In ancient times, there was an emperor who loved everything new.
One day, he became obsessed with a game called "chess" and became fascinated by it.
To reward the inventor of the game, he decided to fulfill one of the inventor's wishes.
The desire of the inventor was simple, he wanted a few grains of rice.
But this is not an ordinary few grains of rice, but on the chessboard, put 1 grain in the first square, double it to 2 grains in the second square, double it to 4 grains in the third square, and so on until the entire board is filled.
When the Emperor heard this wish, he secretly rejoiced in his heart, and felt that it was a very cheap reward.
But as the inventor began to place rice grains on the chessboard, the emperor soon realized that his decision could have unimaginable consequences.
When the 8 grids in the first row are full, the number of rice grains is quite controllable.
But when the inventor began to place the second row, the number of rice grains began to increase dramatically.
Small piles of rice quickly multiplied and became small bags, medium bags, and then large bags.
By the time the second row was also full, the emperor had already owed the inventor 32,768 grains of rice, and nearly half of the checkerboard was still empty.
The emperor realized his mistake, and he summoned the most intelligent mathematicians in the country, hoping that they would help him calculate how many grains of rice he owed to the inventor.
After several discussions and calculations, mathematicians came to an astonishing conclusion: on a 64-grid chessboard, the number of grains of rice per grid multiplied, and the final total reached 180 billion trillion grains of rice, which is equivalent to 10 times the total number of grains of rice in the world.
This story is not only a story about ancient emperors and clever inventors, but also a vivid fable about compound interest.
Compound interest, a common concept in the financial world, is presented here in an intuitive way.
Compound interest, in simple terms, is the regeneration of interest into interest.
In this story, each bar contains twice as many grains of rice as the previous one, which is the principle of compound interest.
When the time is long enough and the base is large enough, the power of compound interest becomes amazing.
Just like the grains of rice on the chessboard, from the first few grains to the last 180 billion trillion grains, this growth process is jaw-dropping.
This story teaches us that compound interest is not just a financial concept, it is also a way of thinking.
Just like the fold of a piece of paper in half, each time it doubles the previous result;
Just like a snowball, the snowball sticks to more and more snow and gets bigger and bigger, and the bigger and bigger snowball can stick to more and more snow, and so on, the snowball will be unimaginably large.
In our lives, whether it is study, work or investment, we can use the principle of compound interest to achieve a leap from small to large through continuous accumulation and hard work.
Don't underestimate 1 hour of study a day, it is 7 hours in a week, and an extra day in a month.
Remember the principle of compound interest, and in the days to come, no matter what challenges you face, you must have patience and perseverance, because the power of compound interest is often hidden in the depths of time, waiting for us to discover.