If you have ever wondered why the rich always get richer the reasons may surprise you. It often comes down to two things.

 

1. They spend less than they earn
2. They earn interest on top of interest (compound interest)

 

The first reason is quite obvious. If they spend less than they earn then they will always have more money. Hence, they will always get richer. The second reason more or less turbo charges the first reason. Say for instance you have $10,000 in an investment account. If that account has an interest rate of 10% then after one year you will have $11,000. If you don’t spend any of that money, after two years you would expect to have $12,000 after the interest is applied. However, you will actually end up with $12,100. This is because you have earned interest on top of interest. I.e. the 10% interest was actually applied to the $11,000. This is an example of Compound Interest. Now I bet you are thinking ‘so what. I only earned $100 more than I expected’. And that is correct, but what you need to consider is the long term effects of that extra money being compounded. The figures below show what would happen to that $10,000 if it was invested for different lengths of time at a 10% interest rate. Read more

 

• 10 years = $25,937
• 25 years = $108,347
• 50 years = $1,173,909
• 100 years = $137,806,123

 

As you can see the amounts of money increase by a staggering amount over time. However, realistically, you are unlikely to invest your money for 50 or 100 years unless you are particularly keen on your descendants. If however you were spending less than you earn and you also invested say $500 per month on top of that original one off $10,000 investment, your money would grow as follows.

 

• 10 years = $126,742
• 25 years = $730,393
• 50 years = $8,535,637
• 100 years = $1,009,366,604

 

You are reading that correctly. After 50 years you would have over 8 million dollars, and after 100 years you would have over one billion dollars! This is not a trick. The maths is accurate. What is even more amazing is the huge effects a few small changes can have can have on the outcome e.g. If you use a 12% interest rate as opposed to a 10% interest rate in the example above, your money would grow as follows:

 

• After 10 years = $143,195 – this is 13% more than before ($126,742)
• After 25 years = $1,022,004 – this is 40% more than before ($730,393)
• After 50 years = $18,226,138 – this is 114% more than before ($8,535,637)
• After 100 years = $5,282,730,057 – this is 423% more than before ($1,009,366,604)