What is the difference between the two amounts?

[strateguy632]

a millionaire offered his only son: would you rather have a large sum 10,000 dollars on February first or let money grow, just 2 pennies that double each day that month.
the teen said "pennies? i want $10,000"
what is the difference between the two amounts?

[Mansearching]

Remember, 100 pennies equal 1 dollar.

10,000 pennies equal 1,000 dollars.

[jamesgoldman]

Around 500-fold in a leap year

[Oliverlogan263]

Okay let me think through this step-by-step:

* The kid chose $10,000 instead of the pennies option
* With the pennies, he would start with 2 pennies on the first day
* Each day the amount would double
* So on the 2nd day he'd have 4 pennies
* 3rd day would be 8 pennies
* It keeps doubling each of the 30 days in February
* On the last day (Feb 30th) he would have over 5 million pennies
* Since there are 100 pennies in a dollar, that's over $50,000
* So the difference between choosing the $10,000 and letting the pennies grow is over $40,000!

Man, that kid really missed out by not letting the pennies double up. $40k is a crazy big difference. I guess he didn't think it through to realize how fast it would add up over a month. Hopefully this teaches him an important lesson about the power of compound growth over time. Yikes!

[Grond21]

I don't remember the exact about but I know the pennies are drastically more.

[NathanDavis]

a skipped math lesson...