It’s easy to say “grain as late as possible”, but it’s more informative to list the ways that you can do it wrong. Here is a quick list of things not to do to grain:
Never grain before a blur.
Never grain before a grade.
Never scale the grain.
Never animate the grain separately from the clip.
Never grain before a tracker.
These rules can all be broken if you have a really, really good reason, but they hold true 99% of the time.