The Fiscal Factor

If someone told you that you could turn a handful of kernels into a pot bursting with popcorn, or roll a tiny snowball into an avalanche, you’d probably think it sounds like magic. Yet, this same quiet magic exists in the world of money , and it’s called compounding. They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is wealth. 

Albert Einstein famously called compounding the “eighth wonder of the world.”

Think about popcorn. At first, you stare at a pot of corn kernels sitting on the stove, feeling kind of stupid because nothing’s happening. But then, pop!  one kernel explodes, and then another, and then a frenzy of pops until the whole pot is overflowing. Thats how compounding feels.

Imagine you are 50 years old and you check your investment portfolio and the number staring back at u is 10 crore. Meanwhile, the average man in India earns around 9.45lakh of income annually. Yet, you have built wealth that only people can dream of.  How did u get here? Compounding. At 21, when you started earning you made a decision to invest 15,000 rupees every month with an average annual return of 12% , instead of spending it on some overpriced coffee or dinners and things you don’t really need. 

This is the magic of compound interest.

Imagine starting with a tiny snowball at the top of a hill. At first, it’s so small you wonder if it’s even going to make a difference. But as it rolls, it picks up more snow, gets heavier, moves faster, and before you know it, it’s racing downhill like an unstoppable force. That’s exactly how compounding works with money, it feels slow and almost invisible at first, but over time, it builds up and becomes something way bigger than you ever expected.

Many think, “I’ll start investing when I earn more.” But the secret isn’t having more money, it’s having more time. 

Warren Buffett is worth over $130 billion today. But what most people don’t know is that 99% of that money came after he turned 50. Why? Because he started investing at age 11 and let compound interest do the work.

The biggest challenge with compounding is patience. In the beginning, it feels like nothing’s happening, and that’s when most people give up. It’s like watching a tiny snowball that doesn’t seem big enough to matter or staring at a pot of popcorn that refuses to pop. It’s frustrating. But if you hang in there and trust the process, that slow start eventually turns into something huge. The ones who wait are the ones who get to see just how powerful compounding really is.