Boring, and it works.
The private finance tools in the lab keep proving one small thing, so here it is in the open: put a little in, leave it alone, let time do the math. $300 a month in a low-cost index fund, around 7% a year, for 45 years — one working life, first paycheck to retirement — grows to about $1.14 million. No trick, just compounding. Change the numbers below and watch.
Your turn — play with it.
Your plan
🫧 That's millionaire territory — mostly from money you never earned, just growth on money that sat still.
Why boring wins.
Nothing here is clever. That's the whole point — and it's the same standard the lab holds its private tools to.
Time does the heavy lifting
In the default plan, most of the final number is growth — not the money you put in. Start earlier, and time quietly outworks a bigger paycheck.
Boring beats clever
The lab's backtest tools graded eleven years of trying-to-be-clever against simply staying put.
The dull verdict: doing nothing won.
Just math, not advice
This is a calculator, not a plan for you. It assumes one steady return; real markets rise and fall. What it shows is the shape, not a promise.
The honest fine print. This tool assumes a single, constant annual return compounded monthly, with contributions added at each month's end. Real markets don't move in a straight line — they swing, sometimes for years. The figures ignore taxes, fund fees, and inflation (a million dollars in 45 years buys less than a million today). Past performance is never a guarantee of future results. Nothing here is personalized financial advice; for that, talk to a licensed advisor. It's a picture of how compounding works, meant to be played with — nothing more.