Compound Love

I’ve been doing something that irks me—tax prep. It’s not because I hate paying taxes (nor do I love it), it’s the number crunching, and categorizing, and seeing in black-and-white or red how much we spend at coffee shops. It’s just not my cup of tea—and it’s obvious that I drink a lot of tea, or I wouldn’t have such a big number after the budget category of coffee shops!

I’m also irked by the fact that I’m pretty darn close to getting social security, and that means I’m getting old. This inevitability prompts me to check more often on my retirement savings. I worry about the “market,” and I just wish it was as simple as hiding silver dollars or gold doubloons in the mattress or in a coffee can buried beneath the Mr. Lincoln rose bush.

I may sound grumpy, but I’m not. Partially due to my awesome yoga class where I was encouraged to choose a word that I would “embody” during 2024. What do I want to be? What do I want to offer to the world? One big, fat word popped into my head, and it wasn’t “wealthy,” since we’re talking about money. The word was LOVE…and then there came a caveat—“without judgment.” Now that’s a tall order.

Back to tax prep, and retirement, and that stodgy stuff. I’ve been delighted by the concept of compound interest. When you’re young it seems intangible, but when you’re getting a bit longer in the tooth one of the perks is that compound interest pays off. If you saved, you have a lot more money in the account than you put in, because you earned interest on your interest.

That got me thinking, since we are getting close to February 14, Valentine’s day. What if we could take love, that kind without judgment, put it out into the world, and as the hours, days, years, and decades go by it compounds?

The formula would look something like this: P (1+r/n)^{nt =} Total LOVE

P = the principal amount of love you start with

r = the interest percentage rate

n= how many times interest gets compounded in a period of time

t = how long of a time you invest your love

For example, if you invest 10,000 units of love into the world (P) and you earn 5% (r) on your investment annually (n), at the end of one year (n) your principal amount grows to 10,500 units. Year two, you now earn 5% on 10,500 which is another 525 units of love! After 10 years (t), you have a grand total of 16,288.95 units of love to share, give away, or reinvest in the bank of humankind.

And don’t forget, we are all capable of generating infinite amounts of love to invest. The more love we invest and the longer we live, can cause a snowball effect—an avalanche of love.

Compound love—it’s the investment opportunity of a lifetime, generating the kind of world I want to live in.