What Doing Nothing Costs You: The Price of Keeping Money in a Chequing Account

It feels safe. Your money is sitting in your chequing account, untouched, not at risk. No market crashes to worry about. No complicated investments to research. Just $20,000 sitting right there, ready whenever you need it. But "doing nothing" with your money isn't actually doing nothing. It's making an active choice — and it's one of the most expensive decisions you can make.

The Illusion of Safety

Most chequing accounts pay zero interest. Some "high-interest" chequing accounts pay a fraction of a percent. For all practical purposes, money in a chequing account does not grow. At all. It just sits there, looking the same as the day you deposited it. And that feels safe. You can see the number. It doesn't go up or down. There's no volatility, no scary red numbers, no market crashes to stress about. But here's what most people don't realize: while your balance stays the same, the cost of everything around you keeps going up. Groceries, rent, gas, insurance — all of it rises with inflation. Your $20,000 buys less every single year. The number in your account doesn't change, but its real value is shrinking.

What $20,000 Actually Becomes

Let's compare two scenarios over 20 years. Person A keeps $20,000 in their chequing account. Person B takes the same $20,000 and invests it in a broad market index fund averaging 10% annual returns. Neither person adds another dollar. They both forget about it for two decades.

Person A still has $20,000 in their account. Looks the same, right? But adjusted for inflation at roughly 2.5% per year, that $20,000 now buys about what $12,000 would have bought 20 years earlier. They didn't just fail to grow their money — they actually lost about 40% of its purchasing power. Person B, meanwhile, turned $20,000 into $134,550. Even after adjusting for inflation, that's roughly $82,000 in today's dollars. Real wealth. Real growth. From the exact same starting amount.

The Hidden Tax: Inflation

Inflation is the silent tax on cash. It doesn't show up on a statement. There's no line item that says "purchasing power lost: $400." But it's happening every single day. At 2.5% inflation, your money loses about a quarter of its value every decade. In 20 years, it loses about 40%. In 30 years, over half. This means keeping large amounts of cash in a chequing account isn't just unproductive — it's actively destructive to your wealth. You're guaranteed to lose purchasing power, year after year, with zero chance of recovery. The stock market is volatile, yes. But over long time horizons, it has always grown faster than inflation. Cash has never done that. The "risk" of investing looks a lot less scary when you compare it to the guaranteed loss of doing nothing.

Doing Nothing Is Still a Decision

People often frame not investing as "not making a decision." But it is a decision. It's a decision to accept zero growth. It's a decision to let inflation erode your savings. It's a decision to trade $134,550 in potential wealth for the comfort of seeing an unchanged number in your bank app. Inaction feels neutral. But financially, it's one of the most costly choices you can make. Every year your money sits uninvested is a year of compound growth you can never get back. The market doesn't pause and wait for you to decide. Time keeps moving, and the gap between what your money is and what it could have been keeps getting wider.

What You Can Do Instead

Keep an emergency fund in your chequing or savings account — three to six months of expenses is the standard recommendation. Beyond that, money you won't need for five years or more should be working for you. Open an investment account (a TFSA if you're in Canada, or a tax-advantaged account in your country). Pick a simple, low-cost index fund. Set up automatic contributions if you can, even small ones. And then do the thing that feels hardest but matters most: leave it alone. You don't need to become a stock market expert. You don't need to watch CNBC or read financial reports. You just need to get your money out of the place where it's guaranteed to lose value and into a place where it has a chance to grow. The difference between doing something and doing nothing, over 20 years, is $114,550. That's the price of inaction. And it's a price nobody should pay.