Albert Einstein probably never said,
- “Compound interest … one of man’s greatest inventions.”
- “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.”
- “Compound interest … the greatest mathematical discovery of all time”
- “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.”
At least, despite all of the appearances of these and similar quotes attributed to the great physicist in modern personal finance literature (and all I’ve seen were published long after Einstein’s departure from this sphere), I’ve never seen any that had a proper citation.
The formula used to calculate the future value of an investment with compound interest is pretty cool. Maybe that’s what Einstein was talking about. But I digress.
While there’s a lot wisdom in those (probably) spurious “Einstein quotes”, and I especially like the last one, here’s another saying about compound interest that I like even more (and I don’t know who said it):
Compound interest can either work for you or against you. You decide.
Borrow money and you’re in debt. If things go as planned, you pay all of the interest and part of the principal in a given month. (Of course, you should pay more than just whatever part of the principal is required by the lender. You should pay more, using the snowball method, so you can get out of debt as quickly as possible.) But if don’t manage to pay all of the interest you owe in a given month, then that interest is added to the principal. Let that happen and you owe more than you initially borrowed. Then you owe interest on the interest! That’s compound interest working against you, whether it’s a loan against your car or just your signature. Another reason to avoid debt.
But:
Put your dollars into a good investment. They earn more dollars. Then put those dollars you earned into the same investment. They will earn even more dollars along with the dollars that were invested first. It goes on forever. That’s what’s so powerful about it.
In The Richest Man in Babylon, Algamish says it this way:
Every gold piece thou keepeth is a slave to work for thee.
Every copper it earns is its child that also can work for thee.
If thou wouldst become wealthy, then thou must keep and save.
And every coin thou keepest must work and earn, and their children must also work and earn, that all may help to give thee the abundance thou dost crave.
