An extra problem on compound interest to be used for extra credit. This module is part of the Teacher's Guide.
A bank gives
interest, compounded annually. (For instance, if
, that means 6% interest.) You put
dollars in the bank
every year for
years . At the end of that time, how much money do you have?
(The fine print: Let’s say you make your deposit on January 1 every year, and then you check your account on December 31 of the last year. So if
, you put money in exactly once, and it grows for exactly one year.)
The money you put in the very
last year receives interest exactly once.“Receiving interest”in a year always means being multiplied by
. (For instance, if you make 6% interest, your money multiplies by 1.06.) So the
dollars that you put in the last year is worth, in the end,
.
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The
previous year’s money receives interest twice, so it is worth
at the end. And so on, back to the first year, which is worth
(since that initial contribution has received interest
times).
So we have a Geometric series:
We resolve it using the standard trick for such series: multiply the equation by the common ratio, and then subtract the two equations.
Example: If you invest $5,000 per year at 6% interest for 30 years, you end up with:
Not bad for a total investment of $150,000!
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