Why to invest money?

Investing to me, is focused primarily on making my own money (work harder, and) make more money for me. It is clearly about long term financial goals. As I started reading up and thinking more about building long-term capital, certain simple why invest basics became very very clear to me.

Time Value of Money

Like most things in life, the early bird catches the worm! I understood I was already late into the game. Realised I could never play catch up - even if I doubled the stakes - compared to having started just 10 years earlier.

Consider the graphic below. Suppose you start early at age 20, invest Rs.20,000 yearly for 10 years in a safe government-backed instrument like PPF (Public Provident Fund) and forget about it-just let it lie in the bank till retirement. And somone who wakes up somewhat later in life, at age 31, and starts investing double that amount Rs.40,000 every year for 30 years, till he reaches the age of 60.
In following table we will see that At age 60 You, the Early Starter would have invested just Rs. 200,000 and seen your investment grow to ~Rs. 3.4 million, and seen a return of 16x. Someone like me who woke up later, will have invested a not inconsiderable Rs. 1.2 miliion, but seen only a 3x return!

Wished I could start the game all over again? You bet, I did! Understood perfectly this aspect of time value of money or what is also called the power of compounding. The longer your money remains invested, the better it works for You! Why Invest, became a no-brainer.

By now my mind had started ticking! Hey wait, what if I could make my money work just a bit faster?

	Early	Starter	Newly	Aware
Age	Yearly	Cumulative	Yearly	Cumulative
Yrs	Investment	Total	Investment	Total
PPF Interest Rate				8%
20	20,000	21,600
21	20,000	44,928
22	20,000	70,122
23	20,000	97,332
24	20,000	126,719
25	20,000	158,456
26	20,000	192,733
27	20,000	229,751
28	20,000	269,731
29	20,000	312,910
30		337,943
31		364,978	40,000	43,200
32		394,176	40,000	89,856
33		425,710	40,000	140,244
34		459,767	40,000	194,664
35		496,548	40,000	253,437
36		536,272	40,000	316,912
37		579,174	40,000	385,465
38		625,508	40,000	459,502
39		675,549	40,000	539,462
40		729,593	40,000	625,819
41		787,960	40,000	719,085
42		850,997	40,000	819,812
43		919,077	40,000	928,597
44		992,603	40,000	1,046,085
45		1,072,011	40,000	1,172,971
46		1,157,772	40,000	1,310,009
47		1,250,393	40,000	1,458,010
48		1,350,425	40,000	1,617,851
49		1,458,459	40,000	1,790,479
50		1,575,136	40,000	1,976,917
51		1,701,146	40,000	2,178,270
52		1,837,238	40,000	2,395,732
53		1,984,217	40,000	2,630,590
54		2,142,955	40,000	2,884,238
55		2,314,391	40,000	3,158,177
56		2,499,542	40,000	3,454,031
57		2,699,506	40,000	3,773,553
58		2,915,466	40,000	4,118,637
59		3,148,703	40,000	4,491,328
60		3,400,600	40,000	4,893,835
Totoal	200,000		1,200,000
Return at 60 years age of both
Total Invested (Rs)		200000		1,200,000
Investment Gains(Rs)		3200600		3,693,835
Investment Returns (Rs)		16		3