What the 2016 nostalgia trend can teach us about investing

By Staci West on 30 January 2026 in Basics

If you’ve been on social media in the past month then you know that everyone is saying the same thing: How was 2016 nearly ten years ago?

People are scrolling through old photos, old songs, old versions of themselves. There’s a strange mix of disbelief and nostalgia, remembering who you were, what your life looked like, how different everything felt.

And I can’t stop thinking: If ten years can disappear that quickly in our memories, what does that mean for how we think about money? Because in finance, ten years is considered “long-term” but, in life, it feels like a blink.

Who I was ten years ago

When I started at FundCalibre in 2018, one of the first things I did was write about my own learning journey, mainly because before that, I didn’t work in finance at all. So this feels like a good moment to take a little trip down memory lane.

Ten years ago, I was 23, living in London and working part-time as a personal assistant. In January, I handed in my dissertation, and by July I’d graduated with my master’s degree. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I got engaged and started planning a wedding. We had one dog, a small one-bedroom flat and what felt like a lot of responsibility for people who still felt very young.

Money was tight. We were living paycheque to paycheque, and opening the credit card bill each month was… an experience. Money felt stressful and emotional in a way I didn’t yet have the language for.

But when I look back now, that’s not what I remember most. I remember long walks with the dog, coffee dates and a home that felt full of possibility and potential. The stress was real, but it wasn’t the whole story.

How memory plays tricks on us (especially with money)

When we look back, our brains don’t replay life exactly as it was. We soften the edges. We compress time. We keep the highlights.

But ten years passes anyway. Whether we actively engage with our finances or not, time keeps moving. That 20-something version of me, stressing about credit card bills and trying to make everything work, is exactly why I wanted to design FundCalibre’s free money courses. I get it, because I’ve lived it.

The quiet power of small financial actions

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my time at FundCalibre, from expanding my own financial education, and from trying to help others do the same, it’s this: small really does become big.

If someone had started investing a small amount ten years ago, even £20 a month, it maybe wouldn’t have felt significant at the time. It might have felt almost pointless. A brunch a month. A few weekly coffees. Easy to dismiss. But over a decade, that money had time to compound. Your contributions could increase as income grew and markets would have had time to recover from setbacks.

Over the past ten years, global markets have quietly done what they tend to do over time. The MSCI World index returned around 267%. The S&P 500 did even more, returning roughly 285%. And closer to home, the FTSE 100 returned about 151%*.

Those numbers on their own can feel abstract, impressive, sure, but still a bit removed from real life. They don’t immediately translate into what this actually means.

With that in mind, below are some real examples of what investing in a fund actually looked like over the past decade. These are among some of the top-performing Elite Rated funds over the past ten years. The table shows two things: each fund’s cumulative return over that period, and what investing just £20 a month (£2,420 in total) could have grown into if you’d been investing consistently along the way**

At first glance, you might notice that the percentage returns and the final amounts in pounds don’t line up in the way you’d expect. Let me explain…

The cumulative return figure shows how a single lump sum invested at the start would have grown over time, riding all the ups and downs of the market. The £20/month figure, on the other hand, shows the value of investing regularly, month after month. That means money is being invested at market highs and market lows, smoothing out the journey over time. This is known as pound-cost averaging, and it’s how most people actually invest in the real world.

What this really highlights is the impact of consistency and time. Small, regular contributions quietly doing their thing in the background while life carries on.

Now, I’m not saying “you should have done this,” (because I didn’t) but it’s to say, look how much can happen while life is busy being life. Because no one in 2016 thought, “one day I’ll be nostalgic for this year.” And no one starting with £20 a month thinks, “this will matter.”

Until it does.

Future You is closer than you think

Why this matters — and what comes next

So, why am I rambling on about my younger self and own money journey? Because, this is exactly how we approach money in The Psychology of Money course.

Money decisions don’t happen in spreadsheets, they happen in real lives, during busy, stressful, joyful seasons we don’t realise we’ll one day miss. The course is built around understanding those moments, reflecting on them, and slowly changing how you relate to money — without judgement or pressure.

If looking back has helped you think differently about the future, you’ll feel at home here.

Ten years passes faster than we expect. But small awareness today can quietly change everything.

*Source: FE Analytics, total returns in pounds sterling, 28 January 2016 to 28 January 2026

**Source: FE Analytics, £20 monthly savings on 1st of the month, 29 January 2016 to 31 December 2025