Why starting a pension fund early matters more than how much you put in

Retirement contributions benefit from decades of compounding, which is why the number of years invested tends to matter more than the size of any individual contribution made later. A smaller amount started early has more time to compound than a larger amount started late.

This is a general principle about time horizons, not investment advice about any specific fund, provider, or asset allocation — those choices depend on your country, your employer, your risk tolerance, and rules that change over time, so they're deliberately outside the scope of this page.

This is also why Patrimony tracks retirement as its own account category, separate from liquid savings and other investments: it behaves differently (usually illiquid, long horizon, different rules), and mixing it into a single total would hide that.