quasify

JP isn’t the only one with numerical difficulties. Gail MarksJarvis either is horribly misquoted here or she’s as bad at math as she is at hyphenating last names.

"Here's how it works," she says. "Let's say you simply invest $200 this year, and nothing after that and you earn 10 percent on the money each year. At the end of the year you will have $220. That's $200, plus the $20 you earned." But here's the powerful part: "Adding no new money, after five years your original $200 has turned into $835.45."

Actually, after 5 years at 10% you’d be at $322. It’d take 15 to hit $835. I guess that’s close enough, give or take a decade.