What does $200 a month turn into?
Small amounts, given enough time, turn into numbers that surprise people. Type in your own and watch the snowball build year by year — and spot the year growth starts adding more than you do.
| Year | You put in | Growth | Balance |
|---|
Why 11%? It's roughly what the S&P 500 — the 500 biggest US companies — returned per year on average over the last 30 years, with dividends reinvested and before inflation. The average hides wild years: some up more than 30%, some down more than 30%. Past returns don't predict future ones, so try 5% or 7% too and compare.
How it works: each month, the balance grows by one twelfth of the yearly rate, then your monthly amount is added. Growth earns growth — that's the "compound" part. The rate is whatever you type: real returns change every year, can be negative, and are never guaranteed. This is math, not a forecast.
Why the last years do the heavy lifting
Look down the "Growth" column. Early on, almost all of the balance is money you put in. Later, growth starts to outpace your deposits — because it's earning on a bigger and bigger pile. That's why time matters more than almost anything else in this math, and why starting earlier changes the end number so much.
The catch nobody puts in the headline
Compounding only works on growth you keep. One big loss resets the snowball — a 50% drop needs a 100% gain just to get back to even (see the loss recovery calculator). That's why, in trading, the first skill isn't finding winners. It's protecting what you have: small, fixed risk on every trade. More in risk management for beginners.
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