A penny doubled

[Dare]

July 10th, 2006 by Alan Yu

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A few years back I was having a conversation with some people on how whenever you decide to invest in something for the long term, you should always think ahead on what would be the best choice in the long run while having persistence to follow through with it. The scenario was that if you were given a choice to receive one million dollars in one month or a penny doubled every day for 30 days, which one would you choose? When I first heard this, I knew that the penny doubled everyday must have been the better choice to go with as it was a little obvious to me that it had to be a trick question of some sort. But how much better would it be was not something that I knew immediately. So to demonstrate this, it was actually written out with all the calculations and it turned out to something like this:

Day 1: $.01
Day 2: $.02
Day 3: $.04
Day 4: $.08
Day 5: $.16
Day 6: $.32
Day 7: $.64
Day 8: $1.28
Day 9: $2.56
Day 10: $5.12
Day 11: $10.24
Day 12: $20.48
Day 13: $40.96
Day 14: $81.92
Day 15: $163.84
Day 16: $327.68
Day 17: $655.36
Day 18: $1,310.72
Day 19: $2,621.44
Day 20: $5,242.88
Day 21: $10,485.76
Day 22: $20,971.52
Day 23: $41,943.04
Day 24: $83,886.08
Day 25: $167,772.16
Day 26: $335,544.32
Day 27: $671,088.64
Day 28: $1,342,177.28
Day 29: $2,684,354.56
Day 30: $5,368,709.12

Quite a big difference once you look at it as you would be getting over 5 million dollars with the penny doubled everyday for 30 days route. The funny thing when I look at this is how it is almost like starting a business and trying to make a profit. In the beginning you struggle a lot to get things going and afterwards once it reaches to a point it just takes off smoothly. How does that analogy go again……it is something like starting a business is like a rocket ship taking off into space. You spend 80% of your fuel during take off and once it reaches a certain point it flies smoothly with minimal consumption.