting.

Someone who invests $50/month starting at age 22 will have more money at retirement than someone who invests $200/month starting at age 32. Not because $50 is a lot of money, but because those extra 10 years of compounding are irreplaceable.

Let me prove it:

Alex invested just $50/month but started early. Jordan invested four times as much per month but started 10 years later. And Taylor? Taylor started small at 22 and gradually increased — the best of both worlds.

The lesson: start with whatever you have. $25/month is better than $0/month. You can always increase later. But you can never get those early compounding years back.

Excuse #3: “I Need to Learn More First”

Translation: I don’t understand investing well enough. I should study before I put money at risk.

I respect this one because it comes from a good place — you want to be informed before making financial decisions. That’s mature and responsible.

But here’s the paradox: you already know enough to start.

The entire XEQT strategy can be summarized in three sentences:

1. Open a Wealthsimple TFSA
2. Set up a recurring purchase of XEQT
3. Don’t stop for 20+ years

That’s it. There’s no additional knowledge required to execute this strategy. You don’t need to understand P/E ratios, earnings calls, moving averages, options chains, or macroeconomic theory. XEQT handles all the complexity for you — it automatically buys and rebalances 12,000+ stocks across 49 countries.

The “I need to learn more” excuse is dangerous because there’s always more to learn. You can spend months reading books, watching YouTube videos, and scrolling Reddit threads — and still feel like you’re not ready. Learning becomes procrastination disguised as preparation.

Here’s what I’d recommend: start investing now AND keep learning. They’re not mutually exclusive. Put $50/month into XEQT today, and continue educating yourself as you go. Having actual money invested makes the learning far more relevant and motivating than studying in the abstract.

The best investors I know didn’t start because they felt ready. They started and then figured it out along the way.

Excuse #4: “I Should Pay Off My Debt First”

Translation: It doesn’t make sense to invest while I still owe money.

This one is partially valid — and that’s what makes it such an effective excuse. The answer depends entirely on what kind of debt you have.

High-interest debt (credit cards, payday loans): Pay it off first

If you have credit card debt at 19-22% interest, paying that off is the best investment you can make. No investment reliably returns 20%. Clear this debt before investing a dollar.

Medium-interest debt (car loans, personal lines of credit at 5-10%): It’s a toss-up

XEQT’s expected return (8-10%) is similar to or slightly above these rates. You could argue either way. I’d suggest splitting: make your debt payments AND invest a small amount in XEQT. This builds the investing habit while still reducing debt.

Low-interest debt (mortgage, student loans under 5%): Invest simultaneously

If your debt costs less than what XEQT is expected to return, the math favours investing. A $30,000 student loan at 4% interest costs you $1,200/year. That same $30,000 in XEQT (at 8% average) would earn about $2,400/year. You’re better off making minimum debt payments and investing the difference.

The trap: Many people use “pay off debt first” as a blanket rule and delay investing for years while they aggressively pay down a low-interest mortgage. Meanwhile, they’re missing out on years of compounding that would have earned far more than they saved in interest.

The nuanced answer: pay off high-interest debt immediately, and invest alongside everything else. Don’t let a 3% student loan prevent you from accessing 8%+ equity returns.

Excuse #5: “The Economy Looks Bad Right Now”

Translation: There’s too much uncertainty — trade wars, inflation, recession fears, geopolitical tensions. I’ll wait until things calm down.

I have news for you: things never calm down. There is always something to worry about. Always.

Let’s take a tour through history. At any point in the last 30 years, you could have found a perfectly reasonable reason not to invest:

If you had waited for “the coast to be clear” at any of these moments, you would have missed massive gains. And here’s the kicker: the people who invested during these scary moments did the best, because they bought at lower prices before the recovery.

The economy always looks uncertain. That’s normal. It’s the default state of the world. Waiting for certainty means waiting forever.

Excuse #6: “I’m Too Young — I’ll Start Later”

Translation: I have plenty of time. Investing can wait until I’m settled with a real career and income.

If you’re in your early 20s and thinking this, I need you to understand something: your 20s are the most powerful investing decade of your life. Not because you’ll invest the most money, but because you have the most time for compounding.

A dollar invested at age 22 has 43 years to compound before traditional retirement. At 8% returns, that single dollar becomes $27.37. The same dollar invested at age 32 becomes only $12.68. And at age 42, it becomes just $5.87.

Your twenties dollar is worth more than twice your thirties dollar, and nearly five times your forties dollar. Every year you delay, your money loses compounding power that can never be recovered.

I know your 20s are financially tight. Student loans, low starting salaries, expensive rent. You might genuinely only have $25 or $50 a month to invest. That’s fine. Start there. Because that $50/month at 22 becomes a habit that scales. By 28, you’ll be investing $300/month. By 35, maybe $800/month. But if you wait until 30 to even begin, you’ve lost eight irreplaceable compounding years.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. This cliche exists because it’s devastatingly true.

Excuse #7: “I’m Too Old — I Missed the Boat”

Translation: If I’d started 10 or 20 years ago, sure. But at my age, what’s the point?

The flip side of Excuse #6, and equally wrong.

If you’re 40, you have 25 years until traditional retirement. That’s plenty of time for XEQT to compound meaningfully. If you’re 50, you still have 15+ years — enough for your money to more than double.

