Compound interest, in a square

Picture planting a tiny seed that grows into a tree, and then that tree drops seeds of its own. Your savings can work the same way, because money that earns money keeps growing by itself. That's compound interest, and it quietly makes more.

Here is the loop. You save a balance, the bank pays you interest, and that interest joins the balance. Next year you earn interest on the bigger pile, so the loop feeds itself and every turn gets a little larger.

Imagine two friends. Maya starts saving at twenty and stops at thirty. Leo starts at thirty and keeps going for decades. Surprisingly, Maya often ends up with more, because her money had extra years to snowball.

So let's put the whole idea together. Compounding needs one ingredient more than any other, and it isn't a big salary. Here's a question to test yourself. Why does starting early matter so much? Because time multiplies your money.