In most cases a little means a lot. A little cyanide does a lot. It will kill you! In the olden days, hitting a baseball a tiny bit more often would double your income. A pinch of salt makes a bland dish come to life. It’s that tiny little extra that makes it all work, the difference between success and failure.
Double a penny each day and continue doing it for only 30 days and what happens? .02, .04, .08, .16, .32, .64, 1.28, 2.56, 5.12, 10.24. By the tenth day you’ve gotten $20.47 if you add it all up.
Little Johnny got up one morning and got into his sharebuilder.com account. He found he had 500 dollars saved up. For 20 bucks commission he found he could buy a 1000 shares of Luminent Mortgage stock for 280 bucks and then 5 minutes later offer to sell it at 325 bucks. Getting it sold quickly little Johnny put 25 bucks in his pocket.
Doubling on you get 20.48, 40.96, 81.92, 163.84, 327.68, and 655.36. Little Johnny was able to do this all because he stopped buying his daily candy bar and instead began putting the money into his sharebuilder savings account. You see, he was putting $ 0.95 into the vending machine each day so that he could enjoy his empty calories and get 20 seconds of sweet joy.
$1,310.72, $2,621.44, $5,242.88, $10,485.76, $20,971.52, $41,943.04, $83,886.08, and then $167,772.16. When he heard the story of the Doubling Penny he realized that in less than 2 years he would have enough money saved to buy a 1000 shares of a small obscure little stock that would actually fluctuate slightly every few minutes.
On the 25th day the doubling penny went from $167,772.16 on to become $335,544.32 and then $671,088.64. Little Johnny realized that even though his lucky penny really couldn’t do that in real life his $0.95 candy machine money could in reality grow to a thousand bucks in 3 short years.
On the 28th day Mr. Penny would have grown to $1,342,177.28 and on the 29th becoming $2,684,354.56 to finally becoming $5,368,709.12. Little Johnny was blown away by the fact that if he could earn 25 bucks from a 1000 shares he could earn 50 by buying 2000 shares. This meant he could double his money by the 4th year all from his candy bar money.
Adding up each day’s penny money we see that 30 days worth of doubling adds up to over ten million dollars. Mr Wizard looked into his crystal ball and saw that Little Johnny grew up to be a janitor at the local elementary school. He wasn’t very smart and well, he really did enjoy tidying up the school house. As he got older he retired.
At 65 years old, Johnny reclines back in his easy chair. “I think I’ll have a candy bar,” he muses to himself. As he slowly munches away he opens up his Sharebuilder statement and smiles. “Ahhh. $65,493,841.37. “Life is beautiful. I am the richest janitor in the world!”
You see ladies and gentlemen, you do not need to have a high I.Q. or a high paying job. Just the little act of putting away an awfully small amount of money can yield you an incredible future. Yes, it is possible.
Pete Casanova
Tags: budget, invest, money, retirement, rich, rule of 72
