Your £0 to £100,000 investment journey
The value of your investments and the income you receive from them can go up and down, and you may get back less than you invest. Any examples are for illustration purposes only.
Everyone starts from scratch. Whether you’ve just opened your investment account or are getting going again after tapping your holdings for a big purchase, we’ve all been there.
Probably the most daunting part is thinking about building up your pot, especially if there’s a long-term, meaningful investment goal to it all like funding a relaxing retirement. It’s easy to be flippant about sticking to investing regularly and not being overawed by the bigger picture (although that’s absolutely still useful guidance) so what does it actually take to build up to a big financial goal, say £100,000?
How realistic is hitting £100,000 by investing, how long would it take and how can you get there?
Compounding your way to £100,000
It’s an article on long-term investing so it’s pretty much the law that we have to mention compounding. Building interest on top of interest is the basis of all good long-term investing strategies so let’s start there. When we’re talking about investing in shares, this means either reinvesting the dividends that a company pays out, so that we get bigger dividends next time, or looking for companies that do the same with their profits internally - constantly pumping money back into the business to produce higher rates of return.
Read more:
Compound interest: the frenemy you need to know
Are you holding too much cash?
Inflation and investing to beat it
How do we feed the compound interest beast enough to hit the £100,000 mark though?
Here are three examples of imaginary investors all aiming to cross the £100k threshold. In each case, we’re focusing on one of the three tenets of compounding (time, investment amount, rate of return) to see how dialling them up and down could look in various circumstances. None of them are meant as a guarantee - after all, rates of return are never steady - rather, they’re illustrations that might help you work out if you’re on the right track or not.
1. Could time in the market help get to £100,000?
Let’s start with four investors, all investing £100 each month into a blend of assets that delivers a 5% annual return. Again, because we’re in Theory Land here, we can talk about consistent returns so remember the real world is rarely so kind. The only difference between our investors is the length of time they have to invest:
Investing £100/month over different time periods with a 5% annual return
The end result can be seriously significant thanks to the snowball effect of racking up growth upon growth. The longer you can give your investments, the greater the compounding impact can be.
2. Changing your investment amount to hit £100,000
So, we’ve had a look at the benefit of adding more time into the equation. Let’s level that playing field by giving three investors exactly 30 years each, so we can see what sort of effect increasing their regular investments can have:
Investing regular amounts over 30 years with a 5% annual return
It’s all too easy to say that more money makes you more money. If we had it available, we’d be investing it already. But, as our two examples show, if you don’t have the extra money right now, you might be able to make the most of more time in the market.
And the opposite is true - if you were able to invest £246.40 each month, still achieving a 5% annual return, you’d be able to shorten that timeframe, reaching £100,000 after 20 years.
Which leads us to our third variable: investment return.
3. Rates of return and their effect on hitting the £100,000 mark
It’s nigh-on impossible to accurately predict the future percentage return of any given stock. That’s not really what we’re talking about here though. When we’re planning a long-term investment journey, we’re normally more interested in the trade-off between risk and return, and an asset mix (taking into account stocks, bonds, real estate, cash and other assets) that suits how much risk we want to take, balanced with an acceptable level of return.
Adding the bonds of highly-rated governments to a portfolio of high-growth stocks might dampen the overall return prospects but might help you sleep better at night too. Getting the balance that suits us and our goals is important, as is making sure our asset blend has the potential to at least keep up with inflation. That means we’ll likely all have a different take on what proportion of assets make up a useful personal portfolio.
Going back to our baseline of investing £100 each month for 30 years, here’s how a range of portfolios achieving different rates of return could perform:
Investing £100/month over 30 years with different rates of return
For reference, the long-term average annual return for the S&P 500 Index (since 1957) is around 10% with the FTSE 100 delivering a total return of around 8% per year, from its inception in 1984 to 2024. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing though and investors have had to put up with bouts of volatility along the way. It’s a good example of what equity investors are willing to go through and how others will try to manage the interim ups and downs by complementing shares with other lower-risk assets.
Balance your way to £100k
The point of running these various simulations is to show that we need to have realistic visions of what we can achieve given how much we are willing to invest, how long we have and how much risk we can take. Are you happy to compromise and lengthen the journey? You might be able to reduce your risk or lower your regular investments. Happier with a higher-risk mix? That could mean you hit your goal earlier.
In the end, stock markets aren’t aware of our plans so there’s no guarantee that we’ll reach that £100,000 milestone. However, for whatever long-term financial goals you have in mind, make sure you’re factoring in the key components in a way that suits you before you start.
Discrete calendar year performance
| 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | |
| S&P 500 | 22.5% | 13.2% | 4.3% | 22.1% | 6.7% |
| FTSE 100 | 18.2% | 10.1% | 4.9% | 13.0% | 10.1% |
As at 2 June 2025. Source: FE Fundinfo. Past performance is not a reliable guide to future gains or indicative of future performance.
Sources: officialdata.org
Important information
When investing, your capital is at risk. The value of your investments, and the income you receive from them, can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invest. Forecasts aren’t a reliable guide to future results or returns.
Make sure to do your own research on what investments are right for you before investing or consider seeking expert financial advice. Please note that this article is meant for information and does not constitute any financial advice. This is not an offer, recommendation, inducement or invitation to buy, sell, or hold any securities, or to engage in any investment activity or strategy.
