The short answer
Yes. Start now. The market might drop next month — it might also rip higher. No one knows. What we do know, from almost a century of market data, is that the longer your money is invested, the more reliably it grows. Time in the market beats timing the market, and it is not close.
Why most advice on this is unhelpful
Turn on financial news and you will find a pundit explaining exactly why right now is either a terrible or amazing time to invest. They have to fill airtime. Their job is not to be right — their job is to sound confident. In the background, actual research on market timing consistently shows the same thing: the average investor who tries to time entries and exits significantly underperforms the investor who just kept buying on a schedule.
This is one of the most studied behavioral failures in all of investing. People sell during crashes when they should be buying, and buy during booms when they should be quiet. And every time, they feel like they are being smart. The feeling of certainty is not information.
The math that actually matters
Imagine two people, both earning $60,000 a year. Person A starts investing $300 a month at age 25. Person B waits until age 35 because they want to make sure the timing is right. They both invest the same $300 monthly after that. At age 65, assuming roughly 7% average annual returns, Person A ends up with somewhere around $720,000. Person B ends up with around $340,000.
Ten years of "waiting for the right moment" cost Person B more than $380,000. That is not a rounding error. That is a whole second house.
The math is the same at any income level. The variable that moves the needle most is time, not market timing. A person investing $100 a month starting today outperforms a person investing $500 a month starting a decade from now — in nearly every historical scenario. The dollars you put in early have 30 or 40 years to compound. The dollars you put in late have a handful.
Your specific situation matters
Some places where "start now" needs a footnote:
If you have high-interest debt (credit cards, payday loans), that debt is effectively a guaranteed negative return. Crush it first or alongside, before you get aggressive with investing. Nobody is beating a 23% APR with an index fund.
If you do not have at least a small emergency fund — even $500 to $1,500 — build that first. Otherwise your first truck repair sends you right back to the credit card, and you have made zero net progress.
If you are about to make a major life move (buy a house, change careers, go back to school), money you will need in the next 1-2 years should not go into the market. That is not "timing the market." That is a different job for a different dollar. Savings accounts and CDs handle short-term goals.
If the only reason you are hesitating is because the market "feels high" or "feels scary" — that is emotion, not information. Start anyway. Start small. Keep going.
What I would actually do if I were starting over
I would pick a brokerage that does not charge me for the privilege of existing, set up an automatic transfer of whatever amount does not hurt — $50 a paycheck, $100, $250, whatever the number is that I can sustain — and have it buy a broad, low-cost index fund every time.
I would not watch the balance for the first two years. I would not try to add more during dips or hold off during rallies. Automatic, boring, on a schedule. That is dollar-cost averaging, and it is the single best tool any beginner has against their own timing instincts.
After a couple of years, the habit is locked in. The account has some real money in it. The urge to "pick the right time" starts to feel silly, because the machine is already working. Every paycheck buys some shares. Some weeks the price is lower, some weeks higher. The average over time is what matters.
Common mistakes
Mistake one: waiting for a crash to buy. This sounds smart. It is actually a trap. Markets can rally for years before they crash, and by the time the crash comes, the price is often still above where you started waiting. Ask anyone who sat in cash from 2010 to 2020 waiting for the "next crash" — they are still waiting.
Mistake two: going all-in with a lump sum the first time you hear a hot take on finance. If you have a large chunk of cash (a tax refund, an inheritance, a bonus) and want to invest it, spreading it across several months is usually easier on the nerves than dumping it in at one moment.
Mistake three: stopping contributions when the market drops. This is the most expensive mistake in investing. A market drop is a sale on the same assets you were going to buy anyway. People who keep buying through downturns do measurably better than people who pause.
The bottom line
Start now, start small, and automate it. Nobody times the market consistently, including the people paid to try. The one thing that separates successful long-term investors from everyone else is that they started — and they kept going when it got uncomfortable.