Here’s what starting at 45 with $500/month looks like:

Starting at 45 and investing $500/month, you’d have nearly $300,000 by 65. That’s not “missing the boat” — that’s catching a later flight and still arriving at a very comfortable destination.

And remember: retirement isn’t a cliff. You don’t need to withdraw everything at 65. A well-invested portfolio can continue growing through your 60s, 70s, and beyond, providing income for decades. Someone who starts at 50 and invests for 30 years (to age 80) still benefits enormously from compounding.

The boat hasn’t left. There’s no boat. There’s a dock, and you can step onto it whenever you want.

Excuse #8: “I Don’t Trust the Stock Market”

Translation: Stocks are risky. I’ve heard stories of people losing everything. I’d rather keep my money safe.

I understand this fear completely. The stock market sounds like gambling if your only exposure is headlines about crashes and volatility.

But here’s what the headlines don’t tell you:

• The global stock market has never lost money over any 20-year period — ever, going back over a century
• Over rolling 30-year periods, the average return has been approximately 8-10% annually
• Even including every crash, every depression, every world war, every pandemic, and every financial crisis, the long-term trend is relentlessly upward

The risk of the stock market isn’t that you’ll lose everything. You literally cannot lose everything in a diversified fund like XEQT — that would require every company in every country on Earth to go bankrupt simultaneously. The real risk is short-term volatility: your portfolio will absolutely go down 10%, 20%, even 30% at some point. It might stay down for a year or two.

But if you don’t need the money during that dip — if your time horizon is 10, 20, 30 years — you ride it out. You’ve always been rewarded for patience. Always.

The real risk is not investing. Keeping your money in a savings account earning 2-3% while inflation runs at 2-3% means your purchasing power is stagnant. You’re not “keeping your money safe” — you’re watching it slowly become worth less every year. That’s the quiet, invisible risk nobody talks about at dinner parties.

Excuse #9: “My Friend Lost Money Investing”

Translation: I know someone who invested and got burned. I don’t want that to happen to me.

Let me guess what your friend did: they bought individual stocks, tried to time the market, invested in something a coworker recommended, or panic-sold during a dip. Am I close?

The vast majority of investing horror stories come from one of these mistakes:

• Concentrated bets: Putting a large percentage in one stock or sector
• Speculative assets: Crypto, meme stocks, penny stocks, SPACs
• Panic selling: Selling during a crash and locking in losses
• Leverage: Using borrowed money to invest

XEQT avoids all of these. You own 12,000+ stocks across 49 countries. No single company can tank your portfolio. You’re not speculating — you’re owning a slice of the entire global economy. And if you set up automatic contributions and resist the urge to sell during dips, you’ve eliminated the most common way people lose money.

Your friend didn’t lose money because “investing is risky.” They lost money because they invested badly. XEQT is designed to be un-screwup-able. Buy it. Hold it. Don’t touch it. The strategy is simple precisely because simplicity is what works.

Excuse #10: “I’ll Start in January” (or Monday, or Next Month)

Translation: I’m going to invest, just… not right now.

Ah, the procrastinator’s favourite. There’s something psychologically satisfying about picking a “clean” start date. New Year’s Day. The first of the month. Next payday.

But the market doesn’t care about your calendar. While you’re waiting for Monday, your money is sitting idle on Saturday and Sunday. While you’re waiting for January, you’re losing four months of potential growth.

Here’s a thought experiment: if someone offered you $25 to open an account today (which Wealthsimple literally does), and all it required was 15 minutes on your phone, would you say “I’ll do it in January”?

Every day you delay, you’re choosing to make your future self a little bit poorer. Not by a lot on any single day — but compounded over months and years of “I’ll start soon,” the cost is substantial.

The fix is embarrassingly simple: Open the app. Set up the account. Buy $25 worth of XEQT. You can figure out the details later — the optimal account type, the right monthly amount, the automation settings. None of that matters as much as simply starting.

Done is better than perfect. Today is better than January.

The Real Cost of Excuses

Let me put a dollar figure on procrastination. If you delay investing $400/month in XEQT by various lengths of time, here’s what it costs you by age 60 (assuming 8% average returns):

Waiting 5 years to start investing costs you nearly $145,000 in lost future wealth. Waiting 10 years costs over $364,000. These aren’t theoretical numbers — this is the compounding you’re choosing to forfeit every day you remain on the sidelines.

The 15-Minute Challenge

I’m going to end with a challenge. Right now — today — I want you to spend 15 minutes doing one of these things:

If you don’t have a Wealthsimple account: Open one. It takes 10-15 minutes. Fund it with any amount. Buy XEQT.

If you have an account but haven’t invested yet: Buy $25 of XEQT right now. Just $25. Feel what it’s like to own a piece of 12,000 companies.

If you’re already investing but have been meaning to increase: Bump your recurring contribution by $25/month. Set it up now before you close this tab.

If you’re invested but sitting on cash “waiting for a dip”: Move that cash into XEQT today. The dip may never come, and time in the market beats timing the market.

Every excuse on this list has one thing in common: it sounds reasonable in the moment but costs you real money over time. The market doesn’t care about your reasons for waiting. Compounding doesn’t pause while you get your act together. The only thing standing between you and a wealthier future is the decision to start.

So start.