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It's coming up to your 25th Birthday and you're going to treat yourself to a new phone. That $1000 iPhone is looking very tempting. It's cool, it's a beautiful and stunning piece of technology and engineering. It screams; "BUY ME!"

There's also a perfectly reasonable $250 Android handset in the shop. It doesn't look quite as nice, isn't quite as fast and the photo quality isn't quite as good. It's just a $750 difference, right? Enough but not a massive amount. You can afford the iPhone.

It's coming up to your retirement and your 65th birthday and your pension and savings aren't what you hoped they'd be. You suddenly remembered that iPhone you bought when you were 25, long gone. You'd replaced it a couple of years later, and had probably gone through 30 different phones in the intervening years. Heaven knows how much you'd spent on the iPhone-go-round, a subscription service dressed us as a capital purchase, how you wish you'd saved the $750, if you'd only invested it how much more you'd have today.

But how much?

Let's have a look using the power of compound interest!

We have $750, invested for 40 years and making 5% per year, interest payable monthly, what do you think?

$5518 - Not bad. That iPhone was actually $5518 more than the Android phone

Hang on, imagine you'd been better at investing and got 10% interest per year, again, payable monthly.

$40,750 - Woah....that was one hell of an expensive decision you made all those years ago! Amazing, what that cool phone has cost you!

Now imagine if you'd staked that $750 in crypto that had earned you an equivalent annual percentage rate of 12% AND into that pot, you added a paltry $25 dollars a month, how much do you think you'd have at 65?

$383,105 - No shit.

Now obviously I haven't taken inflation into account but I simply wanted to show you why its so important, especially when you're young to think carefully about a purchase and how it is really going to cost in terms of your lifetime.

I don't want anyone to live like a miser for 40 years, that's insane. Live for the day but think hard about how you're going to live for the day when you're in the morrow!

Big business uses every psychological trick in the book to part you from your money. Earning money is difficult. Make it difficult to spend!

Don't forget.

CAPITAL = $750, ADD-IN $25 a month and keep going for 40 years.

At 10% interest, you'd have $198377, at 12% you'd have $383105 and at 13% you'd have $536681

How much did that iPhone cost you?

If you want to play with the numbers yourself, go here which is a simple compound interest calculator that anyone can use.