By Erastus Kalenga Hamunjela
In many cases people think investing requires a huge amount of money to start, that you have to be rich to buy shares in companies or to open a unit trust account.
So they say the same thing: I do not earn enough to invest. But it is not about how much you have, it is about researching and planning.
You can buy shares with as little as N$5, and you can open a unit trust account with as little as N$300 as a lump sum and N$100 a month. It all depends on the provider or broker you choose.
So let me answer the question directly, with real numbers rather than encouragement. How far can a small amount actually go? And I mean small. Not N$5,000 a month, just N$100 a month, roughly the price of a beer or a small lunch.
What we are talking about here is long-term investing. Money you put away for years, or for a child from birth, and leave alone to grow. So we are talking about growth investments, like a global share index or a growth-oriented unit trust.
Let’s say you want to buy shares, which you can do as a Namibian through a platform like EasyEquities, where there is no minimum starting capital.
You decide to invest in an ETF tracking the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is an index of the 500 largest listed companies in the United States, names like Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, so when you buy an ETF that tracks it, you are effectively investing in all of them at once.
We use it here because it is one of the most widely held, well understood investments in the world, and it gives you instant diversification rather than betting on a single company.
You start with a small lump sum of N$300 and add N$100 a month, and because your income grows over time, you increase that monthly amount by 5% each year. The S&P 500 has averaged around 10% a year over the long run, so watch what time does to it. After ten years you would have about N$26,000.
After twenty years, roughly N$110,000. After thirty years, around N$362,000. And after forty years, over N$1 million. Across those forty years you would have contributed only about N$145,000 of your own money.
Everything else, close to N$940,000 of it, was created by growth you did nothing to earn except stay invested. That is how compounding works, and now imagine if you had opened this for your child from birth.
Now let’s say you choose a growth-oriented unit trust instead, which you can do with many providers in Namibia, at an average closer to 12% over the long run. Remember this is a growth-oriented fund, which carries more risk, but because you are investing for the long term you have enough time to let the market recover from its bad years. Using the same N$300 lump sum, the same N$100 a month, and the same 5% yearly increase, it grows to about N$139,000 over twenty years, roughly N$533,000 over thirty years, and an extraordinary N$1.88 million over forty.
So again, imagine opening this for your child. This is how you install good financial habits into the next generation. This is how you build wealth and free the next generation from starting with nothing.
The reason many people never do this is not money. It is discipline. Investing requires financial discipline, just like going to the gym. It asks you to be consistent and patient.
I know that fifteen or twenty years sounds far away, but trust me, unless you invest, you will not simply have that kind of money sitting somewhere one day. Put your N$100 to use, and your future self, or your children, will thank you.
Of course, if you can do more, the numbers climb with you. That same investment at 10% with N$500 a month becomes about N$1.13 million over thirty years, and N$1,000 a month becomes about N$2.26 million. But notice something. The N$100 example already did the most important job, which was to prove the door is open. Once you accept that N$100 works, everything above it is simply a matter of degree.
A few honest words, because numbers on a page are always cleaner than real life. These figures assume steady average returns, and real markets do not move in straight lines. Some years are strong, some are painful, and the averages only reveal themselves to those who stay invested through both.
Returns on offshore investments like a global share index also come partly from the rand and the Namibia dollar weakening over time, which has historically helped local investors but is not guaranteed to continue. And none of this is a promise. It is arithmetic, showing what is possible, not what is certain.
But here is what the arithmetic proves beyond argument. The amount you start with is far less important than you think. What’s more important is that you start, that you keep going, and that you give it time. A person investing N$100 a month for forty years will very often end up wealthier than someone investing far more who only begins in their fifties. Time, not size, is the real engine.
So the next time you catch yourself thinking you do not earn enough to invest, look again at what N$100 a month becomes. The barrier was never the amount. It was the waiting. Build the habit, stay consistent, and put that N$100 to work.
This is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
