How to build long-term wealth by investing little and often

At a glance

• A new survey by J.P. Morgan Personal Investing finds that most investors want to contribute over £1,000 per month towards their portfolios but fall short of this figure. They could start with lower contributions.
• Our wealth experts believe that investing smaller amounts more consistently can be a highly effective strategy for building towards long-term wealth goals.
• Investing £100 every month over the last 10 years into a global equity tracker would have made a significant difference to someone’s long-term wealth compared with staying in cash.
• Missing even a handful of monthly contributions over a decade can leave investors far short of their counterparts who invest every month.
• A monthly Direct Debit would make it easier to respectively build wealth and invest consistently, our survey respondents believe.

Investor ambitions outweigh reality

According to a new J.P. Morgan Personal Investing survey of 2,000 UK adults* – of which over 800 respondents were investors – 56% of investors contribute under £250 into their portfolio every month. But most want to invest at least £1,000 per month.

How much should you save before investing?

Setting aside £1,000 a month while adhering to other personal finance principles is a big ask, and isn’t possible for a lot of people. Before investing, it’s usually sensible to build a cash buffer, and we normally think it’s a good idea to be able to cover three to six months’ essential expenses in an easy-access account.

We think investors may be focusing more on how much they want to invest every month, and underestimating the power of consistency. Our research shows that only 27% of investors are regularly investing and could be missing out on the benefits of consistent contributions into their portfolio.

Doing what you can to keep up a regular investing schedule could make more of a difference than you realise.

Missed contributions add up

Had you invested £100 a month in a global tracker✝ for 10 years from May 2016, you could have accrued £23,826, according to our analysis of historical market data.

What’s more, the difference between investing consistently and missing even just a few contributions per year is stark. Over the 10 years to May 2026, an investor who missed four contributions a year would have been left with almost £8,000 less (£15,852) than the regular investor, despite only contributing £4,000 less over the period.

A regular cash saver, meanwhile – who’d contributed £100 every month over the same timeline into cash that tracked the Bank of England’s base rate – would be almost £10,000 short of the regular investor (see chart). This highlights the potential opportunity cost created by staying in cash, instead of investing in financial markets.

Source: J.P. Morgan Personal Investing. Past performance isn’t a reliable indicator of future performance. Calculations reflect nominal value (before inflation). No trading or platform costs included. ACWI management fee factored into account via Net Asset Value.

Investing £100 every month would represent a significant boost to the typical private pension in Great Britain. According to a study by the Office for National Statistics of household wealth in Great Britain, carried out from April 2020 to March 2022, the median savings total of adults with private pension wealth was £57,500.

“It can sometimes feel like a cliché when people say consistency is the key to forming good financial habits,” says Claire Exley, Head of Financial Advice and Guidance at J.P. Morgan Personal Investing.

“But it really is true,” she continues. “Good financial habits compound over time, work together and get you closer to your future money goals if you can stick to them. Regular investing is no different.”

With investing, it’s worth remembering that the value of your portfolio can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invest. The chart nevertheless gives us a helpful insight into how an investment portfolio would have performed over recent times.