pennling · The Power of Time

02 / Evidence

Seventy years of patience, visualised.

$10,000 invested in major U.S. indices

1955 → 2025 · Price return, nominal dollars

S&P 500 · 70 yrs

$1.68M

168× growth · 7.6% per year

Dow Jones · 70 yrs

$1.06M

106× growth · 6.9% per year

NASDAQ · 54 yrs

$1.93M

193× growth · 10.2% per year

S&P 500 Dow Jones NASDAQ

Figures show price return only — with dividends reinvested, total returns would be substantially higher (the S&P 500's total return over this period is roughly 500×). Values are in nominal U.S. dollars, not adjusted for inflation. Sources: multpl.com, macrotrends.net.

03 / Reading the curve

Three quiet lessons hidden in that shape.

The curve looks flat for decades.

Most of the dollar-value growth happens in the final twenty years, not the first fifty. The early decades feel unproductive — but they are doing the essential work. Compounding is patient, not dramatic.

ii.

Steeper returns come with deeper falls.

NASDAQ's brilliance (10%+ per year) comes with visible scars — the dot-com crash, the 2008 crisis. A diversified portfolio rides a smoother curve. For a child's 60-year horizon, smooth matters more than spectacular.

iii.

Nothing on this chart required genius.

These numbers belong to anyone who simply bought the index and held it. No stock-picking, no market timing. The advantage available to you is the same one available to Warren Buffett: time in the market.

04 / The formula

One equation to hold in your pocket.

Galloway's Algebra of Wealth

Wealth = Focus + (Stoicism × Time × Diversification)

Three of the four inputs multiply each other. If any one of them is zero, the whole product collapses. A child born today inherits the one input that even the wealthiest adult cannot manufacture — time — in abundance. The seminar's central idea is simply: don't waste it.

05 / For the mother

What this means if your child is, say, five months old.

A newborn has sixty-five years ahead of them before they retire. That is the single most valuable asset on their balance sheet — and none of it is on yours.

The mother's privileged position is this: you can act on your child's behalf during the years when time is most powerful. Every decade you wait to start, you don't just lose ten years of returns — you lose the most productive ten years, because they were the ones that would have had the longest runway to compound.

The strategy does not need to be clever. It needs to be early, consistent, and left alone. A broadly diversified index fund. A small automatic monthly contribution. A decision made once and then protected, through good markets and bad, for two or three decades.

What you are really teaching is not finance. You are teaching that the future can be planted, quietly, from the very beginning — and that the smallest habits practised for the longest time become the ones that change a life.

An illustrative scenario

CHF 100 per month, from birth to age 18.

Monthly contributionCHF 100

Years contributing18

Total paid inCHF 21,600

Assumed return7% p.a.

Value at age 18~CHF 43,000

Value at 65 if left untouched, no further contributions~CHF 1.04M

Phase 2 · Drawdown 65 → 95

Starting balance at 65CHF 1.04M

Drawdown period30 years

Remainder still earning7% p.a.

Monthly income~CHF 6,900

Annual income, age 65 → 95 balance reaches zero at age 95~CHF 83,000

Illustration only. Accumulation assumes 7% annual nominal return compounded monthly for 18 years, then left untouched for 47 years. Drawdown calculated as a 30-year annuity at 7% — the remaining balance continues earning while annual withdrawals are made. Actual returns vary, are not guaranteed, and do not account for taxes or inflation. This is education, not financial advice.

06 / Conclusion

Two paths, one gift.

At age 18

Hand it to them as they begin adult life.

A fully funded university education, with room left over. No student debt, no part-time shifts instead of lectures, no decisions shaped by short-term money worries. A running start — handed over on their eighteenth birthday with nothing expected in return.

~CHF 43,000

a debt-free beginning

Left untouched until retirement

Let it keep working — for the next 47 years.

You stop contributing at 18. Your child never adds a single franc. The money simply sits in broad index funds and compounds quietly through their entire working life. From 65 to 95, it pays them a full income every month — and then ends, gracefully, exactly when they do.

~CHF 6,900 /month

for 30 years of retirement

Put this in perspective

A single decision made during one child's first months of life — CHF 100 monthly, invested and forgotten — generates a monthly retirement income that easily rivals, and often exceeds, what Switzerland's state pension pays after forty years of full-time work.

The average AHV pension in Switzerland pays between CHF 1,260 and CHF 2,520 per month at full contribution. A lifetime of payroll deductions, early mornings, and careers arranged around retirement eligibility — often totalling several hundred thousand francs in contributions.

What you've just looked at — CHF 21,600 contributed across eighteen years, then left alone — produces roughly two to five times that monthly income. Not because the markets are generous. Because time is.

There are few more beautiful things a parent can give than a future already quietly taken care of — a gift that says, from the very first months, we were thinking of you.

— Sabina Jasinski · pennling

The Power
of Time.

A question for every new mother.

Seventy years of patience, visualised.

Three quiet lessons hidden in that shape.

One equation to hold in your pocket.

What this means if your child is, say, five months old.

Two paths, one gift.

A single decision made during one child's first months of life — CHF 100 monthly, invested and forgotten — generates a monthly retirement income that easily rivals, and often exceeds, what Switzerland's state pension pays after forty years of full-time work.

The Powerof Time.

A question for every new mother.

Seventy years of patience, visualised.

Three quiet lessons hidden in that shape.

One equation to hold in your pocket.

What this means if your child is, say, five months old.

Two paths, one gift.

A single decision made during one child's first months of life — CHF 100 monthly, invested and forgotten — generates a monthly retirement income that easily rivals, and often exceeds, what Switzerland's state pension pays after forty years of full-time work.

The Power
of Time.